Whats Happening

Wolfgang Lotz dreamed of breeding cattle during boring meetings as an engineer for Proctor & Gamble. "Breeding cattle was always something that I wanted to do," said Wolfgang. But his job and raising a family kept him from fulfilling that dream until his retirement at the age of 53. He worked for Proctor & Gamble for 30 years and lived in his native country of Germany most of that time, but also worked for seven years in Mexico and three years in Spain. His children grew up partially fluent in the Spanish language.

Wolfgang and his wife, Ingeborg raised three children, Robert, Ruth and Daniel. All three now live in the United States. That was a powerful reason for Wolfgang and Ingeborg to retire to the United States. However, Wolfgang also had an earlier taste of the freedoms of the American lifestyle when he was an exchange student for two years back in 1961. He loved America and in his own words, "Ever since that time, I have been lost to the European cause."

In his high-pressure job as an engineer, he needed something completely disconnected from his work to think about to relax. Wolfgang enjoyed thinking about breeding cows, so he bought this 200-acre farm in Cedar Grove, NC, without knowing exactly what he was getting into. Most of the land was overgrown woods, so he cleared the land, planted grass and fenced in pastures. He sold the tobacco allotment for the land. He built a road to Highway 49 from his farm for easier access and he began purchasing Angus cattle.

His organizational skills as an engineer are very evident on this farm. The pastures are laid out symmetrically with a central alley connecting all the pastures with the two cattle-working areas. This enables one or two people to work the cattle easily. The land is all cross-fenced and utilizes a rotational grazing plan. The cattle graze each pasture no longer than one week and are then moved to the next pasture. Wolfgang and his herdsman, Martin Carreon do all the farm work.

Every time the cattle are worked through the chute they are weighed. This weight helps Wolfgang to keep a close eye on their well being. All the dewormers, vaccines, etc. that are used are based on weight, so he is sure to get the right dosage for each cow. He weighs the calves and gives them their first vaccination at three months of age. At this time he can assess the quality of his young cows. He can also see if the older cows are keeping up with their usual production. Wolfgang also dubs himself an "information freak," so he enjoys collecting data on his herd this way.

Once a week, Martin mixes the feed for the cow/calf pairs, especially the first-calf heifers. The older cows rely on just grass and hay. Wolfgang buys several by-products in bulk such as orange pulp from Florida. He has been using this supplement for three years and it is high in energy and high in fiber and it seems to stimulate milk production. He also uses corn gluten, whole cottonseed pellets and cottonseed hulls. The feed is 13-14% protein and about 60% energy. He feeds five pounds per head per day and uses some in the creep feeder for the calves. The bulls are also started on this feed.

The Lotzes enjoyed attending the North Carolina (NC) Angus Tours and it was on these tours that they became good friends with Robin and Joe Hampton and Ike and Kathrine Jackson. They found that they all shared the same philosophy about cattle, the cattle business and about life. This friendship grew and developed into the Angus Advantage (AA) partnership between Back Creek, Pasquotank Farms and FairCrest Angus. They meet together many times throughout the year, form opinions about their program and stick with each decision. The partnership is working very well with a successful bull sale in December and a successful female sale in the spring. This year the bull sale will be held on December 14, 2002, at the Sampson County Livestock Arena. This year was also the first year the Angus Advantage held a sale for their purebred customers, called the Friends of the Angus Advantage Sale in June. It was also a successful sale with open heifers averaging $1,725; bred heifers $1,528; and bred cows $1,388. The cow/calf pairs averaged $1,560 for spring pairs and $2,202 for fall-calving pairs.

Many donor cows are owned in partnership with the AA group. The bull calves are all sold through the sale and the balance of the females are spread out among the group. Wolfgang has many of the Angus Advantage heifers on his farm because he and Martin are able to concentrate on getting them bred A.I. "Joe is very busy with his job and Ike is very busy farming, so I have the time to be efficient in breeding them artificially," says Wolfgang. This year he is breeding the heifers to Alliance 6595, 6I6 and a Rolling Rock bull out of Hero 67.

They like to use proven bulls with more than 100 daughters. As a group, the AA partners agreed to go for consistency and using bulls that are proven. Leachman Right Time is another proven bull they have used in the past that has worked very well for the AA group. The clean-up bull Wolfgang is using is a low birth weight bull sired by EE 1254 out of Rito 692’s dam.

