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The Youngerberg Angus Herd had its beginning in the mid-60's.
Dennis graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1964. The first cow herd began with a group of 40 commercial Herefords.
The high adjusted 205 day calf in the herd weighed 423 pounds that
year. This year's top calf adjusted at 849 lbs.
In 1967 a relative, Lawrence Trebesch
(Teton Ridge Ranch), from Dutton, Montana, stopped to visit. He was horrified to see Herefords instead of
Angus; however, no changes were made in our program. The next summer we stopped to visit him and
he informed us that changes in our program needed to be made if there was to be
any respectability in our cattle program. His sons had made their choices to go into the Air Force and banking
business and he said we could have all of his open heifers and we could gate
cut the bred heifers. What an
opportunity! We had just entered the
Angus business. It was interesting that
from this line of females (Zara) came a heifer that we sold to Whitestone Farms
in Virginia. She won her class at the American Royal and stood second in her
class at Denver. Wayne Wilde also
purchased a heifer from that same cow and she produced the high selling bull
the last two years in his production sale. She also produced the heifer calf that had another of his high selling
bulls.
We later purchased two females
from the Van Dykes in Montana; VDAR Beauty 852 and VDAR Polly 625. They became two stable cow families in our
herd; VDAR Beauty's daughter produced the high selling female at $20,250,
selling to Davis on the Highlands in Kentucky.
She topped the 1994 VDAR Sale. We would later flush her to VDAR New
Trend 933 and even later flushed two of her daughters to Focus of ER and Bando
5175 respectfully, giving us one of our best lines of females.
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We develop our cattle by selecting only the best of the heifers and
breeding them back to leading sires in the industry. We made very few
purchases of herd sires;
instead we used A.I. to develop our herd. We usually have 80 to 90
percent of calves sired artificially. It is not uncommon to look at the
pedigrees
of our cattle and see 7-8 generations selected by us on the dams side
of the
pedigree. We believe this is what
allows us to develop the predictability in our cattle.
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We have participated in MBCIA bull tests for at least
30 years and in 2004 were selected as the Seed Stock Producer of the
Year. We felt it was quite an
accomplishment when our first bull reached 1000 lbs. at a year.
Now such a bull would not qualify for the sale. We also have been a consignor
for the last 12 years at Bull Day in Phillip, SD; however, the largest
percent of our cattle are sold at private treaty.
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We look forward to slowing down,
but as the herd continues to grow; it appears mature cow herd dispersal may be
coming. Dana has liking for the cattle
business and enjoys Angus cattle. We are
hoping our son-in-law Mark might be able to join us in the future.
We would like to keep back the two and three
year olds to give them a good start to keeping our cattle program going.
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Our family has been involved in showing cattle in the
Junior Angus program and we were able to be advisors for many enjoyable
years. Tom Burke always referred to
our family as the family of queens, as four of our five daughters served as
Junior Angus queens. All six of our
children enjoyed trips to junior shows, both locally and nationally, and made
many lasting friendships along the way. Now two of our grandchildren show cattle; Wendy's daughters, Jena and
Mara participate in the 4-H Shows in Stevens County at Morris.
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The Youngerberg Family
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