About Us
We raise your Herdsire the Right Way
Who We Are...
Located 20 miles East of Winnipeg, Edie Creek Angus is your source for affordable performance tested, forage-efficient herdsires. We sell Two-year old bulls so that we can develop them properly without pushing them. This way they can grow out and be ready to breed more cows for more years, $aving you Money!
Edie Creek Angus Genetics are bred for profitability, not extreme EPD traits. We treat our cowherd like you treat your commercial herd or tougher, that way we can raise bulls that EXCEL in the REAL WORLD! Read on to find out about our journey towards profitable beef genetics…
Way-back History...
The Bouw family has been involved in the cattle business for a number of generations. My grandfather, Peter Bouw Sr., was a cattle drover in Holland before immigrating to Canada with his wife and three of the eventual four children, in 1957. At this time he worked as a farm hand until he had an opportunity to buy a farm just outside Anola, MB in 1961.
The Evolution...
The farm consisted of a number of enterprises, including beef cows, dairy cows, and hogs, with a small amount of grain/hay to complement the livestock needs. By approximately 1969, a small feedlot was started, which fed up to 1,500 head by the mid 1980’s under the guidance of my uncle Anthon Bouw. My father and mother (Herman & Marilyn) bought the farm in 1998, and it was operated as a smaller feedlot until 2005 when we stopped buying in feeder cattle and only kept our own calves to finish.
New Beginnings…
Edie Creek Angus was established in the year 2000, when we began purchasing bred Angus heifers locally, and from Manitoba dispersals and production sales. These purchases resulted with a little bit of success and a number of dismal failures. As with every business or educational process, “no pain ($$) = no gain” and this would be the reality of our Angus adventures...
The School of Hard Knocks…
We learned the hard way that an animal’s initial appearance can be a misleading indicator of its functionality (aka grain-fed show cows don’t work in the real world)!! Without a constant supply of grain, a number of the purebred cattle we bought milked themselves too hard and did not rebreed, thereby culling themselves and providing a very negative $ Return on Investment ($ROI).
A Fresh New Approach!
In the fall of 2005, I wasn’t able to make it to the Manitoba Grazing School, but attended a follow-up session with Gearld Fry, which opened my eyes to the world of sustainable beef genetics. This was an ideological fit with our family’s approach to agriculture, which includes organic crop production, and it seemed to solve the problem of cows who needed grain for survival in our herd…
The “O C C Revolution”…
Over that winter and the following year, we did lots of research into sustainable beef genetics, and one herd prefix that kept coming up in the pedigrees of animals that looked phenotypically correct was “O C C”, which we found out stood for Ohlde Cattle Co. After much research, we discovered their genetics in most other forage-friendly Angus animals in the industry, and as a result, we knew we had to look into bringing these genes to Manitoba!!
A New Start…
Coincidence or Divine providence unknown, but fall of 2006 we received a sale catalogue for the dispersal of the giant Crowfoot Cattle Co. herd in Standard, AB. The Crowfoot herd was one of very few Canadian Angus herds to have O C C-bred cattle, and here they were available for sale! In November 2006, I went to check out the herd with Stefan, and we were suitably impressed, so Dad and I went to the 2-day sale December 29th & 30th. We purchased 36 head at the sale, and the cattle have stood up to our wet-grass, no-grain, no-nonsense conditions.
The Greatest Bull to walk our Pastures…
The next important step in our journey towards sustainable beef genetics was the purchase of Hillfire Legacy 518R from John Setrakov at Meadow Lake, SK. We wanted a bull that would breed stout grass-efficient bulls and leave us daughters that would mature to be 1200-1300 lb cows that are productive, fertile, easy fleshing, and have great feet and perfect udders. 518R’s mother is an Elite Dam with the Canadian Angus Association, has a great udder and temperament, and survived under John Setrakov’s demanding conditions—John’s cows definitely work for him, not vice versa… 518R has been a great investment which will be paying itself out for many years to come as we calve out his awesome daughters and please customers with his terrific bulls!
O C C Cows on Canadian soil!
The latest exciting chapter in the genetic progress of Edie Creek Angus cattle is our recent acquisition of 7 cows and 15 embryos from Tim Ohlde of Ohlde Cattle Co. We just recently brought these cows and embryos home, and are VERY excited to have them around and look forward to calving them out! In addition to their prepotency in ease of fleshing, these cows also possess perfect feet and udders, and are very good looking cattle. Generations of longevity are also bred into these great cattle, as many of the matrons in their pedigree have produced until the ripe young age of 14 and beyond. Calving ease is another trait that consistently runs deep in the OCC bloodlines: despite the depth and muscling that they exhibit when mature, their calves have short gestations, are born easily, and have a “laser-like focus on nursing”.
The “Ohlde – School”…
These OCC cows are the ultimate in low-input, low maintenance cattle that are still productive and fertile, but cost much less to keep, which balances out the perceived lack of weaning weight production. $100 more calf produced by fall-time does not make up for the $150 extra feed bill that an 1800lb cow eats! As Tim Ohlde says: “Cattlemen need to start thinking in terms of profit per cow instead of pounds per calf. Where costs are documented, the ideal weaning weight still ranges from 500 to 600 pounds--anything over that is usually at the expense of net profit. If a commercial producer is trying to reduce production costs and is keeping replacement females, it doesn't make sense to purchase bulls from a herd that is strictly production oriented.” You do get paid for the pounds of calf that you produce, but if you don’t know what it costs you to produce those pounds of calf, how do you know if you’re making a profit??
The Key to Ranch Profitability...
Tim Ohlde also says: “The efficient, functional, forage-loving cow will always be the key to ranch profitability. The variables for creating this animal have always been rather simple. It is man’s constant need for “more” that complicates matters. The equation for creating the functional cow focuses on moderate mature size, volume and capacity (“guts”), the ability to flesh easily on grass and calving ease combined with udder quality without worrying too much about growth and carcass traits. This approach results in cow herds that can be profitable with less inputs while also being incredibly versatile (e.g. crossbreeding). We at Edie Creek Angus agree with Tim Ohlde’s philosophies of breeding beef cattle, and are very proud to offer some of his great breeding to our new customers here in Manitoba, Canada, and beyond.
C’mon Down!
If you’re ever in the Winnipeg area, we’re only 25 minutes out of town, so come on down and have a look at these great cattle, we’re always happy to share our love of great cattle and agriculture in general with great cattle folks.
Raising Your Herdsire Right…
We now develop bulls for sale as 2-year-olds on pasture and forage diets. This allows them to develop slowly without being pushed to breed before they are done growing, and allows us to be able to sell bulls that have not been fed a feedlot ration. We believe that these bulls will service more cows for many more years than a grain-fed yearling bull. The bulls have been grazed in a rotational-grazing, electric-fence system and are very accustomed to human contact and are easy to work with.
Breeding Bulls for Grass Farmers…
Edie Creek Angus bulls are thick, easy fleshing animals that are structurally correct and come from cows that WORK!! The extra development time also gives us a better representation of the dam’s ability to produce, as we have another sibling to compare the bull to.
Photo on the left: The entire Bouw Family at Jonathan & Eileen's wedding, August 22nd, 2009; Top of Bale: Matthew Blieske, Stefan Bouw; Standing: Herman Bouw, Kendra, Jaxon, Jonathan Bouw, Eileen, Marilyn, Aria, and Elyse Blieske