www.herefordamerica.com • 5
HEREFORD AMERICA • November/December 2021
Stenberg... (continued from page 1) in partnership for 10 years. As with any business relationship, there are bound to be areas of disagreement, and the Stenberg duo was no exception. “I’d been after him to show cattle since I was about 15 years old,” Dave said, but Ove didn’t see the merit in it at the time. But, Dave took advantage of a convenient opportunity to get his foot in the door of the show world. Ove was from Denmark and hadn’t been back to visit for as long as Dave could remember. With a lot of persistent encouragement, Ove travelled back to his home country to visit family, and Dave used that as a chance to try out something new.
“The day he left (for Denmark), I started working on three head of cattle,” Dave recalled with an ornery chuckle. He ended up showing them at Sioux Falls and Parker where he had the reserve champion heifer and bull. Ove must have been convinced by his son’s efforts and continued success at large shows. Dave remembered taking a “good string out to the South Dakota State Fair” in 1954. “There were 25 in a yearling bull class, and I won,” Dave said. In 1968, ownership of Stenberg Herefords passed along to Dave and his wife, Audrey, who stuck by him through their triumphs, and like most ranch wives do at some point or another, through the tribulations. “We went through some tough times” selling Herefords with the rise of dwarfism and an overall lack of demand for
Audrey and Dave Stenberg
Easy Calving
BW WW YW M M+G REA Marb
New baby on the Stenberg farm near Colman, SD.
the breed, “but we stuck with it,” Dave said proudly. “I tried to support him the best I could,” Audrey said. They persevered through those tough times, and in much the way that a lot of generational operations function, there was a sense of déjà vu when Dave got a phone call from his grandson, Cody, nine years ago. At the time, Cody and his wife were living in Brookings. Cody had gone off to college and had taken a variety of jobs. But he felt it was time to come home. Dave answered the phone and Cody asked, “grandpa, would there be room for us on the farm?”
Of course, Dave was elated with the opportunity to work alongside his grandson, just as his father had done with him. “He started helping me,” Dave said. “He had a pretty good eye; I could see that from the beginning.” Again, in the cyclical fashion that the world operates at times, they didn’t always see eye-to-eye on every breeding decision that was made. “I bought 10 cows from grandpa” and made the breeding decisions for them, Cody said. With the opportunity to make some individual breeding decisions, they still operated with collective goals. Dave and Cody really moved their cattle forward (continued on page 6 )
Easy Keeping
-0.3 55 109 34 61 .56 .02
F Frontier 916 174E x 446 Polled. BW 72 lb. Used in our herd. Popular with ranchers for A.I. on hundreds of black heifers. Possession for sale.
BW WW YW M M+G REA Marb
0.3 71 114 34 70 .55 .36
F 33Z Victor 117
33Z x X651 Polled. BW 70 lb. CHB $165. Surefire calving ease and exceptional carcass genetics in a stout, stylish package.
80 bulls For Sale Privately BW WW YW M M+G REA Marb
F Endure 126 173D x Warrior Homozygous polled. Power and quality.
3.2 68 106 36 70 .69 .11
Feddes Herefords Tim 406.570.4771 tfeddes@msn.com 2009 Churchill Road
BW WW YW M M+G REA Marb
Dan 406.570.1602 drfeddes@msn.com Manhattan, MT 59741
Our sale is any time you want. All our cattle sell privately. See more bulls for sale at:
www.feddes.com
F Endure 194 173D x Anodyne Homozygous polled. Our #1 nursing ratio.
3.7 71 112 32 68 .69 .19
