Welcome to our 26th Annual King of the Range Production Sale! Commercial cattlemen’s source for functional, honest, and problem-free cattle.
more loafing space while maintaining our three feet of bunk space per bull. We believe spreading bulls out helps reduce the risk of injury due to extreme riding. We develop these bulls on a single ration from weaning until sale day—never changing. The ration is forage-based, consisting of haylage, silage, alfalfa hay, prairie hay, and corn. We target a 3.25 lb ADG. Some will do better, some a bit lower, giving you the opportunity to find both big spread bulls and maternally bred bulls without compromise. My biggest passion today is the developmental stage of bulls. There isn’t a day that goes by that we aren’t trying to create a better environ- ment for our weaned calves to excel. It’s a huge investment, but I feel it’s one of the ways we add value to your purchases—knowing these bulls are cared for and developed correctly. I touched a little on labor earlier—this is a family-driven ranch. Every task here is done primarily by Owen or myself. Daily feeding, bedding, calving, sire selection, and all individual cow matings are handled by us. Turnout and AI are done entirely be Liv, Owen, and me, as well as the countless jobs in between like giving shots and processing calves. All clipping is done by Owen, and the pictures are a family affair with Liv leading. Liv also handles our advertising and promotions. We each have our areas of expertise, and when help is needed, we’re not too proud to call on each other first. We are all driven by the same core beliefs, and I can proudly say that most decisions are very uniform— no matter which one of us is making them. Lastly, we’ve decided to try to help the young producer—if you’re un- der 30, your purchase will receive a 5% discount; the future of this in- dustry depends on people willing to build something long-term and we know firsthand how difficult it is to get momentum started. Thanks for taking the time to look through our program. If you have any questions, give any of us a call. Mike, Myra, Owen and Liv
This year’s cattle market feels like we’re in the driver’s seat going 120 MPH—adrenaline running, thrilled to be part of it—while at the same time glancing down to make sure we’re buckled up and hoping the tires are good. Are we going to run out of gas? Crash? Airbags go off? I honest- ly don’t know. But if you’ve spoken to me, you know I’ve never been more optimistic about this market. It’s tough not to be optimistic about the future of our industry, while still having enough experience to understand that markets never stay the same. I’ll be the first to tell you I’m not an econ major—my wife and banker would agree. However, we have the lowest cowherd numbers on record. Pasture has been broken for farmland and will never be reseeded to grass. Our consumers value high-quality beef. Our producers continue to age, with few young people entering the cow-calf sector. Even if every heifer born last year were kept, we still would not maintain the numbers we have today. And we all know with the price of calves today, most heif- ers are sold to go on feed. So, with all that being said—what’s next? For us at Stavick Simmental, we’re not changing things. We will keep the same number of heifers to maintain our herd and add a few so we can continue to cull from the bottom. We will continue to live by our core values: every cow on the place should be able to put a bull in the sale or leave an improved daughter in her place. They will be problem-free, func- tional cattle with as much performance as our environment will maintain, with no added luxuries of creep feed or extra labor. Our cows will continue to give birth to thrifty calves, nurse with prob- lem-free udders, and maintain great dispositions. Their feet and legs are structured to allow them to graze big pastures in rough country, where we can analyze and cull poor producers or problem cattle. Remember— cows that stay pay. Our bull calves will continue to be developed using sound manage- ment and feeding techniques. We will never compromise structure or proper scrotal development while chasing huge ADG. This year, you’ll notice we’ve added a third development pen. This was done to create
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