Our roots are what make us who we are. Let us share our story with you.

Erickson Stock Farm

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Where we are now

With family roots deep in agriculture, and a passion to care for animals, our family has never strayed far from the cattle industry. After the 2002 dispersal of Erickson Farms, Tim and Nancy focused on careers as financial advisors and raising my brother and I. As we grew up, Parker and I worked on developing show heifers and creating a small herd with the help of our parents. When we do things we do them all the way, and decided to jump back into breeding and marketing superior Simmental genetics in Bolivar, Missouri. The changed name, Erickson Stock Farm was created from the connection to stock investments in careers that helped restart the farm, and to encompass any livestock we may have on the farm, including the thoroughbred race horse stock we keep around. Parker helps with cattle working days, but focused his time into sports in high school and is now immersed in his college football career at Truman State University. Much of my time is now filled with days in cattle auctions in SW MO as a Livestock Market Reporter, and working with clients of my livestock photography business, Grace Erickson Design. I have found my role in our operation working with my Dad to build our program and focus on marketing and breeding efforts. We strive to build functional cattle that we like to look at. EPD’s and measuables are still of importance in our herd, but should be put into functional packages that are also ready to turn heads in the show ring. We believe lots of you think like we do, and our goal is to work to make Simmental genetics for those people at many different operational levels.

Here’s some extra history behind the lives that made us….

Then

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Origin

Peter Emil Erickson came to America from Norway in 1861, learned the language and promptly served the next three and a half years fighting the Civil War.  In 1865 he settled in northern Illinois and started life as a farmer.  Seventy five years later during WW2, his son Marvin, his wife Mildred and their eight kids continued on.  During these years the annual family ledger showed entries for milk, eggs, and meat rabbits on the income side and mostly flour, sugar, salt and simple hardware items as expenses.  With youngest son Bob always wearing a smile, they were humble, small operators, but hard-working, bill-paying, and often innovative, early adopters of tractors, self-propelled pickers, and milking technologies.  


The Stillmeadow Years

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In 1974, Bob Erickson moved his side of the family to 520 acres of north central Missouri prairie crop ground. Two years later halfblood heifer named Toni, bred by Carl Newbrough, became the first registered Simmental to the family. Soon the herd grew fifty cows for ASA # 13429. Performance testing was strictly employed for the next twenty years with all calves weighed monthly and frame scored at weaning and yearling. Bulls were marketed at the Missouri Performance Tested Bull Sales, UMC Bull Test Station, and off the farm. Bob’s son Tim and his sisters Heather and April enjoyed showing steers and heifers at many county fairs and Missouri State Fair.

 
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On June 1st, 1985, Tim married his high school sweetheart, Nancy Squires. Nancy was a Hatton, MO native and grew up in a multigenerational grain farming operation. Tim also received an Animal Science degree from the University of Missouri in 1985.  He stayed on for a Masters under Jerry Lipsey, coached the livestock judging team, mapped the UMC cowherd for fescue endophyte tolerance, repaired the feed efficiency testing units at the test station, assisted in the first large scale heritability study on beef pelvic area at Nichols Farms, and the first major assessment of pork cutout value based on measures previously used only to measure percent lean. The Stillmeadow herd topped the tested bull sales on occasion and a 6.7 frame bull became the fastest gaining 112 day test to that date at 5.28 pounds per day. 

 
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NWSS 1999

 

Still, frame sizes, mature weights, and birth weights crept upward almost everywhere and the Stillmeadow herd was no exception.  By the mid 90’s, as an idea man, Tim was blessed to be a planning member of the Focus 2000 Conference after which the course of our breed changed toward moderation, calving ease, enhanced eating quality, and solid color patterns.  Tim A.I.ed the first cows mated during the young sire carcass progeny test and followed the calves through the feedlot and kill plant. He helped Dr. R. J. Lipsey and the ASA board usher in shear force testing, longevity EPD, docility, hair and fescue tolerance, PTP shows and the Young Gun Conferences for ASA.

Erickson Farms Years

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Meanwhile, Tim and Nancy bought a futuristic group of heifers, including TE Erica E207B and TE Erica E559 the high marbling ultrasound heifers from the high marbling EPD bull in the breed, Emmons Black Hercules from the 3C herd. Their flushes to Nichols Black Destiny formed the nucleus for Tim and Nancy’s Erickson Farms venture in Elkland, Missouri in 1997.  At the 1998 NWSS Bull Pen Show, the bull pen didn’t win the pen show as judge Galen Fink commented, “These bulls are my kind and they dominate with their huge tops, big rear ends, wide bases, and massive bone… but I can’t use a Simmental pen with a 5.5 frame bull in it.”  Still, the winds of change were blowing hard and by the next morning TE McClintock (lead bull) had leased to Accelerated Genetics with pasture rights to Triple C, TE McCredie “Fat Butt” had leased to Twentieth Century/Alta/Genex with ownership to Mark Smith, and Flying B in Mississippi while TE McCallister (anchor bull) was bought by ABS with pasture rights to Taylors Black Simmental. The next day their sisters attracted much attention on the hill.

These cattle embodied the traits that drew new attention to the breed, accelerated our commercial acceptance and broader usage, and introduced Simmental as a critical maternal component of the club calf industry.  The Burnhams of Prickly Pear Simmental Ranch in Helena, MT added 70 top leased cows the next year, including Miss Prickly Pear 615F, the dam of PPSR NoPhault as well as the dam of PPSR Montana Irish.  From 1997-2002, Erickson Farms sold lots of bulls, added several sires to AI stud roles, added a daughter Grace and later a son Parker to the family and worked themselves to the edge of exhaustion.  At the dispersal day of the full Erickson Farms herd in 2002, many of the base cowherd became the start of the Lucas Ranch in Cross Timbers, Missouri and bolstered herds like Nichols Farms South, RA Brown Ranch, Paradise Simmental, and Joe Garretson’s Three Cedars Farm.

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