The Maddux family got its start in Nebraska in the late 1800s. Taylor Maddux, John’s great-grandfather, moved from Iowa to Santa Fe in the mid 1870s and worked as a teamster hauling freight from Santa Fe to the surrounding silver mines.

In 1880 he moved to Culbertson, Nebraska, and soon after to nearby McCook, where he ran a livery stable until the turn of the century. Family accounts indicate that Maddux liked to drink and gamble. He particularly loved to race his horse.

"My great-grandmother Clara, on the other hand, was a teetotaler Methodist woman who didn’t appreciate drinking, gambling or race horses," John says.

She apparently got her fill of her wayward husband, because in 1886 she took up a claim outside present-day Wauneta, on Stinking Water Creek (the creek was apparently appropriately named, because buffalo would often get stuck in the muddy creek bottom and die there). That original homestead is the headquarters of present-day Maddux Cattle Co.

"My great-grandfather stayed on in McCook and ran the livery stable," John says, "but he would ride out on his horse, Skank, every month or so to see his wife. It was a 60-mile ride one way."

During the 1890s it got extremely dry. Many of the early settlers were desperate to survive, and Taylor Maddux found himself trading horses and even saddles and spurs in exchange for land. Later he expanded his operation with tree claims. Forty acres of planted trees garnered a homesteader a quarter-section of land.

By the turn of the century, Taylor Maddux had accumulated enough land to get a toe-hold in the ranching business. He sold the livery stable and a herd of Angus cows and moved back to his wife and the ranch on Stinking Water.

Taylor Maddux died in 1917, at which time Glen Maddux took the reins and continued in much the same fashion. He prospered through World War II. In his heyday, Jack says his father fed upwards of 1000 head of cattle.

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"Back then, everything was done by hand with a team of mules and a No. 14 scoop," Jack says.

Glen Maddux saved the money he made from his feeding operation, and during the Depression the young entrepreneur was able to accumulate additional land by buying people out of bankruptcy.

Today, the feedlot operation revolves around Jack and John’s longstanding practice of early weaning. They started that practice years ago, primarily because the economics, at least for them, say it is cheaper to feed their calf crop on low-cost corn and byproducts in a feedlot setting than carry them on grass to the yearling stage.

March-born calves are therefore weaned off their mothers at 70 days of age, in June or early July. They’re straightened out over a 45-day period on cool season irrigated pivots and some native meadows. The young calves are enticed to come to the bunks scattered out on the pivots by a sweet-smelling ration of corn gluten and distillers’ grain. By the end of the 45-day period, they’re bunk broke and eating six to seven pounds a day. They come to the feedyard in August, generally weighing on average 390 pounds.