Nebraska Angus Breeder Mike Bartels

Welcome to the Cattleman’s Corner.

I’m Brian Hale, sitting in for the late Howard Hale, as we continue his legacy of speaking with cattlemen and women from around the globe. Balancer cattle are registered hybrid seed stock that have documented pedigrees and expected progeny differences. Balancer cattle combine the gelby growth, muscle, leanness, fertility, longevity, and low-yield grading ability with the carcass qualities of the Angus.

Today, we have Mike Bartels from South Central Nebraska. So how did you get started in the cattle business? Sure, Brian. Our family operation when I was growing up was just a couple hundred commercial cows, Angus cows, crossbred bulls.

And when I was in FFA in high school, I kind of fell in love with the show circuit. We grabbed a registered heifer from a local seed stock guy that we’d been buying bulls from, and it kind of started from there. Through college, I accumulated some bred heifers along the way, and it’s kind of been a labor of love ever since.

We’ve jumped into some embryo transfer through the years and have kind of just expanded our numbers to where we are today. And that’s with the Angus genetics, right? Correct. You said you did some crossbreeding? Way back in the day when we had just commercial cows here, dad would have had crossbred cows.

Okay, so now you’re strictly… Strictly Angus now, yeah. We’re just north of Riverton, Nebraska. So Riverton, Nebraska is smack dab in the middle, right along the Kansas-Nebraska state line.

And we noticed that you’re almost into Kansas there. You’re pretty far south in Nebraska, aren’t you? Yeah, we see Kansas from our back door. Mike Bartels from the Bartels Angus Ranch, where their goal is to build relationships and to help you become more profitable raising cattle in Franklin County, Nebraska.

You can find them listed on cattlemanscorner.com, agsearch.us, our agricultural search engine, or by simply searching for this interview on your favorite search engine. That’s going to do it for today’s Cattleman’s Corner. Thanks again for listening and may God bless.

I’m Brian Hale.