We bought our first registered cows in the mid sixties (25 cows and 31 heifers) from Richard Alkire at Lemmon, SD. Our first herd bull was BHR Yellow Designer 16 by Yellow Designer, and bred by Baldhill Dam Hereford Farm in North Dakota. ‘Designer 16’ bred 30 cows naturally when he was 13 years old. Since our early years in the Hereford breed we have been line breeding our horned herd with the best producing sons out of the most consistent breeding Herd Bulls that we purchased. Having a fat cattle packing plant 3 miles from home took most of the guess work out of deciding which Sire and sons to use! A 33% prime load shipped to CHB in 1997, followed by a 27% prime load in 1998, are just a couple samples of what our cattle have done in the cooler. We have traditionally been a female producing herd, only 5 females from the Oxley dispersions were brought into our heard during the past 40+ years. We moved some Polled blood back into our program in 2003. Our foundation Herd Sires included: BHR Yellow Designer 16 in the 60’s, Great Northern 7215 in the 70’s, AGA 10S Standard 131W in the late 80’s, OXH Classic 1008 in the 90’s, JJ L1 Homebuilder 706 in the 2000’s. We retired Homebuilder in 2006 with a broken leg. His son, LH Dsignr 444 ‘Burley’ stepped into his sire’s place in the herd, breeding both Spring and Fall calving cows. Working year round, he still maintains a 2700+ pound frame. In 2008 we retired our initial Polled Herd Sire, TS Webmaster EM 22L, and replaced him with J&J M33 Marshall T111, who took over the Polled Herd Sire position. Marshall’s first calf crop are all gaining over 3+ pounds per day.

Hereford cattle have grazed our Missouri pastures for 53 years. This herd was started by Joe W. Haines, my great grandfather, and was carried on by my parents Floyd & Janet Reynolds. My wife and I and the kids make the third and fourth generation to breed Hereford cattle here. If you know us, you know we put a lot of energy into this breeding program. We have been able to build this herd without having to use a single trait selection process. What I mean by that is that we have never let our cattle get to a point that we needed to make a drastic change. Birth weight has never been a problem, our calves come easy in the 70 – 90 pound range. Milk and udder quality has been good for many, many years. The area we live in has determined the size of cattle we produced. Although we still breed a lot of growth in these moderate framed cattle. If you move these cattle into the feedlot they have the genetics behind them to get big. Carcass quality has been focused on for many years and is a strength in the cowherd, along with using bulls that will continue to improve this herd and breed.

In the mid eighty’s our biggest challenge was finding the money to pay the feed bill. QUESTION: Do we continue feeding cattle or go to town and get a job? Our love of Herefords and a lifetime of farming was hard to give up. ANSWER: In our quest to remain in farming, we decided “value added marketing” may be the answer - Sell more and Buy less. Because of the previous 20 years of carcass work, we knew our Herefords were the right kind of cattle. Our next project was to find the best quality grain to market and feed. Through the Iowa State corn yield test, we discovered Golden Harvest corn was consistently high in protein and test weight. Our next project was soil fertility and grain drying. Our fertilizer program was designed for ‘optimum’ yield's not ‘maximum’ yields, and our research on grain drying told us drying temperatures not to exceed 120-130 degrees resulted in the best grain quality. Crop rotation gave us a supply of alfalfa hay for an added source of protein. The next project was to continue the improvements of genetics in our cattle. We have always had cattle that marbled well, but in the ‘70’s we had yield grade 3’s & 4’s. Now we have 2’s and 3’s with the same degree of marbling. In the past 25 years we have feed good hay, corn, corn silage, Vitamin E, and self-fed mineral and salt with no commercial protein. Grain quality, good forage and genetics have been a good way to market our crops with much less out of the pocket cost. Hereford cattle respond very well to this type of program.