With the herd reduction sale in the past, the Diamond M Ranch, located west of Estevan on Highway 39 and run by Jordan and Amber Mantei, is getting a bit closer to their new plan implementation. The family has been running a Simmental cattle farm since 1994 and now decided to downsize and gradually retire from the purebred operation.
Jordan Mantei said the latest sale went quite well, with bulls averaging at $6,000. The high selling red bull went to Mader Ranches of Carstairs, Alta., for $14,750. The high selling cow was purchased for $7,000 by Wilson Stock Farms.
Forty-six bulls that were sold that day will be used at the farms all across from Ontario to Alberta.
“We do internet sale also, so we sent four bulls to Ontario for the first time. We sent 11 bulls to Alberta this year. Some went into Manitoba,” said Mantei.
Some of the Mantei’s bulls were sold for quite a bit of money, but they were nowhere close to the record that was set last April in Alberta, where a Simmental bull was sold for $275,000.
The bulls are sold at two years old and on average last three to five years. Mantei noted that they have a lot of repeat customers every year. But this time many more farmers showed up to the sale to use the unique opportunity to add some of the Diamond M Ranch’s animals to their herds.
Retiring from the purebred farming Manteis were selling the top end of their purebred cows off. That was the only sale for cows, but there will be one more bull sale that will take place next year. After that, the family plans to be done with purebred cattle. They’ve been into purebred business for over 26 years and have been selling bulls for 20 years, but the operation takes a lot of time and effort.
“There is lots of planning as far as mating a certain cow to a certain bull to get that ideal progeny, heifer or bull, to keep building the herd,” said Mantei. “There is paperwork to be done… There is a lot into the purebread end of it for sure.”
The Simmental cattle farming was started by Jordan and his father, who originally was running purebred Chalet cattle. Since the 90s the family grew the heard 10 times running about 450 heads at their retirement time.
“My dad has been gone for 11 years already, so it was me and Amber taking over and we kept building it up until this year when we decided to slow down or retire on the purebred end of it,” said Mantei.
Now they are downsizing the herd to about 220 heads and plan on running commercial cattle.
“It’s a little less work as far as paperwork and pure bread end of it goes.”
The kids are still young. The oldest one, who is 13 years old, helps a bit with smaller tasks, but not a degree that’s required running a big herd. And finding a full-time helperd has been a challenge for the family, so Mantei said that they want to downsize to the point where he could manage it himself.
Now that the extra heads are gone from the yard, they will have time to get ready for the spring and everything it brings. Usually, Diamond M Ranch cows go into calving in April on the grass. Even though the family runs a mixed farm, they just let cows calve on their own just keeping an eye on them for any complicated cases.
With wind shelters in place, cows handle the cold spikes fine, but Mantei pointed out that winter in the region has been quite good for cattle farmers.
“This winter has been pretty nice actually compared to some … When you see -30 for a week or 10 days that gets a little hard on the cattle.”
