Background

Our operation was founded in 1935 by Marion Nicholas (Chad’s grandfather). The farm began with only 15 cows. Gary entered the operation full-time in 1958. Marion and Gary proceeded to purchase purebred Hereford females over the years. Gary purchased the first purebred Hereford in 1954 and the herd continued to grow from that point forward. The use of polled bulls became prevalent in the mid '70's with 90% of the herd being polled today.

In the fall of 1995, we bought our first Gelbvieh cattle as somewhat of an experiment in a second breed. This maternal breed impressed us with their ability to combine so many traits into one package that the other exotics did not. This included growth, muscling, milking ability, fertility, and longevity all combined in a relatively easy fleshing package. We marketed bulls and were active in the Gelbvieh breed until 2016. At that time we decided to focus once again on our Hereford breeding program. We maintain our Gelbvieh females today and use them to produce F1 females that have been received well by our customer base looking for the advantage of crossbred replacements.

The goal of the McCoy Hereford breeding program is to breed moderate framed, easy fleshing, maternally focused cattle that will be profitable in modern commercial crossbreeding operations. We strive to produce productive cattle on minimal inputs that have a solid balance between calving ease, efficient growth, and strong maternal attributes with heavy emphasis on udder quality and improved carcass value. We have ultrasounded our replacement females for 15 years and this has been very significant in terms of carcass value.

We incorporate as much technology into our breeding decisions as we trust as it will result in a better product for our customer and the beef supply chain in general. However before we analyze and implement all of this information there are still 3 basic criteria that need to be satisfied to be McCoy breeding material. These are pass or fail criteria. Either cattle have them or they don’t. These are:

Feet and Legs
Udder quality
Fleshing ability

The Hereford breed has made great improvements over the past decade and we have been proud to be a part of that process. We are very passionate about the bulls we produce and feel they continue to create greater value for our customers every year. Feel call to discuss how our bulls can make you more profitable. If they can’t we welcome the opportunity to discuss why not as we hope it can make our breeding program stronger and more robust in the future.