WYMAN CREEK CATTLE COMPANY: WHERE LOOK AND A LOW INPUT HERD GOES HAND IN HAND

WYMAN CREEK CATTLE COMPANY:

WHERE LOOK AND A LOW INPUT HERD GOES HAND IN HAND

by Deanna Nelson-Licking

Deep in the Missouri Ozarks, a herd of Brangus cattle flourish, but the south hasn’t always been their home. The herd started near Oroville, California in 1990 when Carolyn Belden Carson and her family attended a Brangus herd dispersal sale with a family friend. Two open heifers came home with them and became the foundation of Wyman Creek Cattle Company. Wyman Creek Cattle Company is owned by Bob and Kathy Belden, daughter Carolyn and her husband Larry Carson, and daughter Annie Belden, daughter Denise and Larry Roenspie and sons Adam, Nick and Neal. Carolyn is the one in charge of the cattle with the others having their own careers and pitching in when needed. Carolyn’s husband, Larry, who retired after working maintenance for 40 years at AT&T, had a small herd of Angus cows when the couple married. “Some of those Angus cows still have influence in our Ultrablack program,” she said.

Raising registered cattle was a new endeavor for the family, as Carolyn’s parents were tree farmers raising walnuts and almonds on an irrigated place in California.

“We liked the Brangus really well and we had helped our friend with his cattle and started growing our herd. We bought a few females, but mostly we have bought the best herd sires we could afford and bred a great set of daughters,” Carolyn explained. In 2016, the drought in California was extremely hard on the farms and orchards when they ran out of water. “We had three good wells and a tree farmer from the other end of the state came by and asked to buy our place,” Carolyn recalled. She said that the price offered was too good to turn down but they were unable to find pasture ground in California that they could afford.

“We needed a place that could run a couple hundred cows and had three houses so we started looking online.

Missouri came up and we flew out to look at properties. “We bought a place near Summersville and have three times as much land as we had in California but since it’s not irrigated and in the Ozarks with timber, we can only run the same amount of cattle.” They were very impressed with the adaptability of the Brangus. “We moved everything from fall pairs, that we moved in spring, and the spring calvers who were dry. We had no problems moving the Brangus, nothing out of the ordinary with the humidity, bugs, and the fescue. We had a few registered Angus and straight British bred cows who thinned themselves down by half in two years. They either tolerated it or they didn’t.” Carolyn and her family have worked with the Missouri Department of Conservation putting in water tanks and fencing out the ponds. She has noticed that where the cattle have access to the ponds, the Angus and British bred cows will all be out in the water, while the Brangus will be out grazing. “We have the only eared cattle in the area and the Brangus breed back and winter doesn’t bother them.” Wyman Creek Cattle Company now runs around 140 registered cows plus replacement heifers. Early on, they purchased Brinks genetics and even after the original herd was sold, they have continued to purchase stock from the program’s owners.

“Every two or three years we outcross the herd by synchronizing and AI’ing. We have also used some home raised bulls that have been very influential on the herd. We produce registered and commercial Brangus and Ultrablacks. The Ultrablack program was implemented as a means to add completely new outcross cow families to the herd, but has resulted also in the production of WC UB Fortress 322F, a UB1 that we exhibited with some success in 2019-2020, ending up as the International Brangus Breeders Association (IBBA) Ultra Show Bull of the Year and his dam, purchased from Bradley 3 Ranch

as a weaned heifer, was the 2019-2020 IBBA Ultra Show Dam of the Year. The first Fortress calves are on the ground now and hitting the show ring with some success. But more importantly, we can’t wait to put those UB2 daughters into production,” Carolyn said. The herd is split between spring and fall calving groups with typically twice as many spring calvers. With two calf crops, it provides the Belden and Carson families two income sources for the year. They have been saving the top end of their bull calves and are starting to have repeat bull customers, but the real focus is building the cow herd and improving the female base and offering replacement females for sale. “That is why we show, for the show market. It is the opposite of California, there, they always wanted the females at the sale barn but it was hard to market the replacements. It was harder to sell the elite females in California, now it is easier to market Brangus females and easier to have a presence at the shows in Missouri. They have to be in front of people, customers have to see them first in order to buy them. Whatever we don’t keep or sell as replacements go to the sale barn, we now have females sprinkled all over our part of Missouri in commercial herds. We have also hosted two online Treasures of the Ozarks heifer sales through Hi Point Marketing. The goal is to hold two sales annually, spring and fall, mainly (continued on page 28) (Front row L-R) Bob and Kathy Belden, MD the dog, Annie Belden. (Middle L-R) Denise, Larrya, Nick and Neal Roenspie, Larry and Carolyn (Belden) Carson, (back) Adam Roenspie. (J-Lens Photography) Goose the canine assistant and enforcer. Carolyn relies on her dogs to help move the cattle.

