Family members pictured, from left, are Charlie Madaris with his two girls, Shelby and Molly; Katie and Chuck Madaris; and Kathleen, Ellis Ann, Shep and Bradfield Evans.
Raising Kids and Cattle A cattleman. It was all Chuck Madaris ever wanted to be. Today, he and his wife, Katie, are succeeding in ensuring their children, Charlie and Kathleen, and their young families have the same opportunity at CK Cattle, the enterprise they built near Hope Hull, Alabama. “My dad wasn’t a cattle farmer,” Chuck explains. “But I was exposed to cattle through my mother’s family and became laser focused on working in the industry.” After earning an animal science degree at Auburn University, Chuck began working for a larger, multifaceted operation, where he helped build and manage a beef herd. It’s also where he met Katie. Ultimately, the couple realized Katie’s family’s operation couldn’t support multiple generations. Chuck and Katie jumped when an opportunity to start their own cattle enterprise came along in the late 1980s. Their goal: Grow a business that would sustain theirs and future generations. With young Charlie and Kathleen in tow, they moved about 20 miles up the road and launched CK Cattle in 1989. Today, Chuck and Katie, Charlie, Kathleen and her husband, Bradfield Evans, manage the various aspects of the registered Angus, Chiangus and SimAngus seedstock and commercial cattle operation, with support across the board from Katie and their families. \\ Much of Alabama is busted up into 160-acre tracts, but this is cattle land, and I knew if you wanted to be in the cattle business in a big way in Alabama, this was the place. // — Chuck Madaris Profitability Breeds Sustainability At the most basic level, sustaining any cattle operation centers on profitability. Today, as the team at CK Cattle begins bringing its third generation into the fold, it is striving to ensure sustainability and profitability intertwine as tightly as a strand of barbed wire. “We approach decisions not just from a financial perspective but also on how it helps us beyond the bottom line,” Chuck says. Sometimes, the payoff is unexpected. For example, CK Cattle operates on a contiguous land base, stretching across more than 3,000 acres on what is known as the Black Belt — a band of heavy, black soil ill-suited for timber or crops but ideal for grass and cattle. Having all the land connected provides an ideal environment for raising cattle and families.
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