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Customer Profiles
Customer Profiles - Rio Vista Ranch, Elmer & Susan Rosenberger of Austin, TX
If you are looking to add Butler genetics to your Texas Longhorn herd, the Texas Hill Country is home to 23 “mama cows” and three herd sires that are the genetic foundation for Rio Vista Ranch, owned by Elmer and Susan Rosenberger. With locations near Johnson City and Lampasas, TX, the Rosenbergers are committed to producing quality Butler genetics.
After retiring from engineering and marketing careers within the computer industry, Elmer and Susan were ready for the enjoyment and lifestyle that comes with breeding and raising Texas Longhorn cattle.
“We purchased our first Longhorns in 2000, although it wasn’t until 2002 that we began to seriously focus on breeding Longhorns as a business,” Elmer said.
The Rosenbergers have come a long way since acquiring their first Longhorns from Robert King.
“We had no prior knowledge of longhorns and purchased them mainly as ‘pasture art’. Without appreciating the significance, we had purchased heifers with pedigrees that were either straight Butler or heavily Butler-influenced,” he said.
Little did they know, they had come across some of the premier Texas Longhorn genetics. Elmer said that as they began to learn more about the breed, they came to appreciate their Butler cattle even more because of their appearance and the reputation and history of the Butler bloodline in the breed.
“Our herd is now nearly 100% straight Butler bloodline. Going forward, we are focusing on continuing to improve our herd, with the goal being to produce straight Butler animals that are overall high quality in terms of horns, conformation and pedigree,” he said.
Two years ago, the Rosenbergers began to focus on building the genetically superior herd they wished for.
“In 2005, we began working with Russell Hooks who has assisted us with defining the goals of our program and concentrating our focus on superior Butler genetics. Since then we have acquired several outstanding foundation Butler cows, such as MF Good Dot, Miss Ace Monarch FM74, and Sweet Temptress to complement our trio of outstanding young bulls,” Elmer said.
Prior to purchasing LonghornMax in 2004, the Rosenbergers kept cattle records on spreadsheets. They first learned about LonghornMax by seeing pedigree and photo reports posted on consignor’s pens at various sales.
“As our herd grew and we became more aware of the need to efficiently track and analyze pedigrees, which is very important to the Butler breeder, we knew that we had to find a better tool than our original spreadsheet method. Longhorn Max filled that need and provided us with so much more capability,” he said. “Now we have immediate access to information on pedigrees, calving history, medical history, etc. And any changes we make are immediately reflected so that our information is current and up-to-date.”
Elmer suggested that those who are new to the software should try to enter their herd information as soon as they can, and keep information current and complete after that.
“The more current and complete the data is, the more powerful and flexible LonghornMax becomes as a tool to assist them,” he said.
He said they use the pasture worksheet in LonghornMax most often to jot down notes in the pasture and keep track of new calves, but they really like the reporting capabilities of the software.
“The standard reports address nearly all our needs, but if we need something special, there’s the custom report capability to help us out,” he said.
Herd update is another important feature in the Rosenberger’s record keeping, with the ability to quickly perform pasture movements and medical record updates.
“For simple, efficient, and comprehensive management of our registered longhorns, we think Longhorn Max is an essential tool,” Elmer said. “We highly recommend it.”
You can look for Rio Vista cattle at the upcoming Butler Breeders Invitational Sale, held September 1, in Lockhart, TX. To learn more about the pure Butler genetics available at Rio Vista Ranch, visit them online at http://www.riovistaranch.com.
If you are a LonghornMax customer and would like to be featured in a ranch profile, please contact us.
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