Cows
Cattle with a Purpose Beyond Performance
With the original purchase of cows from Mike Sitz our focus had been on the certain sires that were a part of the pedigree. Like any other rancher looking into anothers herd the sires were really the only animals that we were familiar with at all. I remember Mike driving Kari and I out to a pasture where the majority of the mature cows were wintering. He had lived with his cow herd his whole life. He knew every cow's pedigree from the bottom of his heart and the back of his hand. The uniformity that is in Mike's cow herd and cow lines is a testament to his eye. With this, was the foundation of my education based on the value of the cow along with the cow herd itself began. Where I had been putting a larger focus and bulls that were popular at the time I found that in order for me to build a herd like Mikes I needed to put an emphais on using bulls from good cows that would leave a lasting legacy. Little did I know how much further Larry Leonhardt would push me in the same direction. Since the beggining of Sprenger Cattle Co our selection of the cattle we use has never been based solely on EPD's. We have always felt there is more to cattle than numbers. Instead we have put emphasis on the necessary traits that made the Angus breed great. Traits like foraging ability, fleshing ability, sound udders, feet legs, calving ease, longevity, and quite dispositions. All of these traits are easier for me to see in my own herd. Because of this we have identified a few select cows that we have choosen to intertwine thougth the herd via their sons. Our cows are managed in a low input enviroment often along side our commercial cows. The cows are expected to graze year round on native range and or crop residue. They recieve timely supplementation of protien in the winter and mineral supplementation during the calving and breeding seasons. The cows and heifers are expected to deliver a calf unassisted beginning in May and wean a quality calf, with out creep feed, in late November or early December. There are no exceptions to these two rules.For the last 7 years we have choosen to bred our cows for only 45 days. There are 2 reasons for this. First, we have moved our calving date from a late March early April calving date to May and June. We miss out on the major winter storms because of this but we do not want to have calves born in July either. The other reason is to that we weed out the less fertile cows that are unable to rebreed in a timely fashion. We know that profitability is the name of the game and the more pounds that are sold equates to more money. But how much did it cost to achieve those added pounds. What we are seeking here at Sprenger Cattle Company is cow efficiency, and we do not find it in our larger framed, heavy milking cows. Our more moderate framed cows wean a good quality calf and stay in much better condition than the large framed cows. We are grazing more cows on the same land base and increasing our output. We are all limited in our major resource, grazing lands. Sure we could buy more grassland, but those acres need to be just as productive and profitable as the ones we already own. As livestock producers we need to think about the dollars generated per acre not per cow.
