Conformation, phenotype and the dam’s record on weaning weights are all evaluated in bull selection for sale and to determine which cows become bull mothers. The bulls at the Ingalls ranch are evaluated for temperament after first being sorted by birthweight. Ingalls had the champion and reserve bull pens as well as overall supreme pen honors for their bred heifers. Ingalls’ Centennial Angus has had top bull and bred heifer pens of three at the annual Faith Stock Show for years, this past August being no exception. “Too much emphasis on any one trait means we’re sacrificing something somewhere else.” While the focus is weaning weights – indicated in part by milk EPDs – he looks at longevity and other profitability factors. That’s because Hugh takes a balanced approach. People want more milk, so I want my milk EPD in the double-digits but not more than 20.” “You’ve got to have a good cow as the base of that bull,” says Hugh. Hugh and Eleanor have built a reputation of excellence with the Angus breed, selling their bulls based on the production factors that produce ranch income. They drink coffee, eat cookies … and tell stories.” Then “the guys come to pick them out,” Hugh explains. The Ingalls ready the papers and price the bulls on paper before the sale. “They come for bulls and for Eleanor’s good cookies and coffee,” Hugh says with a smile. The event draws cattlemen from the tri-state region and as far as Montana.įor 30 years, he’s been advertising the annual sale by radio, then chooses a song to sing with a “thank you” message to buyers on the airwaves after. Every year, they hold a spring sale of roughly 120 to 125 breeding-age bulls by private treaty. Today, Angus are at the top of the beef food chain, representing over half of total purebred cattle numbers in the U.S., according to the American Angus Association.Įverything on the Ingalls’ ranch is purebred Angus. “I took a lot of ribbing down there that year,” he says with a chuckle during a ranch visit. He remembers it well, pulling out the 2006-2007 South Dakota Angus Directory with its “throwback” cover picturing what Hugh recalls as “a scared young farm kid in bib overalls” at the halter of the Angus heifer calf he took to the Western Stock Show in Texas in the 1940s.
He had the very first black calf at the Western Junior Stock Show in the days when Hereford and Shorthorn ruled the ring. Hugh, himself, has owned Angus since he was 12 years old, when his father, Lawrence, gave him his first heifer calf. Half the males of the calf crop are sold as steers for beef quality research at South Dakota State University, and the other half as herd bulls private treaty at his annual spring sale. The Ingalls Angus genetics are also recognized as high-quality and uniform. In 1983, their efforts were recognized with the American Angus Association Centennial Angus Herd Award.
Production records have been important to the genetic program ever since Hugh and Eleanor started ranching together in the 1950s at their current location near Faith. Not surprising since Hugh has the state’s oldest Angus herd, dating back to a bull with a handwritten pedigree purchased from Illinois by Hugh’s grandfather in 1895. Over 100 years later, Ingalls’ Centennial Angus Ranch is among South Dakota’s top 10 Angus breeders for registrations. Hugh Ingalls’ father was 12 years old on a farm in eastern South Dakota when members of the family moved west to settle various 160-acre tracts of treeless prairie on the other side of the Missouri River. El Lechero provides a switch in attitude in South Dakota
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