Our Program... Bowman Ranch continues to focus on the mother cow. Making it through tough conditions makes a quality mother cow possessing all the convenience traits, more important than ever. We don’t have time to deal with bad dispositions, poor udders, or tough doing cows. We are a family operation and provide all the day to day labor. We demand that each cow earns her keep. They have to maintain a sensible frame score, be structurally sound, easy to handle, and have an acceptable udder, while weaning a heavy calf and breeding back on time each year. Cows aren’t given a second chance and have to perform every year. Our registered herd is treated exactly the same as our commercial herd. They survive and thrive on limited resources on a 100% forage diet. We strive to graze our cowherd 8.5-9 months of the year and will go 10 months if the forage is there and the winter allows it. We then supplement home grown hay and a dry mineral supplement. We do not creep feed any of our registered calves as we feel we can’t properly evaluate our cow herd if creep is provided. These bulls have to do it on mother’s milk and what Mother Nature provides on SW North Dakota grass. All animals selling were born and raised right here on the ranch. Every registered calf is weighed on a digital scale within 24 hours of birth. In April, they get their first round of vaccinations followed by another round at preconditioning in September and boosters at weaning in October. Weaning weights were taken September 1st which we used to calculate adjusted 205 day weights. This is done so we can ratio the bulls with the ones that get banded at that time. Actual weaning weights were taken on the bulls when they were weaned on October 5th. After weaning, bulls are placed in the feedlot here on the ranch. Bulls are fed a high roughage ration consisting of chopped grass, alfalfa, and barley hay, corn silage, rolled corn, distillers grain, and a vitamin/mineral supplement. I personally feed and evaluate them each and every day. We target around 3 pounds of daily gain leading up to the sale. Bulls are then backed down to begin to harden up to ensure a bull that is ready to go to work breeding cows.
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