Our mission is to produce cattle that will make our customers more money. Our bulls are moderate framed, fertile, durable and easy keeping. On average our bulls are in service seven to nine years for our customers. Their calves are easily born, grow quickly, gain efficiently and have large enough ribeyes to produce carcasses with Yield Grades of 1 and 2, and low to average Choice Quality Grade. We breed our bulls to be structurally sound for longevity and performance in the pasture on forage based diets.
Ridgefield develops bulls in large grass paddocks with free access to a well balanced high roughage diet. By design, our paddocks range from 1,500 feet to 2,000 feet in length to insure that our bulls benefit from plenty of exercise throughout their development. They are never penned for more than a day in a dry lot, from the time that they are weaned until they are sold.
Our feed bunks are located in a centralized area near our working barns, commodity barn, silage pits, offices and equipment storage areas. This not only aids in the efficiency of our operation, but also constantly exposes the bulls to people, machinery and random noises. Developing the bulls in the active environment in which we raise them, produces animals that are easier to work and less prone to being startled. It also makes it easy for us to observe them and foster the gentleness that comes with regular human contact; a trait for which Ridgefield Farm is known. We don’t mean to imply that mature bulls should ever be trusted, however, we believe that you will find our bulls easy to handle and less destructive on infrastructure and less troublesome for the personnel who work with them.
Costs associated with livestock production are skyrocketing. Whether it is the cost of feed, fuel, or shortage of labor; minimizing input cost and maximizing the yield of high quality beef must be the goal of any cattle operator who expects to stay in business. This is the reason that in the summer of 2008 we purchased a Grow Safe System for use in measuring residual feed intake (RFI), a commonly accepted method for determining feed efficiency. We now RFI test all of our animals, both bulls and heifers on our Grow Safe System. In addition to obtaining RFI information, we also measure average daily gain. At twelve months of age the bulls and heifers are linear measured, Ultrasounded and given breeding soundness examinations.
Our progeny purchase program, The Ridgefield Braunvieh Bull Deal, has provided us a great deal of experience with crossbred progeny from our bull and cows of other breeds. We have yet to find a breed upon which the Braunvieh bull doesn’t produce an outstanding calf. The calves produced by our Braunvieh bulls are heavily muscled, moderately framed, disease resistant and good performers both in the feedyard and on the rail. Our experience, to date, is that across the board, with no control over the cow herds from which we purchase the progeny from our bulls, we are averaging a yield grade of about 1.85 and 45%-50%are grading choice.
We are very proud of our bulls and encourage you to come see them for yourself or look at them on our website or a DVD. Compare them to any bulls, of any breed that you have seen anywhere, and we think that you will see why we have customers from the East Coast to Florida, to Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, North Dakota and states in between.
We are driven by the satisfaction of our customers and back every bull that we sell with an unconditional guarantee. If you aren’t happy, we will make it right.
Steve Whitmire
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