Twenty-one years ago, Josh and Corry Worthington of Dadeville, Mo., bought four Angus cows, with no land or land leases to their name. They just turned the girls out in the yard of the small house they were renting.

From those humble beginnings, Worthington Angus would grow into an enviable seedstock operation thanks to their discipline, belief in their vision for the herd and a lot of helpful people showing up to support them along the way.

“Corry and I are first-generation Angus breeders, but we’re not first-generation people,” Josh says. “Our parents taught us how to treat people and work hard.”

Josh, the American Angus Association’s 2025 Young Breeder of the Year Award recipient, and his family now breed around 350 females and transfer 400-500 embryos annually. This model has allowed them to market 250 bulls a year and some registered females in both their spring and fall sales. 

“We really enjoy building things together,” Corry says. “It definitely grew us closer together, constantly trying to figure out how to make [Worthington Angus] work.”

Creating value

Josh’s determination to get the business set up with the right plan and to always do right by customers stands out to Corry as key pieces of what has helped them be successful.

“When you’re starting something from nothing, you’re going to need to be pretty laser-focused,” Josh explains. “We felt like if we could be disciplined in our approach to using proven genetics to breed cattle, that we could create value.”

The value he talks about is in the minds of commercial producers: often the people the Worthingtons would call friends, neighbors and even family.

Before they could sell 250 registered Angus bulls annually, Josh sold his first two to his dad back in 2006. He says he knew then, and he knows now, that every bull purchase a commercial producer makes is a big deal.

“My mom and dad operated a small commercial cow-calf operation, and money was tight,” Josh says about his upbringing. “There are other families just like we were when I was growing up who are counting on me to get it right.”

He says that’s why his mindset is locked in on delivering quality and doing it consistently.

“We’ve always been the kind of people that worked really, really hard on plan A,” Josh says. “Plan B was making sure Plan A didn’t fail.”

This translates to both a need and a desire to understand what his customers expect. Josh sees their bull purchases as invitations to help clients be successful. That might be following up after their breeding season, discussing goals or helping to market their calves. 

Customers of Worthington Angus market their calves in a variety of ways. Some sell their calves at livestock markets in southwestern Missouri, while others background them first or develop replacement females. Josh says they also have customers who retain ownership and sell on a grid to earn premiums.

“Anything we can do to be the marketing arm, we just made up our mind that our customers are busy and that’s a service that we can provide,” he says.

For customers selling at a livestock market, that support typically looks like compiling an affidavit with their bull battery and average expected progeny differences (EPDs), vaccination records, calving and weaning information, and any nutritional information that might be important. If a commercial seller has feeding or carcass data, that will be shared with potential buyers as well.

Josh says hiring two full-time employees to help manage the day-to-day operations has afforded him the time to go the extra mile with these marketing efforts as well as other aspects of the business. 

“I couldn’t do everything I do without [all these people] in terms of spending time with customers and trying to look down the road and getting to spend some time in the office thinking, and processing and understanding data and understanding our business,” Josh notes.

In addition to helping execute administrative work for the farm, Corry also runs an architectural engineering firm and has enjoyed collaborating with Josh on facility improvements as they have grown their business.

“She’s always there anytime we need anything,” Josh adds. 

Hometown living

Josh says their three sons and parents serve as extra hands too, and the support doesn’t end there.

“We’ve relied heavily on our parents — Corry and I both — because they live close,” Josh says. “I talk about all the people who helped us build this place when we started; but we have two sales each year, and all the neighbors and friends in this little community help cook all the things that Corry’s prepared. Every oven in this town’s probably got a cobbler or cheesy potatoes or something in it getting ready.”

Josh describes it as a wonder to behold when a train of Dadeville residents cycle through the parking lot to feed their customers a hot meal right on schedule.

“Everybody probably thinks they live in the greatest place on earth,” he says, “I know we do, and it’s a great place to call home.”

Why I love the Angus cow and why I love the Angus breed is because it delivers a product that the consumer is demanding and willing to pay for. And what could be greater than being stewards of God’s creation to feed God’s people?” — Josh Worthington

Corry says she loves what a big family and community event sale day is. After 17 sales, Corry jokes she doesn’t know why so many people keep showing up to help, but again, they are so thankful.

She says she also loves raising their kids in a rural place where they can have Sunday dinners with her parents and Josh’s parents. They have a strong church family and a good school in their local community, where Josh serves on the local board. Professionally, there was a time when she thought she would have to live in an urban environment to find success in her line of work.

“We are very grateful that we have been able to come back and find a way to farm but also live off the farm as well,” she says. “I’m not out running tractors, but I definitely feel like I can support the farm in every other way.”

Both Josh and Corry continue to be students of their businesses and their crafts. They read business books together, and Josh attends industry events including the Beef Leaders Institute in 2010. Corry says part of their relationship is pushing each other to get better.