(continued from page 27) geared toward marketing young show heifer and elite brood cow prospects. And we sell private treaty bulls and females off the ranch as well,” she says. The steers are mostly sold straight off the cow after preconditioning. “We are not set up to feed a lot of cattle, we feed the bulls we retain and the replacement heifers get fed lightly from weaning to breeding. Then they have to go be a cow. They are treated like a commercial herd. I run my cows like my customers run their cows. They need to handle the environment and raise a calf, I’m more confident selling a bull like that. They sort themselves out for fertility and efficiency,” she noted. Carolyn handles most of the day to day chores, with a trusty side-by-side and her cattle dogs. They have welltrained cattle pasture rotations, which doesn’t need additional help. Larry and Denise both work in the school system, she as a teacher and he a bus driver. Daughter, Annie Belden, works full time as an emergency room registration clerk and is expecting her first child this winter. Patricia Welch and Nicole Chapman were family friends back in California who recently moved to Missouri and purchased an extra house from the family. They also pitch in to help whenever they can. “We’ve done quite a bit of pasture improvement and land clearing here since we arrived. My parents have done most of the heavy equipment work, as my dad runs the bulldozer and my mom the excavator. Everybody pitches in during haying season and certain tasks need more help, like farm projects and cow work. My sister helps with the show cattle, as she is my crew outside the ring since she hates the show ring. Denise keeps me going and helps me with everything. We are good at getting them fed and ready but I have the fitting skills of a ten-year-old so we hire the fitting done,” Carolyn said. A neighboring cattle feeder backgrounds a lot of calves and has bought most of the Wyman Creek calves. “The last two years I have weaned our calves, they take the calves, weigh them, and turn them straight out on grass and don’t worry about them. They bring me small groups of high-risk calves they purchase. I have a covered area and I get those calves turned around, give them their shots and get them to eating before they take them and bring me another group.” Carolyn and her family are making Wyman Creek Cattle Company a force to be reckoned with in the show ring and as producers of quality cattle. “My mom and dad had two daughters; they never raised us to feel like we had any limitations and we are capable. I worked with dad to start with, but it didn’t take very long at all. He would tell everyone if they wanted to know something about the cattle to talk to me, so being a female has never been an issue.” “We really like to support the junior programs, as we feel they are the future of our industry. To that end, I am currently serving as an advisor to the International Junior Brangus Breeders Association (IJBBA) Board of Directors. I previously served on the IBBA Show Advisory Committee and the IBBA Board of Directors, also. Lastly, we are pretty proud to be able to say that we have been the owners of the Summit Sire, The Natural of Brinks 535F15, purchased as a yearling from the 1997 Camp Cooley Ranch Production Sale. We are also the breeders of the Summit Sire, WC The Merlin 821K. The influence of both these bulls has served as a foundation of the overall longevity and productivity of our cow herd today,” Carolyn said.

Carolyn feels that their breeding program is still growing and evolving. “I don’t feel like I’ve succeeded yet, I keep working at it, always building and improving the female herd. You have got to have a good cow herd, we have always focused on disposition, especially with older people and kids around. Cattle that are correct and sound, muscle, milk and growth follow those other traits, and you get a package of all those things. Producing cows that are fertile, functional, phenotypically correct, consistently productive and easy to look at, I don’t want to pack feed to an ugly cow.” Wyman Creek Cattle Company is where style and function meet in a herd that exemplifies low input environmental adaptability with show heifers, registered bulls, registered and commercial replacement females available year round.

WC UB Fortress 322F, the 2019-2020 IBBA Ultra Show Bull of the Year. First generation UB, whose dam was purchased as a weaned heifer calf from the storied Bradley 3 Ranch Angus herd. He is being used heavily across the board in the Wyman Creek herd with fantastic results. (L-R) Betsey Bradley, Carolyn Carson, and Annie Belden on the stick.(Showchampions Photography)