21 minute read
Twenty Three for 2023 Ed & Mandy Raithel
Ed & Mandy Raithel
Manager & Marketing V.P.
Herbster Angus Farms
Falls City, Nebraska
HerbsterAngus.com
@Herbster.Angus
herbsterangus@sentco.net
Ed: Our job is to create the greatest set of cattle anywhere. Mandy and I are committed to making it happen at Herbster Angus Farms. We are celebrating our 25th Anniversary here as of today, May 1st! We know making great cattle takes a lifetime to do and that’s what I think makes us so picky. We’re not going to settle like some people do. A lot of people will say, “We can get this 'next best thing', and it will work.” Jumping into genetics just because they're new and hot causes a lot of problems. We just don’t buy into that philosophy. We’re not going to take a mediocre udder, not going to take bad feet, and we’re not going to take a whole lot of white in Angus cattle, let alone bad attitudes. I’ll sacrifice a bit of carcass quality to get a better udder, or a little more longevity, or a little higher breedback percentage. Every person creates their own boundaries, but there are some operations that are a bit more lenient than we are. So, it’s our goal to create a phenomenal set of cows, and of course, sell some awesome bulls along the way.
Ed: At Herbster Angus Farms, we’ll just keep trying to stack the absolute best of what we can find, without any settling, and we’ll see what happens. If you continue to put the best genetics in according to your stipulations, you’re going to get the best outcome. Not every time of course, since genetics don’t work that way, but by the same token, if you stay consistent with your breeding choices, things have to get better.
Ed: Charles is the driving force behind this whole operation. We know who's name is on the gate. Fortunately, we’ve been together for so long, it’s easy to know what each other wants. Charles and I go to a lot of sales together, and he enjoys that immensely. It’s challenging and fun for him, and we can hash it over so many ways. We know each other so well that we don’t have to discuss every little breeding decision. I don’t have to call him and say, “What do you want me to breed the mother of our high-selling bull, 616 to?”
I know what Charles wants and where he wants to go. There’s a good level of trust and Charles knows Mandy and I are going to do what’s in the overall best interest for his cattle. In fact, here’s a short story that’ll give you a perspective on how we’ve grown stronger together. I probably had been working for Charles four or five years and I was trying to incorporate a specific bloodline into the program. I A.I.’d some cows to a bull having those genetics. The bull I used happened to be one that sired daughters that had absolutely horrible udders. He would wreck any udder he touched. I only had one cow that I bred him to that had a good enough udder to carry this bull. Charles happened to come home after being on the road that fall, and we were calving some of those cows out. Charles looked at the fall calvers for a while and then he comes up and asks me, “What is this sire code?” I told him the name of the bull and he said, “Why on earth did you use that bull?” I told him that I had researched the bull and then talked to some people that owned the bull. They all assured me that everything was great with him. In response, Charles said, “Let me stop you right there…Don’t ever breed another cow of mine to another bull that you haven’t seen! You better have seen his mother, his grandmother, his aunt, his niece…as many as you need to go find. I will buy you a plane ticket to Timbuktu to look at them. I don’t care how far it is, just don’t do that again. Now, you’re going to have to get rid of all those!” We haven’t had any more conversations like that.
Mandy: Yes, it was a tremendous sale for us. The Doc Ryan bulls averaged $14,263 and were the highlights of our sale. They were well received by our bull customers. Four things really helped us this year. First, we utilized Doc Ryan, which helped our bottom line. Second, we got our sale catalog out in a timely manner, about 2-1/2 weeks before our sale. As most everybody knows, you might as well be building the pyramids to get that done. Third, we shot videos of our bulls for the first time. Lastly, we did a really good job with our advertising and social media presence. All of that brought more people to our sale to generate great revenue this year.
Mandy: Yes, the addition of Doc Ryan was phenomenal for us. People were real happy with the quality of the Doc Ryan cattle. He really increased our EPDs, and that resonated with our buyers. Doc Ryan is an awesome growth spread bull and carcass bull, and it really upped our game on the marketability of those cattle. We had breeders coming who wanted power bulls, and then we had some that wanted that number spread on those Doc Ryans, along with that power. It all came together and gave us great sale results.
