Both Judy and I grew up on cattle farms in Georgia. In 1973, returning from a long tour of duty in Viet Nam, we bought land south of Huntsville, Alabama in the beautiful Tennessee Valley and started our own commercial cattle operation. Initially, we crossed Hereford bulls on Black Angus females. Then in 1983 we discovered “Red” Angus and all the advantages they brought with them, such as heat tolerance, foraging ability and a breed association composed of cattlemen who emphasized real, measurable performance criteria and maintained worthwhile, usable data.
We switched to red bulls and were impressed. In 1983 we bought WEP Paycheck 750 and a few purebred red cows to go with him. We soon noted that our purebred cows stayed with, or out-performed, our very best crossbreds for growth and were much more consistent and uniform. After many hours of research and much soul-searching we determined that, in the long run, purebred Red Angus produced more pounds of beef on a given quantity of grass than was possible with any other breeding system, and maintained quality far better than crossbreeding ever would. We were soon in the purebred business and looking for well-balanced, total performance cattle. We found what best suited our program, and our vision, at Boot Jack Ranch in Montana and with our dear friends, Cliff and Audry Haugen, whose philosophy of cattle breeding closely matched ours. Their BJR cattle furnished most of the foundation genetics for our herd. They were, and are, true performance cattle.
For almost 25 years now, we have been striving diligently to create superior Red Angus genetics. We have continually tested and proven their merit in the real world, and we have never forgotten that the real purpose of raising cattle is to produce quality beef economically. We have always stressed the traits that are important to the efficient production of top quality cattle: fertility, calving-ease, milking ability, rapid early growth with high-grading carcasses at an early age.
We love them beautiful, too, but it takes “tough love” to develop superior genetics. Only competition will weed out imperfections and flaws. So we are tough on our cattle. We run a 63-day calving season with most of our calves being born within the first 30 days. Cattle not breeding back within the 63-day season are culled. Cattle not reaching our performance criteria, no matter what they cost us, are culled, but as a result, our bulls have topped feed trails for both gain and efficiency, and our females earn respect whereever they go. After 25 years, our goals remain the same.
Kenneth and Judy Freeman
256-498-3802 ...................KenF@otelco.net
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