About
Maddux Cattle Company is a cow/calf, yearling cattle operation located in southwest Nebraska. Taylor and Clara Maddux homesteaded the ranch in 1886, 11 miles north of Wauneta on the Stinking Water Creek. The ranch has grown today to encompass 45,000 acres of owned and leased land that sustains 2,500 mother cows and 5,000 yearlings. Native range consists of sandhills and hard land canyons that are part of the watersheds of three creeks that run through the ranch. The operation has approximately 2,500 irrigated and 600 dry land farming acres, the balance being native grass, some of which is sub-irrigated meadows. Jack and John Maddux, the third and fourth generation owner/operators of the ranch, manage the operation.
Replacement heifers and cows are bred to calve in April and May. Cow/calf pairs summer on native range, calves are weaned in the early fall, and wintered in backgrounding facilities or winter grazed with supplementation of wet distillers grains. All calves, with the exception of home raised replacement heifers and bulls, then go to leased grass in the spring. Steers and heifers are marketed off grass each August as 900-pound yearlings.
After weaning, cows are winter grazed on leased cornstalks from November through mid-March. Cows are then driven back home to native range roughly one month before calving. In this system, the Maddux cowherd has a full 12-month grazing system with no hay or supplement fed to the mature cowherd. Some strategic protein supplementation is used for first-calf heifers pre-calving and pre-breeding.
The cowherd is a maternal composite of 5 breeds: Red Angus, Tarentaise, Red Poll, South Devon, and Devon. Cows are British in body type and production levels, with breed selection aligned with the year-round grazing and the low input production system of the ranch.