Ed: There were some Casino Bomber sons out and about that I looked at, as I had been studying them for about a year or so. They were good and checked most of the boxes, but something with them wasn't quite right. Anyway, I kept looking and listening and watching ads and videos. I browsed social media heavily too. I saw something about Doc Ryan on a social media post, and it just hit me really hard when I saw it. So, I immediately started digging, and it turns out Doc Ryan was backed by a great maternal line that Bill Rishel had developed. We’ve used a lot of different genetics over the years, and I think Bill is one of the greatest cowmen in history along with Mike Hartman and Eldon Krebs. When one of those guys has one that surfaces to the top — I take a hard look at that animal. They all have a great track record for finding females or bulls that impact our industry. When I learned Bill was the driving force behind Doc Ryan, Charles and I couldn't get to North Platte to look at the bull fast enough. After visiting T/D Ranch and seeing the bull in person, we knew he was exactly what we were looking for. I started studying the maternal lineage. The females behind Doc Ryan are well-known to be phenomenal uddered, productive, and they have really good feet. Doc Ryan's maternal pedigree contained a lot of great cows developed in the Rishel program. Bill created an awesome foundation, then Rishel and Trey Wasserburger added some pieces from the Gardiner program, and that enhanced the carcass value of Doc Ryan. He was a perfect choice for us to use on Schaff Angus Valley genetics.
Doc Ryan is so structurally sound and so fluid in his movement, and the angle to his shoulder makes him so different than most Angus cattle today, especially carcass-bred Angus cattle. He’s just one of a kind. There’s not one Angus bull out there, with the kind of numbers and that kind of genetic value with that kind of structure in the entire breed. It’s not even close. If anybody tells you different, they haven’t seen him or they don’t know how to evaluate livestock. It’s just that simple.
T/D Doc Ryan 049
Ed: It depends upon whether or not they fit our program and what our cow herd needs. I saw a bull the other day that was getting some hype and was a high-seller at a sale. He was the third son I had noticed out of a particular sire group this year. Then I studied the bull, his performance data, his EPDs, and his genomic data. I was sitting there looking at the numbers, and I said to myself, "With that performance data, we would have cut this bull at our house!" (laughs) There is no way that I’m going to promote a 550 lb weaning weight bull that weighed less than 1,100 lbs at a year. I don’t care what kind of carcass data he might have or what his heifer pregnancy might be if he doesn’t have enough performance. I get in trouble for not having a gray area with these things, especially when people can be fragile in this modern day. But, I’m at the age where I know what I want, Charles wants, our buyers want, and what this program needs to move forward.
Mandy and Charles W. Herbster
Ed: The America females are so awesome. Most people don’t realize that we’ve been using the maternal genetics that produced America for a long time at Herbster Angus Farms. Charles owned America’s grandmother and great grandmother too. In fact, he bought America’s grandmother in the Schaff Angus Valley Sale in 2006. The Madame Pride cows are phenomenal. They have longevity and udder quality—all those things that they don’t have numbers for. That's what makes the America cows so good. I took all my America daughters and I bred them to DocRyan, since it was such a perfect fit. In cattle breeding, you have to think three or four moves ahead. My next plan is to take the majority of Doc Ryan daughters out of America dams and breed them to Maverick. That mating would solidify calving ease with carcass traits and make awesome cattle.
Mandy: I’m originally from a little town in central Ohio—Mt. Gilead. Ed is from a little town south of Jefferson City, Missouri called Westphalia. Both are very, very small towns. I grew up in the Hereford business. We showed cattle and my parents still have Herefords in central Ohio. I was on the National Junior Polled Hereford Council as a director from 1992-94. Ed grew up raising Simmental cattle. His Dad ran a big herd of Angus and Simmental cows in central Missouri. We’ve both been at this all our lives.
