Colorado to Nebraska: Part 1- Our Story

Rocking R Red Angus was established in 2010.  We started with a small group of cattle knowing we wanted to raise quality beef for our family.  Both Dan and Katie are a generation removed from ranching, but we have always been foodies and knowing where our food came from was of an extreme importance to us.  So following in our grandparents footsteps, we began our journey.

 

When Dan's mother passed away in 2014, Dan felt a calling to raise Red Angus genetics as Inis' family had always done.  In being medical professionals for many years, you could say we are nerds for the science and genetics behind the cattle.  We fell in love with the Red Angus breed, and the docility to raise these cattle around our family.  

 

For years, we have focused on High-Altitude genetics, and raising quality Cattle and Beef for our seedstock operation.  We have grown to have Annual Bull Sales. (More to come on the Future of our Sales!) We have loved the mountains of Colorado, although challenging, it has been our home for many years.  Our ranches have been over 2 hours apart, making constant traveling and trucking of cattle.  

 

A few years back, we finally sat down, and decided ranching was 100% in our hearts, and by now we were all in.  But, we knew what we were doing was not sustainable.  Ranching is hard, but we are crazy and LOVE it.  We love that our family can all do it together.

 

Our ranch in Montrose, our home place, was where we wintered the cattle and calved.  As our herd has grown we ran out of room, and the city was slowly growing out to where we were, making it hard to find lease ground to keep our cattle spread out.  We didn't have the facilities we needed and calving was becoming very challenging.  

 

Our ranch in Gunnison, our summer grazing property, had views you could only dream of, with water galore.  But unfortunately, the grass was not enough for our cattle.  All the forest permits in the area were taken, and we knew it wouldn't be sustainable to truck the cattle further.  

 

We initially thought, we would find a neighboring ranch to attach to our high country property.  But deal after deal just didn't work in our favor.  And we started praying on it, because it was getting harder and harder to raise our cattle.  

 

So, we looked at every possible ranch in the West in our budget.  Every spare minute we had was driving through Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana.  And we showed up at every ranch with open minds, knowing it would take a lot of work.  Every ranch ended up having a major flaw that would not make sense for our family or our operation.  

 

We had so many ranches that didn't work out, so when people asked what we were doing, we didn't say much.  Because we were tired of getting our hopes up, with the fear of it not working out.  We didn't let out the news about moving our ranch until we were 100% sure.

 

We continued to pray as a family. 

 

We were feeling pretty discouraged, and now our home in Montrose had sold, and our ranch in Gunnison was under-contract.  But we had no idea where we were moving.  It was hard, not going to lie.  We were in Las Vegas at Nolan's roping competition, when we got a call on a new ranch listed in Nebraska.  Nebraska never even crossed our minds, neither of us had ever even visited.  But, we said let's go take a look.  

 

I remember getting in the truck after looking at the ranch, and Dan just said this is our place, and I felt a sense of calm.  We couldn't believe we were in such an unfamiliar place, but it just felt right.   So we began our new journey..