We are a cattle ranch – first and foremost…
We love seeing our commercial calves in great demand in the fall just like the many ranches that we market our bulls to. Our goal as a purebred operation is to produce the kind of cattle that do just that for us and our customers.
The Six Mile Cow Herd Today
Six Mile Ranch currently runs a cow herd of around 450 head of Registered Red Angus cows and a herd of 150 Registered Black Angus cows. The bulk of the purebred cows are calved beginning around February 1 with a 60 day interval, taking them to April 1. A smaller group of females are bred to calve from May 1 to June 15.
Herd health is very important at Six Mile and all animals are on a scheduled vaccination and nutrition program as directed by our herd veterinarian.
The ranch develops all of its own purebred calves from weaning on, enabling us to accurately test their performance on feed as well as on their dams.
The commercial cow herd numbers around 150 head of mother cows and is made up of predominately Red Angus and Red Angus cross females. The bulls used in our commercial herd are all home-raised sires or sires purchased from our own customers. The commercial cows are calved March-May. The commercial calves are usually marketed in the fall but have been fed out on the ranch, depending upon the market situation in the current year.
The Breeding Program
We believe in having a powerful maternal cow herd. Our attention has always been focused on conformation, structure and production in our cow herd. We like our females to be moderate, easy keeping, excellent uddered females with the capacity and natural muscling to do well on the range.
“Performance” is a very important part of the beef cattle business. We aim to raise cattle with as much performance and muscle mass as possible, however we will not sacrifice structural soundness, fertility nor maternal traits to get it. We believe that Angus cattle are a maternal breed that naturally excel at producing the most desirable beef in the industry. This is one of the main reasons they are in the forefront of the cattle industry today, and it would be a shame to lose sight of that.
Six Mile has always felt strongly about sparing no expense to bring the best genetic sires into our highly maternal cow herd. Every sire we choose must be backed by a solid, productive dam and when we find him, we do our best to own him.