Mandy: Ed and I met each other when he was doing some freelance work showing Charolais for Cliff Orley in Pennsylvania. I was still showing Herefords at the time, and we ended up meeting each other through a mutual friend. Then, while we were dating, Ed got a job opportunity at Sydenstricker Angus Farms in Mexico, Missouri. That was in 1994. He was going to move up there and start working as the show and sale cattle manager for Eddie Sydenstricker. We worked there together for four years. We learned a lot from Ben Eggers, who is still the manager at SydGen, and I think both of us would do anything in the world for Eddie (Sydenstricker). I finished my college degree at The University of Missouri-Columbia in 1998 and Ed wanted to go somewhere where he could be in a managerial role rather than as a division manager. Charles had been a Sydenstricker customer in the past, and we had a good relationship with him. He offered us an opportunity, and we took it in 1998, 25 years ago today! A silver anniversary is quite an accomplishment in this business! We love it here and what we get to do everyday, and we love working with Charles. It’s a great opportunity for us. When we got here there were probably 50 cows running around, now there’s about 450 head. At first, I worked part time for Charles, then I came on full time in 2008. That’s how we landed in Falls City, Nebraska and with Angus. We didn’t pick the Angus breed, Angus picked us!
Mandy: It’s different every day. I like to have some sort of semblance of a routine, but anybody that does our job knows it could change at a moment’s notice. Most days, we’re out the door early. We finish chores and then the next part depends on the season. It could be calving, A.I., delivering bulls, or designing ads. No one day is ever the same on a place like this. That’s what’s great about working at a ranch. You can predict that it’s going to be unpredictable. We’re just out there taking care of the cows every day and fielding the ball that is hit to us. People outside of our world have no idea what we do or how unpredictable things can be on a cattle operation. Don’t get me started on the ever changing weather. About 10 years back, it was a particularly nasty calving season, and it was a blizzard outside—winds blowing sideways, a hitting-you-hard-in-the-face, kind of snowstorm. We finally got everything somewhat stable and got a moment to spend in the office where it was warm. I remember Ed looking at me saying we have to go up and get that tractor, or whatever it was that day. I looked at him and said, “I don’t want to be a cowboy, I want to be a princess!” (laughs) Everybody thinks ranching is a glamorous life like they see on TV. I wish I could go out and ride my horse in the sun with my hair blowing in the wind in clean jeans. Everybody wants to be a cowboy until it’s time to do cowboy things.
Mandy: I’d say it’s romantic about 5% of the time. Just this morning, I jerked a CIDR out of a cow and the slime slapped me in the side of the face. That’s not real sexy. (laughs)
Mandy: My favorite piece of equipment has to be our OK Corral. That thing is just a genius of engineering. But, my favorite things to use on the ranch are my horse and the cow dog. With a good ranch horse and a good dog, you can move almost any number of cows in an easy, quiet fashion with no yelling and no cows running willy nilly. Ed says it’s like cheating. If you have a good horse and a good dog you just get a lot of things done quick.
Ed: Definitely our OK Corral. Our friend Dan, the Titan man’s father helped develop it. I can’t think of anything else that we use more. It’s a favorite.
Mandy: I made a post a couple of years ago when the “Me Too” movement was going on. I thought it was sad that women were feeling degraded, sexualized, or mistreated by their male counterparts. As a woman in agriculture, I’ve never felt like that. The cowboys out here need help, and they are thankful for good help. They have to get a job done, and if you’re a woman on the crew, they need you to succeed. So, the thing about it is, if you’re a woman in this business and they like you, they’ll do anything in the world to make you better. The other thing they’ve done for me is take me out of my comfort zone. I remember saying, “I can’t do that. I can’t back that trailer. I can’t rope that calf. I can’t do those things.” They just blinked and looked at me and said, “No, you’re going to do it because I know you can.” That’s what makes me so mad about all these other women from town who say men just drag them down and they don’t treat them right. I’ve never experienced that. If the cowboys have done anything for me, they've built me up.
I think cowboys in general are great men. I’ve only experienced the utmost kindness from them in all levels of this business. From the owners to the managers to the cowboys that I work with every day. If you work hard and respect them, they’ll give you every ounce of respect back and then some. As a woman in this business, you do have to be smart and gritty and be willing to do whatever is asked of you. No whining.
Mandy: We have one daughter, Miranda, and she’s 23. She’s been very involved in the Angus business. Now she’s actually branching out and doing some things on her own in the Conklin Company (Charles W. Herbster also is the Owner and President of the Conklin Company). She’s staying in the family business, only now on a different route. Her major goal is to have her own business and get her own cows. Without her here at home, the workload has increased a lot for Ed and I. Luckily, we have a few other people that help us out here on the ranch as well. There are five of us full time. We are one big family at Herbster Angus Farms.
