Feeding cattle has been a Maddux family business since Woodrow Wilson was president, but John Maddux wonders how long that can continue, given burgeoning environmental regulations and dwindling irrigation potential for area farmers who provide reasonably priced grain.
(Pictured to the right are Jack Maddux, right, and John Maddux, left.) |
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Maddux Family Has Been Feeding Calves At Home Ever Since 1918
By Colleen Schreiber [Livestock Weekly, November 6, 2003 -- used with permission of the publisher]
WAUNETA, Neb. — "If I ever make it to heaven, I know the good Lord is going to be feeding steers."
That was just one of a handful of popular sayings coined by the late rancher/feeder Glen Maddux. Maddux was one of the earliest cattle feeders in Chase County, Nebraska. He began feeding cattle on the family ranch in 1918, and the family has been at it every day since.
Today the 3000-head capacity feedyard is run by Glen’s son and grandson, Jack and John Maddux. They feed all of their home-raised calves here plus 1200 head or so of Mexican steers that come off grass beginning in early September. And because drouth has forced them to cut back on cow numbers, the father and son team also buys a few natives to feed at home as well. John also feeds at several commercial yards in Kansas and Nebraska.
"There have only been three or four good years since 1918," Jack Maddux jokingly insists, "but we keep doing it because it’s been the enterprise that ultimately helped us expand."
In addition to their 3000-head feedyard, Maddux Cattle Company encompasses a 2500 head cow-calf operation on some 40,000 acres of deeded and leased land in the Sandhills of Nebraska.
John says his grandfather was a "value-added kind of guy." It was because of that approach to the cattle business that he also imparted two other philosophies to his son Jack — "never ever sell a bawling calf and never ever sell a bale of hay."
"He thought there was value to be added by retaining ownership in his cattle," John says of his grandfather, "and the hay had to be fed to that bawling calf. We pretty much hold to those truisms to this day. I can’t remember the last time my dad bought a heifer to feed, and I can’t remember him ever selling any hay, and I know that we’ve never, ever sold a bawling calf."
Jack adds, "If I ever sold any hay, my daddy would roll over in his grave, and second, he would come back and haunt me. It’s because we’re cattle people. We don’t want to sell it; we want to feed it. Same applies with the bawling calf."
Though Jack says his father was one of the first to feed cattle in the area, by the mid-1920s almost every farmer in Nebraska fed a load of cattle.
"If you raised corn, you fed some cattle. It was not the day of specialization; it was the day of diversification."
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