Why Angus?

As a young student growing up in Dadeville, Josh was active in the American-International Junior Charolais Association and in FFA. 

He says, “My connection to being able to be involved in the beef cattle business was showing cattle at that time, and the adult that I saw doing that was an ag teacher.”

Those influential experiences led him to pursue a degree in agriculture education at Missouri State University, where he says he learned about other ways he could apply himself within the beef industry. As he was finishing his schooling, he learned about an opportunity to go to work for Angus in his home state. 

He crossed paths with then-Association regional manager Don Laughlin, who mentioned the Missouri Angus Association would be looking for a general manager soon. Josh talked with his advisor and decided to apply for this “dream job.” 

“When I took the job as a general manager for the Missouri Angus Association in 2004, it felt like it was a good time to transition to a different breed, and I never looked back,” he says. “I always had a lot of admiration for the Angus breed and in particular, Certified Angus Beef.”

In that role, he says his goal was to take aspects of an already-strong state association and bring them to the next level. The organization’s publication, Missouri Angus Trails, transitioned from black and white to color. It began mailing to a segment of commercial operators in Missouri in addition to its members. Under Josh’s leadership, it also offered sale management services and started a commercial female sale program.

“I came into the association wanting to grow it, to make it sustainable, profitable and be very closely tied to the commercial cow-calf world ... that all of those Missouri Angus breeders served,” he says.

While Josh was Missouri’s general manager, he and Corry welcomed their first son, Wriston, and second son, Grayson. Josh says while those years were some of the best of his life, being on the road and away from home many nights were hard on their young family.

“When we were expecting our third son, we knew that we needed an exit strategy from Missouri Angus,” he says. 

That exit came in July 2015, and Worthington Angus hosted its first sale in March 2016.

“I’d already calculated out how many bulls we needed in that first sale,” Josh says. “We knew how many cows had to be here to be the pipeline to create the first sale, and we knew when the first sale needed to be.”

For years the childhood sweethearts and business partners, Josh and Corry, had quietly invested in preparing their herd for an eventual sale. They also sold bulls privately in their local region around Dadeville and southwest Missouri.

“One of the things I was most proud of when I left Missouri Angus is everybody was wondering what I was going to do,” Josh says. “To me, that meant I had done my job because they didn’t know that I was building the program here.”

He says he remained just as driven about serving the membership during his last days as he was during his first.

Full steam ahead

Josh describes his business philosophy as aggressive and fast-paced. For Worthington Angus, that meant moving from one sale in 2016 to two sales in 2019 with their first fall sale. 

He says one of the reasons they were able to expand at a rapid pace was the lessons he learned from other breeders and by surrounding themselves with people who were honest, and that helped them think about the future.

“A lot of folks that worked at American Angus, Don Laughlin and Bill Bowman, have been mentors that I couldn’t begin to thank enough — always there to take a call and real mentors, real friends, real people who care about your business,” Josh says. 

He says his dad would be on that list too, among many others.

“They asked questions that challenged us and made us think,” Josh says. “They tried to help us understand the scope and magnitude of the beef industry in a way that, I think, has allowed us to set the stage so that we can provide a product for our customers for many, many generations.”

As he thinks about being the 2025 Young Breeder of the Year, Josh says it’s difficult to imagine himself not being the one still needing wisdom and advice, but he also wants to pay it forward.

“I look at the people that have done that for me,” he says. “They’re icons, and I’m a long ways from that. Maybe someday I’ll be qualified.”

So what’s the end goal at Worthington Angus? Josh says it’s producing the whole package. 

They are after cattle that can qualify for the Certified Angus Beef^® (CAB^®) brand, after growing rapidly to a desirable end point and producing a high-value carcass; and they need to leave a set of daughters in the herd that not only replicate that process, but also improve it.

“The reality is the Angus cow will deliver on all of those fronts if we made her correctly,” he says. “Most of our customers are what I would consider small to mid-size producers, and they come here to buy bulls that will do it all.”

As a self-proclaimed student of the industry, Josh also has embraced technology to help make that goal a reality.

“That’s part of our role at Worthington Angus: not just to deliver genetics, but to understand available tools, resources and technologies that might help our customers, and then provide the education to them so that they can utilize those same tools and technologies that have been beneficial for us,” he says.

From the genetics perspective, he says he is curious about future developments in what can be done to increase disease resistance and overall efficiency in cattle.

“Different components of DNA technology are going to allow us to identify cattle that just work better in different environments,” Josh says.

On the maternal side, he keeps a close eye on fertility and longevity, understanding the economic effects they have for producers. 

“Why I love the Angus cow and why I love the Angus breed is because it delivers a product that the consumer is demanding and willing to pay for,” he says. “And what could be greater than being stewards of God’s creation to feed God’s people?”