Life back home

He grew up a mile and a half away from his wife, Katie, who was raised on a dairy farm. They started dating in high school and have been together ever since, making the relationship work through 10 years of military service. They married in 2010, their oldest son was born in 2011, and Fred left the Army in 2012. 

When he came home, he worked with a road construction crew, while his brother milked cows with their dad, Scott. He says he matured a lot during his military service and realized he took a lot for granted, especially agriculture.

“I realized it was a better fit than I thought,” he says, explaining he came back to the operation, too. 

Dairy cattle predominate their area, but Fred decided to use a beef bull on some heifers. 

“Hereford x Holstein crosses were not the beef cows we envisioned,” he laughs. “They took 2.5 years to get to size. Eventually, they just became excellent recips.” 

By then, both Fred and Andrew had created their own commercial beef operations.  

“It took time to turn the wheel from that Hereford x Holstein cross. It took us from 2010 with that Hereford bull to having registered Angus calves in 2019,” he says. “My brother started down the registered road a little bit before I did and said, ‘Hey, you know, I’m going to this sale. Why don’t you come along with me?’ So we both have our own herds, but we are both in the Angus business.”

That sale was in 2016, and Fred says it was a turning point for him. 

“That was when I realized, ‘This is what I want to do and how I want to do it.’”

He credits the Angus community for teaching him so much, noting you can pick up the phone and anybody will help you. He says the tight-knit Angus community helped fill the void from leaving the military.

Since becoming a registered operation, Fred realized he needed to market his calves differently. For the last two years, he has concentrated on pushing the envelope genetically. He realizes he’ll never be big enough to compete with larger herds farther west, so he focuses on providing the right bulls in a predominantly dairy region. The Angus x dairy market is undoubtedly growing in his area. 

Fred also concentrates on creating genetically superior females, admitting that can be difficult as technology improves so much faster than the cattle life cycle. Though it’s not for lack of trying, the average cow on his place is 2 years 9 months. 

Two years ago, his dad sold the dairy cows, so they converted those facilities to house feeder calves. They can finish calves in 18-20 months and hang 1,000-pound carcasses. 

“This lets us see our operation with a complete picture. We get to see the EPDs (expected progeny differences) at work,” Fred says.

With three different sets of goals, he doesn’t ignore any EPD. Since he has such small contemporary groups, he can select the bull for each cow specifically. Ninety percent of his calves are from embryo transfer.

He credits the growth of Bullard Creek Cattle to skills he gained in the military: people skills. Growing up, he says he was pretty quiet. The military forced him to work with people from different backgrounds, which made it easier to open up and talk to people — a key skill in learning the Angus business. 

Plus, military service and Angus cattle run in the family.

He grew up hearing a story about his great-grandfather, Walter Tiffany, boarding a troop ship in the New York Harbor headed for France during WWI. 

“He saw a man loading cattle onto a railroad box car and was curious about what breed of cattle they were,” Fred reflects. “He asked the gentleman, and with a thick Scottish accent, he was told they were ‘Aberdeen Angus, the finest cattle in the world!’ Hearing that story from my grandfather [also named Fred Tiffany] about his father definitely played a role in pursuing Angus cattle.” 

Editor’s note: Kasey Brown is a freelance writer from St. Joseph, Mo.