History
In beginning, our great-grandfathers emigrated from Germany to escape the poverty and constant wars of Europe. They settled in the fertile hills and valleys of Cummins Creek. Since that time, and for the last 150 years, we have been farming and ranching in central Texas. My family earned their living from this land with various enterprises including grain and cotton farms, cotton gins, dairies, and ranching. In the 1960's King Cotton died and the land was planted to bermuda and the economy changed to beef cattle.
Colette and I bought our first 100 acres in 1973 and have been adding property over the years. Four years ago we started buying ranch land on Cummins Creek only three miles from where two of my great-grandfathers settled. We purchased it in five transactions from four different landowners over the last four years. This new ranch consists of 450 contiguous acres and is very secluded and unimproved. We have been concentrating on selling our other property and moving our entire operation to the new facility. We think we know how our forefathers felt when they settled their farms, built houses and barns, and cleared their property. It is a very rewarding experience!
I bought my first cow in 1957 with money earned picking cotton and added to it over the years with other commercial Hereford and later Brahma cross cows. We purchased our first Angus heifers in 1990. Over the next few years, we selected cattle from various sales and bred them to what I now call "The Bull of the Month Club." Look back through your 10-year-old Angus Journals and see how many of the bulls featured in the glossy ads you recognized in today's pedigrees. I have done this and none of the bulls recognized as great female sires today were very highly promoted in the front pages. In addition, most of the cows we purchased were not the quality animals we thought we were buying and ended up at the auction barn.
We knew that we needed a different approach if we were to succeed in this business. We visited the McCurrys in Mt. Hope, KS, and began to understand what it takes to build a great cow herd. If I could give advice to any new breeder, it would be to buy the best females you can afford from a reputable and honest breeder who does not follow the latest fad. You can breed to the best bulls in the Angus breed, but you will not make a lot of progress if you do not have a quality female on the bottom side. Use established and highly proven sires even if their semen is scarce and expensive. It is a lot cheaper than finding out after three years that your heifers can not raise a calf.
We changed our focus and acquired three top proven donor cows from McCurry Bros. We flushed them to the top proven bulls in the breed (6807, Bando, 155, Traveler, etc.). We later acquired donors from other quality programs and currently more than 50% of our calves are now produced by embryo transfer and raised by our own herd of registered Angus recipient cows. Please note that I used the word "proven" to describe our donors. A female must prove herself with outstanding production to become a donor in our program.