Mandy: I find it very challenging to squeeze in the total amount of miles that I have to complete to do well in the Marathon. I just have to make the time. So, I get up before the sun and I get my miles in. Most training days, I run 3-6 miles, but I also have a long run day on the weekends where I run up to 20 miles. I still do a day’s work after every one of those runs. Thankfully for me, Ed loves me enough to give me the time to do my long run once a week. I’ll move my longer day if it’s too busy, but I’ll still make sure to get it done. Of course, some days the weather might be bad, so I’ll just have to juggle it around because I do zero miles on the treadmill. I do all my running outside.
This morning is a good example. I’m recovering from the Boston Marathon I ran a couple of weeks ago, so my mileage is low. I ran two miles, made breakfast, helped Ed pull a hundred CIDRs, and fed cows already this morning. I just keep going. The bonus about my situation is the total time on my feet. I'm training for a 100-mile race coming up in September. The all day grind after a run will make my body more resilient for those 100 miles. If I run six miles in the morning before the sun comes up and then I stand beside a wrapper in the hayfield all day long, that’s time on feet. It helps. At 48 years old, you just never know what your body’s going to do, but I’ll keep going until I can’t anymore. I tell Ed, that if I can’t run, I’d like to get good at breakaway roping.
Ed: I love to rope, and I like old rope horses. If they’re 10-20 years old, I’m in. Horses have a lot of life left in them at that age, and they're past that adolescent stage. I like that. That’s what I would do more if I had the time. Rope.
Mandy: I think honestly that my parents, as Hereford breeders, would say I’m pretty brainwashed, but I believe Angus is the breed that makes the world go ‘round. Angus black hides, their ability to marble, and their maternal traits make them awesome for the commercial cowman.
Mandy: As far as the industry goes, we are all happy about the record calf prices! Though the one thing that I’m really worried about is the bad drought that’s down in Kansas and some parts of the Sandhills. I’m concerned for those folks.
Mandy: Go and see the cattle for yourself. That mirrors the story that Ed told earlier about the udders. Just go look. If you don’t have the knowledge, figure out how to get it. Find a mentor who can tell you what a good foot looks like, how a knee is supposed to work on a bull, and what a great bull looks like as a baby. Find someone who knows impeccable phenotype and can teach you how to see the difference between perfect and not so good. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and what’s beautiful to one person is not beautiful to someone else, but we have an industry standard in beef cattle. Although I think youth programs do a good job teaching structural correctness, I worry that a lot of people don’t have the experience with cattle over generations to be able to predict how they develop. Gain the knowledge and don’t take anybody’s word for it.
Ed and Mandy's daughter Miranda
Mandy: I like ground beef with jasmine rice because that’s a go-to meal on my training diet. That’s an athlete’s meal.
Ed: If I’m in true bodybuilder mode, I’d say Sirloin, medium rare, but I love a good Ribeye most of the time.
Mandy: I think the biggest mentor for both of us has been Charles W. Herbster. He taught us how to be better businesspeople, and to never settle for average. His late wife, Judy, mentored me in marketing and advertising. She was very particular about what we did with every ad and we’d move things around on each page until it was just right. In my younger years, I can remember thinking, “Can we pick this to death anymore?" Now (laughs), I do the same thing. She made me better, and now I’m the person who goes through everything with a finetooth comb. Charles taught us to make deals eye to eye, in person, with a handshake. I think that’s very powerful. Ed and I brought the knowledge of the cattle business. Charles brought the art of the deal. Together, that makes Herbster Angus Farms achieve great things.
22. What did President Donald J. Trump say to you when you met him?
Ed: He's just as cool in person as you'd think he would be. President Trump said, "Hey, that's a nice hat! You're a good looking guy!" We'd like to give a shout out to Kaycee Orr Hoffman at Bar None Hat Company for making a nice enough hat to get a compliment from the President!
Mandy: We will be right where we are now. Riding horses, running, and raising Angus cattle! Some things never change!