Flushing is done solely to improve the cow herd, not to sell progeny or embryos at a high price. Probably one-third of the calves last year were embryo transfer (ET) calves. He flushed a Sitz 6802 cow to Alliance and also flushed cows to Precision, 8180, Traveler 71 and EXT.

Donor cows are chosen by their bloodlines and after they have had at least two calves that are 110 or better on the weaning index. Some of his donor dams now are sired by Ideal 17365 and 9929, among others. One of his younger donor cows indexed 112 at weaning and 108 on yearling on her first calf. Another donor had two calves that indexed 117 at weaning and 113 at yearling. Wolfgang is determined to improve the quality of his cow herd so he can improve the quality of his calves. The bulls only contribute 50% of the genetics, so he pays close attention to the maternal side of the equation. He likes his females to have a good combination of structure, udder and performance. Wolfgang says that the bulls 8180 and EXT are excellent for improving udders in the females.

Wolfgang is finding cattle breeding to be harder and much more involved than he expected, but he is really enjoying the scientific and creative component to this industry. He has met other Angus breeders from other states and he was very impressed with the way they used data and technology to improve their herd. He tries to fashion himself like Henry Gardiner from Kansas, Dale Davis from Montana and the Sitz brothers from Montana.

One of the hardest things that Wolfgang has been forced to learn about agriculture is that certain things, like the weather, just can’t be influenced. In business, if things weren’t doing well, an individual could just try harder and develop more expertise and the business would usually pick up. This spring and summer have been incredibly dry for the fourth year in a row, and nothing can be done about it. Wolfgang has tried to fight the drought a little by purchasing an irrigation system. He is able to irrigate a portion of some pastures with water from one of his five ponds. He is skeptical as to whether the results justify the expense of the equipment. He says that it does keep his pastures growing rather than becoming dormant in dry weather.

The fertilizer he uses is sludge, which is applied to half his pastures in the spring and half in the fall. The sandy soil type on the farm has a clay subsurface and he believes this organic fertilizer is improving the quality of his topsoil. A neighbor has been cutting and baling the hay for Wolfgang but he does plan to purchase hay equipment in the future.

As he was fencing his pastures, he also fenced the cattle out of the water. Wolfgang says, "I did it before someone told me I had to." Every pasture is equipped with a water line and a drinker. These feed out of either the house well or the other farm well.

Wolfgang and Ingeborg built their house on the farm in 1997. They really enjoy the peace and quiet and "elbow room" out in the country. Wolfgang says that in Europe, things are so crowded that there are people everywhere, even in the country. He says that Germany alone has 80 million people in an area the size of North and South Carolina. Living out in Cedar Grove with plenty of space is just another reason the Lotzes love America.

Wolfgang also says, "Freedom is a terrible bug. Once you’ve been bitten by it, you can’t get rid of it." He and his wife both enjoy being cattle farmers in America and they credit the Angus Advantage program for helping them get ahead quickly. Wolfgang has learned that it is not easy and it takes time and many generations to establish a successful purebred program. With his partnership in the Angus Advantage, he is jumping over many years with proven genetics to achieve a successful Angus seedstock operation.

Growing up in Elizabeth City, Ike Jackson came from a long line of farmers. His great-grandfather bought this land in 1879 and farmed it, followed by Ike’s grandfather and then his father in turn. His father actually worked for John Deere for 42 years but farmed on the side. The family always had commercial cows but Ike bought his first registered Angus at the young age of nine. He also began showing 4-H steers at this age. His interest in cattle continued and at the age of 12, he bought a yearling bull from the Kenlock Farm dispersal in Virginia.

From that time on, Ike kept replacement heifers out of registered Angus bulls. His herd continued to grow in quantity and quality. He formed a farming partnership with his father on January 1, 1968, which continued until his father’s death in 1999. He and his wife, Kathrine had formed their own farm, Pasquotank Farms in 1992. Ike and Kathrine now farm the entire farm under the name Pasquotank Farms. The farm is named for this county, located in the northeastern part of North Carolina near the Outer Banks. Ike has found that people unfamiliar with this county may not be able to pronounce the farm name, but they always tend to remember it.

