
The ‘milk cow’ that changed a beef business
If not for a milk cow and a hurricane, the magic formula that is Riverbend Ranch might not be.

First, the dairy animal: It belonged the VanderSloot family, and it was 12-year-old Frank’s job to care for it, milking it by hand morning and night.
It might seem like a far stretch from the small northern Idaho farm that supported the family decades ago to now owning the 19th largest seedstock ranch in the nation, but without that early connection to agriculture, Frank might have occupied his time and resources with another venture.
“I think that’s the way to raise kids,” Frank says. (For the record: I agree!) He always had some cattle around, but 25 years ago he began building the registered herd.
“It was a selection of one at a time, and honestly that’s what I think has given us an advantage in the marketplace today: the fact that we chose every cow that we thought were some of the best out of these herds,” Frank says. He’s seen people spend years trying to “upgrade.”
“We started with the entire cowherd being exceptional,” he says.
And as for Hurricane Floyd? Well, it claimed half of Steve Harrison’s family cowherd in North Carolina. The animal science graduate had come back to manage that enterprise on the diversified farm, and when the flood waters rose, bringing unimaginable devastation, he said, “I can’t go back to working in the hog barns.”

So he headed West.
Together Frank and Steve, now the general manager, have shared a mission, making Riverbend not only successful but a well-known source for genetics that will do it all. They are unashamed of their focus on carcass quality.
“If we’re in the business, we should do it right,” Frank says
The vision was his, but it has continued with Steve.

“We’re highly data-driven,” he says. “We’re trying to put as much carcass into the cattle as we possibly can without sacrificing their ability to work in the real-world. It’s our guiding principle.”
They have a large commercial herd and several satellite ranches to stock. They see how their genetics perform in the grow yard and on the cattle they retain through the feedlot, both their own and purchased customer calves.
“Each group of cattle gets better in terms of yield, in terms of conversion, in terms of grade,” Steve says.
But it all comes back to making sure the cattle work for the people buying Riverbend genetics.
“Our focus is our commercial bull customers. Everything we do revolves around trying to service them.”
When I visited last month, I heard “customer” a lot, and not in a way that seemed like lip service. When they create cattle, they have you in mind, and their numbers prove it.
May your bottom line be filled with black ink,
Miranda
PS–Watch for “the rest of the story” in a fall issue of the Angus Journal.
You may also like
Humble Growth
Customers from around the world file into the Shamrock Shack beside their sale ring each spring and fall. They’re not just buying into Connealy cattle, but the customer-service guarantee. For getting that and a lot more right, Connealy Angus was recognized with the 2024 Seedstock Commitment to Excellence award.
Feeding Better Cattle Better
Not everyone is cut out to be a cattle feeder. It’s an art and a science that comes with a need to overcome risk. Wayne Carpenter fed his first pen of steers in 1980 and lost money. But he stuck with it. Today with their sons’ families, he and wife Leisha run the 15,000-head-capacity Carpenter Cattle Company.
Working for Premiums
The commercial Angus rancher from Collyer, Kansas, came back for daily homework in 1999 after a year at college. For 25 years now, he’s studied all the ways to grow his family’s W6 Cattle cow-calf herd with Angus at the base. Guided by data, Walt worked to improve the herd from zero Primes to averaging 60 percent. Learning what drives premiums prompted improvement.