Welcome to Tessier Herefords, located 6 miles south of Belfield, ND.

 

I'm Zach, a third generation rancher. My wife, Larissa, and I along with our daughter, Hadley Jo and son Hayden moved out here in 2010.  We transformed part of the section of grassland to build our home, barn, feedlot and facility and continue to work, build and improve their ranch.

 

Our family loves every aspect of the cattle business. We especially enjoy genetics and parent lineage, due to the fact that Zach was raised on a commercial cow calf operation, just a half mile north of the place. Now that he can see whose daughters are performing and whose sons gain rapidly on grass, it has sparked his attention to the registered side of the business. This is where he fell in love with the Hereford breed due to their docility and ability to grow with minimal inputs, the cattle work for us not the other way around. Unlike most seed stock producers, we at Tessier Herefords will not creep feed our seed stock, nor will we silage feed the bulls in the lot. We feel this is a false representative of a breed of cattle that can produce rapid gains with zero inputs.

 

When the calves are born we are adamant about their data. They are weighed and genomic tested for accuracy of EPDs and parent verifications. Our cow herd is not pampered, but is raised alongside our commercial cows. Once it's time to go to summer grass, we put the bull calves in the roughest terrain we have in the badlands of south western North Dakota. We feel this harsh environment will do the culling for us. If the calves can't survive this climate and environment, they are culled from the herd.

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At weaning time we have strict expectations of where we want our weights, regardless of age. Our philosophy: if they don't perform on their own without feed how can we expect them to perform for our customers?