Welcome to Buerge Ranch
Buerge Ranch got its start in about 1963 in Bates County, Missouri where Paul Buerge moved his family after owning two grain elevators there for several years. He had expanded into the cattle business, built a feedlot, and raised cattle, both stockers and cows & calves. Through his grain elevator experiences he championed a new grass that had been developed, Kentucky 31 fescue. Soon, he learned both the virtues and the challenges of using fescue grass in a minimum input cow/calf operation. Cattle of numerous breeds and cross-breeds were tried for several decades.
Paul's youngest son Robin moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1976 to begin a career in banking and left the cattle business behind for several years. Ultimately, the Missouri operation was sold and Robin slowly built his own cattle operation in Oklahoma. In 2010 land was acquired near Morris, Oklahoma (30 miles south of Tulsa) where the current ranch operation resides.
"In the 1980's we had a winter snow storm that was just terrible and thousands of cows died because ranchers could not get hay to them. When it was all over it was clear the angus cow survived the best with the least long term damage. We already knew she was a superior mother, but her toughness was less obvious to us. We have been an angus breeder since."
Purebred and Commercial Angus Cattle
Today Buerge Ranch raises both purebred and commercial angus cattle. The majority is black angus but we also have a herd of purebred red angus we are studying and they are showing great promise.
We are in the purebred business quite by accident. We found recurring feet and fertility problems in bulls we purchased and noticed the cows we raised using those bulls were just not as self-sufficient as we were used to. So a search for different genetics ensued and we found some cows that were "easy keepers" like we were used to. It turned out the purebred cows we bought in Texas were sired by Ohlde Cattle Co genetics, mostly OCC Emblazon 854E. The difference was immediate and that was over 10 years ago. Now 90% of our herd has OCC genetics. We have fewer problems of all kinds and the cows are longer lived than we have ever owned.
Today we know it's not the size of individual animals that matters much, it's the number of animals we can raise on the ranch land we own, it's harvesting the highest percentage we can on the number of cows we own, and it's keeping our input costs to a minimum. Seems pretty simple, right.
We look forward to talking about cows!