LaRayne Meyer

If you ask Bill Holland what makes a good cattle producer, he’ll say, first of all, you have to love cattle. You have to read them, to know what to feed them and how, to look at cattle and know if they’re hungry or not – and they’d better not be hungry.

The next big secret to staying strong in the cattle business, said the Wisner, Neb., beef producer, is to feed cattle so that their rate of gain is such that you make money – make money when the market’s good, and make enough money that you have some to lose when the market’s bad.

Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?
That advice isn’t something Holland learned overnight. It’s wisdom he’s gained from feeding cattle since 1947, moving up the ranks from cowhand, to feedlot manager, to business partner and owner. Through hard work, diversification, hard work, long hours, hard work and love for the industry, Holland has expanded the number of cattle he has on feed until, today, he is a partner in feedlots in three states that fatten more than 200,000 head.

Holland’s wife, Marge, remembers the days when the Hollands’ three sons were young and her husband worked from 4:30 a.m. until 10 p.m., seven days a week.

“I was fortunate to have awfully good help and an understanding wife,” Holland said, crediting both. “And there’s no law against hiring someone smarter than you to work for you.”

Holland owes much of his success to being able to work alongside Louis Dinklage, a cattle-producing icon who was among the first of the cattle feeders in the state to open a commercial feedlot in 1969. He eventually came to be one of the largest in the nation.

At only 20, Holland was a foreman at the Dinklage Feedlot; Dinklage was already well known in the beef business at that time. The front cover of a predominant cattle-feeding magazine of 1951, the Capper’s Farmer, shows Holland at the reins of a pair of Belgians hitched to a 14-foot Colby wagon. Holland weighed corn from overhead bins by putting it into a 50-gallon barrel cut in half, and then layering it in the wagon with protein, dehy and hay. The front several feet of the wagon was left open so that Holland, running a shovel along the floor of the wagon, would be able to get all layers onto his shovel to fill the bunks twice daily. He filled bunks for 4,000 head a day, the horses pulling the wagon alongside the bunk on their own, the cattle falling in behind. Û

Dinklage was a genius when it came to cattle feeding, Holland said, and instrumental in making Cuming County one of the premier cattle-feeding counties in the nation.

“He was the first to feed a lot of protein,” Holland said. “Protein brought out more of the muscling and red meat before the cattle got too wastey with too much fat.”

Holland left the Dinklage employ to feed on his own in 1956.

“Louis put up his money for cattle against my labor and facilities,” Holland said. They split the profit, half and half, eventually feeding 1,000 head on Holland ground. Holland continued in relationship with Dinklage until the elder man’s death in 1984.

In the late 1950s, Holland looked at the cattle in his lots, their hides caked with mud when it rained, the heavy clay ground making it difficult for feed wagons to get in and out of the yards.

“In 1958 I bought the sandiest farm you could find,” Holland said, and opened Holland Feed Lot near Wisner. The land was so sandy and ill-producing that it was referred to as a “dog farm.” But Holland knew from previous experience that sandy soil dries out quickly after a rain and after spring thaws, making for good cattle- feeding conditions.

“The minute the sun comes up, the sand dries and falls off [the cattle]. It doesn’t ball up like clay. Once it does rain, the pens are dry in two to three days.”

Three more feedlots followed the first. Gradually, Holland Feed Lot at Wisner expanded to hold 20,000 head and he began commercial feeding in 1990. In addition, Holland and his partners’ yards in western Nebraska, Colorado and Wyoming are filled with 188,000 head of cattle, many of them black Angus crosses.

Although many factors of Holland’s life as a feeder have changed since he fed his first beef, in other ways the last 60 years have remained the same. “When I started, we raised beef because we wanted corn to bring more than $1.25 a bushel. Now we want it to bring more than $1.75.

“And we like it, I guess. I’d rather ride a horse all day than a tractor.”

to be continued next issue