IN PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE PROVIDING GENETICS FOR THE REAL-WORLD

At Cavender Ranches, we’ve been involved in the Brangus breed for over 30 years and made a commitment to start feeding all of our cattle 25 years ago. We are consumers of our own genetics. We continue to run our commercial operation marketing replacement females at our two annual sales, feeding and harvesting our steers and nonreplacement quality females. We are not a boutique registered outfit but rather a performance oriented, commercially driven seedstock supplier. Our goal is not to sell a few high dollar bulls and females each year but to have a lot of successful cattlemen that count on us year after year to continually improve our seedstock to ultimately improve their cowherds and bottom lines.

In the beginning, we knew nothing about our carcass value, but felt we were leaving money on the table by not feeding our cattle based on the size of our herd. We happened to go with a feed yard that sold cattle on a grid which allowed us to see our carcass results from the start. When we first began, we immediately picked up an additional $50 in value per animal by simply getting them to the feed yard and retaining ownership. Over time, the additional value has grown significantly as both calf prices and our emphasis on meeting the demands of our commercial and feedlot customers have increased.

The knowledge we have gained, and the resulting data, has continued to drive our pursuit of excellence in our seedstock operation. We are dedicated to producing functional cattle with eye appeal, carcass value and genetics to perform at a superior level. We want enough ear and phenotype in our bulls to produce high demand commercial Brangus females, environmentally suited for a wide cross section of our country. We are aware there is variation in needs across herds and regions. Some herds need a little less ear while others may need to reduce frame and add thickness, for example. We aspire to have a variety of type and kind while maintaining consistency and uniformity in performance and quality throughout our bull offering.

Consistency and uniformity are paramount at Cavender Ranches. This requires a disciplined approach over many years to accomplish. We believe our vision will help drive better Brangus genetics and accelerate the progress the breed is making. We realize as a breed we will have to compete with other carcass and feedlot-oriented breeds to be relevant in the future. We look forward to the challenge.

With this challenge in mind, over the last 12 years we have built a foundation Angus herd with the intent of creating new bloodlines to add more carcass value into the Brangus purebred population. We like to start with a UB1 that has a Brangus look and chose to use some of what we thought were the best Brangus bulls in the breed and sires that were looser made. As we progressed, we tried to choose Brangus sires that were complimentary to our UB1 females to continue a path toward UB2 and Brangus. We focused on EPDs, underlines and breed character as we made future mating choices. Our end product goal and vision has been to have “best of breed” EPDs and multitrait leading genetics in a balanced package. We have seen tremendous uniformity and consistency in our new Brangus breed up cattle. In combination with great EPDs, we also want eye appealing cattle with enough ear and adequate, but not excessive, underlines that are often discounted in both the purebred and commercial marketplace. We strive to produce moderate framed, functional cattle that can maintain their flesh in real-world situations while gaining in the feedyard and grading well at harvest. We want cattle from our program to excel when compared to other breeds, regardless of the yardstick used to measure them.

We believe EPDs are not always perfect, but they do matter. Our involvement in the Angus and Charolais world validated our belief in EPDs as we continue to witness producers pushing the envelope on breeding balanced performance cattle while observing cattle without top EPDs and data are being sold at lesser values. We believe the same will be true in the Brangus World as we move forward and that it will drive value in the herd bulls and elite females that lead our breed.

Our traditional Brangus cowherd features many of the breed’s leading cow families including 541, 415, 468, 75, 117, 2, 63, 99, 406, 561, 803 and 924. We have infused many of our new Brangus herd sires into our traditional cow families providing a punch in their EPD profile where needed – either growth, carcass or birthweight. Sometimes, one cross totally changes an EPD profile and will allow much greater flexibility in the subsequent matings, allowing the incorporation of fresh new herd sires. Through this disciplined approach we will continue our pursuit of better cattle.

At Cavender Ranches we are proud of our ranch staff including Justin Matejka as General Manager, Dustin Kennedy, Registered Cattle Manager, Johnnie Rivera, Bull Station Manager along with Josh Massey, his son Halton, Aubrey McClure and Dane Bennett on the cow herd side. In addition, we have Mark Cowan and Todd Harvey working in customer service and marketing. Together these cattlemen provide a wealth of knowledge, experience and resources for our customers, to help with their programs and achieve their goals in competing in today’s beef industry.

One of our top goals in the purebred sector is to assist our customers and help make them genetically competitive and successful by providing value-oriented cattle that meet the demands of the real-world cattlemen. If we can help make our customer’s programs successful, then our success is assured.