Moving Cattle From Colorado to Nebraska

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. I’ve got Dan Reardon from Rockin’ R Red Angus on the phone.

Yeah, Dan, I noticed you recently moved to Nebraska. Can you give us a little background on your operation? We are from Western Colorado. We moved to Nebraska Panhandle about two years ago.

We ran Red Angus cattle at high elevation in Western Colorado. We ran our cattle above Gunnison, about 10,000 feet up there in the summertime. And our farm was in Montrose, Colorado, about 6,500 feet.

So we’ve been dealing with Red Angus high altitude genetics for years. We wanted to make a change for quite a while. And two years ago, we were finally able to make that happen and chose the Nebraska Panhandle as our new place.

Our ranch, like I said, is due south of McGrew. So we’re kind of in between Bayard and Gering, but just a little bit closer to Baird. Are you doing the same practices or is it different now? We’ve changed some things.

We definitely can create a lot more performance at the elevation we run cattle at now. Introduced genetics from other high altitude breeders. And we did that for years.

But after moving to Nebraska, we can incorporate a lot more performance into our genetics. We feel like we have an extremely maternal type of herd. The last two years, we’ve implemented a lot of performance into those genetics.

And our weaning weights and our yearling weights are significantly different from when we were running in Colorado. That’s Dan Reardon from Rockin’ R Red Angus, now located south of McGrew, Nebraska. When it comes to raising cattle, maternal efficiency and greater calving ease are two very important traits.

The U.S. Meat Animal Research Center data shows Gelbvieh females have the smallest mature cow size of the four major continental breeds. This reduced mature cow size allows for puberty to be reached at an earlier age. Visit Gelbvieh.org. That’s going to do it for today’s Cattleman’s Corner.

Thanks again for listening and may God bless. I’m Brian Hale.