The land is actually divided into three farms raising both cattle and row crops. The crops grown are cotton, corn, soybeans, wheat and oats. There are 450 acres in crops and 160 acres in pasture. Ike also has about 30 acres in pine timber and 20-30 acres of coastal swampland. Ike chuckles as he says he may look into raising alligators in the future on this prime swampland.

Bill Trueblood is Ike’s close friend who also works full time on the farm. "Bill is in charge of crops and I help him. I’m in charge of the cows and Bill helps me. It works out great," says Ike.

The past few years required some changes to be made, with crop prices being so low. The cow herd needed to be increased anyway to breed for more bulls for the Angus Advantage bull sales. This caused all the marginal cropland to be put into pasture. The cow herd is now at 80 to 85 brood cows but it needs to be up around 100. Ike says, "It is a challenge to maintain the quality in the sale and still maintain the quality in your herd at home. This is a challenge the Angus Advantage team wants to meet."

The people involved in the Angus Advantage partnership began talking about 8 years ago. Ike had met Wolfgang Lotz when he hauled some of Wolfgang’s bulls to the Salisbury Bull Test Station. Robin & Joe Hampton, Wolfgang & Ingeborg Lotz, Ike & Kathrine and Bette & Doan Laursen began the initial discussions while on an Angus tour in Kansas in 1994. "The Angus Advantage just sort of evolved from our discussions," said Ike. "We want to be a full service seedstock supplier for our customers."

Ike also says that the key thing is that everyone must be in favor of a particular thing or the group will not do it. Unfortunately, the Laursens were unable to commit to the Angus Advantage Team for the future, so the team is made up of Robin & Joe Hampton, Wolfgang & Ingeborg Lotz and Ike & Kathrine Jackson. This group took its own tour out West, visiting purebred breeders, then feedlots and packing houses. They wanted to see how to help their customers from all these important viewpoints.

Originally, Ike calved from Thanksgiving to January but this seemed to conflict with the bull sales. Now he has March, April and May calves and these seem to work well for the bull sales. The AA customers want something old enough to work so these 14-month-old bulls and even 18- to 19-month-old bulls fit perfectly into the December sale. Ike is mainly using Right Time and Sitz Alliance 6595 in his A. I. program now.

The Angus Advantage group owns several donor cows. Ike mainly sets up the recips and then hauls them to Wolfgang. Wolfgang then takes them to their embryologist, Dr. Fulper in Virginia where they are implanted. They have gotten very good results. Ike says that he selects a donor cow according to the right bloodlines and the right production record.

During the last four to five years, Ike says the herd has turned to predominately Sitz bred cows, which are mostly Traveler bred cattle. Ike really enjoyed the opportunity to go to Sitz Ranch and purchase some females. Joe, Robin and Ike purchased three bulls from Sitz in 1997 and they have influenced both of these Angus Advantage herds.

Ike says that the Sitz brothers have been great to do business with and you can always depend on what they say.

"Sitz had the most uniform set of functional cows that I have ever seen," said Ike.

It is plain to see that careful planning combined with the influence of other breeders has given this breeder a clear direction for the future. His future plans are to increase his cow herd, increase his cotton acreage and decrease his grain crops. He sees many possibilities in cotton for this area. He is very excited about his partnership in the Angus Advantage. Ike says that he has been involved in many partnerships in his lifetime and this Angus Advantage partnership is by far the most enjoyable. The Angus Advantage will hold their fifth bull sale in Clinton in 2002 and their female sale will be in the spring of 2003 in China Grove.

"We share a common goal and a common vision. They are all people of integrity and it’s a pleasure to be in business with them," Ike says of the Angus Advantage group.

Ike has been involved in the cattle industry in many ways. He served as president of the North Carolina Cattlemen’s Association from 1979 to 1980 and served on the Executive Committee for four years. Now he is involved in one of the most progressive cattle partnerships in the South. He is committed to producing Angus genetics that will work for their customers. To visit with Ike Jackson at Pasquotank Farms, give him a call at 252-330-2796 or visit the Angus Advantage Web site at www.angusadvantage.com.

Angus Advantage

474 Griffin Swamp Rd.
Elizabeth City, NC 27909

Phone: 1-252-333-4892

Angus Advantage

474 Griffin Swamp Rd. Elizabeth City, NC 27909

Phone: 1-252-333-4892

474 Griffin Swamp Rd.
Elizabeth City, NC 27909