CAR ZAN Land & Livestock

Through my years in High School, I spent allot of time day dreaming about the ranch of my dreams instead of paying attention to the teachers. I would draw different ranch logos, come up with different company names to see which sounded the best or which logo looked the best. Around grade 10 I came up with the name CARZAN Land & Livestock and it stuck. Since then I have been striving to grow the ranch of my dreams. The dreams have changed allot over the years as my life changes, the market changes. It began with a dream of 1000 Purebred Horned Hereford cows and 1000 - 2000 commercial cows. Now I'm happy with 300 Horned Hereford cows and 200-400 commercial cows, as well as 50-100 Welsh Blacks. And that is the goal we are striving for! I have been involved in 4-H and showing cattle here and there since I was young, but this all really started for me at the ripe old age of 15, when I went down to J Bar E Herefords at Plentywood, MT to buy my first set of heifers to show in the Canadian Junior Hereford Association. I ended up buying two heifers, and then coming back the next winter and working a deal with Arvid and Linda Eggen on a group of 20 Purebred Horned Hereford bred heifers and the beginning of CARZAN Land & Livestock was formed. Over the next few years I grew my commercial cow herd a little, and became an 18 yr old cattle buyer for my dads company, and by the time the border closed in 2003 due to BSE in Canada I had around 35 cows. In the fall of 2003 I saw an opportunity to get into the cattle business with the drop in prices and bought a large group of black brockle face open heifers at a few sales I was at. I believe they were under .70/lb for 500lb heifers. Those cows were probably our best purchase. With the help of a local Feeder Co-op I bought more cows, and in 2008 purchased some more purebred females from VC Hereford Ranch at Langenburg, SK. By 2009 I was running around 160 cows. Mostly Angus/Hereford X females, Speckle Parks, and my horned hereford cows. We stopped registering our purebreds as we were really only breeding females for ourselves and with dad and I running 400 cow/calf pairs and breeding every heifer born through the BSE years, we just had enough bulls for ourselves. We began realizing that bull customers didn't care if they were registered as long as we knew the pedigrees on them, so we never did register any cows or their offspring. Back in 2006 we were sick of using Angus bulls on our hereford cows to produce replacement females and were looking for other options when we came across Welsh Black cattle. We purchased 3 Welsh Black bulls from Randy Kaiser, Kaiser Celtic Cattle at Ponoka, AB, as well as multiple bulls over the next few years. It is one of the best decisions we ever made. The Welsh Black/Hereford cross far exceeds the Angus/Hereford cross that is so common in Canada and the USA. Fleshier cattle, more hair, better wintering ability, better milk, better growth, it honestly feels like sometimes they can do it all. In 2012 we decided to purchase 2 bulls and 17 open heifers from Frosty Acre Farms at Bluffton, AB and then in 2013 we purchased 13 bred heifers from Tyson Mitchell at Kitscoty, AB. We are mostly raising bulls and females for ourselves at this time, but we hope to develop allot more buzz for this breed then there is now. There just aren't enough breeders or promoting going on to get the name out there for this breed, but we believe that if your looking for ranch cattle, for our northern climate, that these cattle are it! As a 3rd generation Hereford Breeder, this breed is in my blood. And any of you who have been or are in the industry, know that its a hard breed to shake when you have good ones! For the last few years we have been trying to concentrate on getting debt free and building a home base of our own. The next step is in the works right now and will be announced when things are finalized in the next few weeks. In the fall of 2012 we made the decision to split from my parents operation and venture off on our own. We wouldn't be where we are now without the help of some neighbors who let us rent their corrals, and pasture. Other neighbors who let us pay for feed when our calves were sold and help with branding, weaning, and trucking cattle here and there. Neighbors who have wintered the cows so I could get a full time job at the steel mill to make our dreams happen faster, we owe them all a great deal of thanks. The future is bright in the cattle industry, our future is bright in the cattle industry. So stay tuned to this page, because our star will only shine brighter in the next few years, and you don't want to watch this star burn past!