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About Wolf Creek Angus Ranch...
In the fall of 1979, Mike began attending Ohio State University, and Mary moved to Manhattan, Kansas, where she attended Kansas State University. Both majored in animal science. Mary went on to obtain a masters degree in animal production, with an emphasis on beef cattle reproduction.
While at K-State, Mary participated on the university's livestock and
meats judging teams. She also worked at the KSU purebred beef barn and
meat science laboratory, where she served as assistant manager, as well
as serving as an extension assistant while she attended graduate school.
Upon graduation, Mary returned to Ohio to accept employment with the American
Angus Association's Certified Angus Beef Program, where she was most recently
employed as associate executive director for the highly successful branded
beef marketing program. Mike and Mary were married on April 15, 1993, and immediately began searching for a ranch in the Kansas-Nebraska region. In the early spring of 1994, they were able to purchase 53 females from the cow herd Mike had developed at Colvin Angus Farms, and they moved to Luray, Kansas, to begin building Wolf Creek Angus Ranch. Added to the Wolf Creek cow herd were six "Power Play" females Mary selected from her family's operation, Calcutta Farms, in East Liverpool, Ohio. Also added to the herd in 1994 were twenty females purchased from Lyons Ranch, Manhattan, Kansas. Jan and Frank Lyons, Mary's sister and brother-in-law, provided Mike and Mary the opportunity to select several "Traveler" and "Bando" bred females to expand the performance-bred base cow herd of Wolf Creek Angus Ranch. Today, Wolf Creek Angus Ranch brood cows number over 190, and still, the majority are daughters and/or granddaughters of either "Traveler" or "Bando," as well as "Ambush," who has also become widely recognized as a proven, great sire within the Angus breed. The Wolf Creek Angus Ranch cow herd is a spring calving herd. Each spring, breeding age females are artificially inseminated once prior to being turned with a natural service sire for the remainder of the breeding season. The majority of the heifers produced at the ranch are grown and developed, with a small number sold annually as yearlings in the spring or as bred heifers in the fall. The balance are retained in the herd as replacements. Nearly all of the ranch's cattle income is generated from private treaty sales, with a select group of 75-85 bulls offered each spring.
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