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Thank you for taking the time to look at our 2017 bull sale catalog. We are the fourth
generation family to be ranching on the Boardman Valley in the middle of Cherry County in
Nebraska. The family ranch is the Three Bar, we have been a commercial cow calf and yearling
grass operation since 1959. My wife Shannon and I bought our first registered Red Angus cows
in 2008. We feel very strongly about using bulls that are raised in the same environment that
our commercial cows are in.
This will be the fourth year that we have sold ranch developed virgin coming two year old Red
Angus bulls. We are selling the top 37 of 80 bull calves that were born out of our registered
cows in 2015. Our feed program consists of meadow hay and pellet after weaning, then kicked
out to grass for the summer. Why do we feed this way? We feed our bulls in the same manner
as the other cattle on the ranch. We feed our cows and calves a protein cake through the
winter, so that’s what the bulls get in pellet form. The bulls in this year’s sale had an average
scan weight last spring of 800 lbs. Average ribeye scan was 8.95 well over one square inch
per hundred weight. The average IMF scan was 3.37 with average back fat scan of .07 inch of
back fat. Our bulls aren’t fat when scanned or pushed hard as a calf because we want them to
continue to gain on grass without going backwards.
Last May we put the yearling bull out with 50 head of the ranch’s older bulls, that we use on the
commercial cow herd, so they didn’t get any special treatment until we turned the ranch bulls
out with the cows August first. In October we sorted the sale bulls. One of the qualities we look
for when we sort for sale bulls is the bulls that gained well through the summer. After the sort
we put them on after grass and started feeding them pellet. In November, they went to hills for
winter protection and that’s when we started feeding them hay along with pellet.
If you have any questions or would like
to come to the ranch and look at the
bulls before the sale please give us a call.
Thank you
Eric Ravenscroft and family
Ranch # 402 823 4140
Cell # 402 322 9248
Greetings
