Winter Cattle Journal 2025 | BERWALD RED ANGUS: Award winning females with good dispositions
Austin Berwald knows his cattle.
In fact, the Toronto, South Dakota cattleman knows them so well, he can spot a cow 100 yards away and know her ear tag, her genetics, when she calved, and all of her stats.
His expertise with cattle was recognized when Berwald Red Angus won the 2024 Breeder of the Year award given by the Red Angus Association of America.
Growing up in the dairy business, Austin has always had an eye and a brain for cattle. At the age of thirteen, he attended AI school, and in high school, was managing the family farm’s row crop operation.
Seth Leachman, Austin’s friend, marketing manager and consultant, came to work with the Berwalds two years ago.
Austin’s goal, when Seth came to the ranch, was “to build the best Red Angus female in the country,” and that’s what he’s done, Seth said.
The fastest way to make genetic progress is by shortening the generational interval, and, as Seth says, they are “cranking the generations,” taking the best young females and flushing them to the top young bulls.
“The tough thing about the cattle business is whatever you do today (in breeding), it takes two years before it bears fruit,” he said.
To pick up the pace, the Berwalds use AI and intensive embryo transplant, both conventionally and with in-vitro fertilization (IVF) to speed up the generations.
IVF has been around a while, but as its costs have decreased and pregnancy rates have improved, it’s become more common.
Berwald predominantly uses an IVF process without the use of hormones which can negatively affect the fertility of the donor. IVF also allows Berwald to collect embryos on young females as well as cows that are up to 120 days pregnant, every two weeks, where conventional flushing can only be done every sixty days.
“We take yearling heifers at twelve months and IVF transfer them two or three times before we actually AI breed them. You generate more eggs, without giving the females any drugs.”
This past spring, the operation put in over 640 eggs in recipient females.
As they choose their best females to flush, they’re “using the tools we have available to us,” Seth said: “EPDs, performance, DNA, and we also evaluate the cattle from a phenotypical and structural standpoint.”
Austin takes “what we think is the best cow in the breed, the really highly sought after, with the best mothering abilities and the best traits, and we’re trying to multiply them.”
Because of the acceleration of generations, his best cow in the herd, who is fourteen years old, has 62 direct daughters and granddaughters, and many of them are his top donors today.
“We may have a young female, a two-year-old, that’s just raised and weaned her natural calf, and we might have a half-dozen embryo calves out of her also. With a normal cycle of a cow, if you were to breed her once a year, she might have ten calves in her lifetime. Our elite donors have sixty to 100 head of progeny,” Austin said.
“We’re taking the very few elite females and multiplying them,” Seth said. “So our newest generations are daughters of those top cows.”
Austin is a stickler for another trait in his cattle: disposition.
He knows he’s achieved his goals when his neighbor who’s bought Berwald bulls, John Krause, sends him pictures of Berwald cattle.
“He’ll send me Snaps (from Snapchat) that his cows follow him, and how my genetics have improved his operation.”
“We really select for docility,” he said. “We really breed for that. If I have a cow, and she tries to hurt me, we don’t keep her.”
He has a calm demeanor with his cattle, and insists his crew does as well.
“We don’t use paddles or flags and we don’t use sticks. The hot shot is the very last resort, in an emergency, and we typically don’t use it.
“It’s how the calves have a good experience. If they’ve been rough handled, they don’t forget it. And my crew knows the drill. When we’re working cattle, they know they’re not going to be in the back pens, beating, yelling or screaming. If something’s not working, we’ll reassess the situation and work things through.”
Krause, who lives a mile north of the Berwalds, is a testament to the Berwald cattle’s temperament.
“The thing that set me over the edge about having (Berwald cattle) is we had them in the yard here at home. My daughter was two years old, and she could go out and pet that bull through the fence. That bull was so gentle and so mellow to deal with, it was unreal.
“The disposition is a big one, in my book,” John said. “We weaned a month ago, and in our pasture, one guy can walk out there and sort the bulls out. One guy can sort and load. The disposition is that easy.”
Growing up in a dairy family, Austin believes in feeding forage.
“Forage is a wetter feed, and where the animals are ruminants, forage is a natural feed. We like to feed haylage, silage and earlage, wetter feeds. By feeding forage, it allows cattle to develop more capacity and more rumen development. Where we live, our grass is washy-er and wetter. So when they go out in the spring on the wetter grass, in my opinion, they have enough capacity and rumen development to get the wetter feeds and process them.”
The Berwald operation had its first sale in March 2023.
For the 2023 and 2024 sales, Austin put the top dozen of his elite heifer calves, “the very, very top of my entire operation,” for sale. In 2024, six of those elite heifers stemmed back to the fourteen-year-old cow who has 62 daughters. One of those heifers was the high seller, bringing $60,000 and going to the Broken Heart Ranch at Firesteel, S.D.
Their 2024 sale stats included 103 Red Angus bulls averaging $11,910, ten registered open heifers averaging $21,950, and 46 commercial open heifers averaging $3,165.
Austin comes from a line of cattlemen and dairymen who knew their animals.
“I just know every cow,” he said. “My dad was that way, my grandfather was that way, and my uncle is that way.
“My dad had 1,200 milk cows and when they calved, he could remember the cow line, when the mother had calved, and what the breeding was.
“I live with these cows. I truly do. You calve them out, you remember each one, its mannerisms. That’s one thing I pride myself on. You come here for a tour, I won’t have a note sheet and a laptop with the info. Literally I know every cow that’s here.”
Austin and Becky have five children: daughters Jaylee (15), Jaedyn (9) and Jocelyn (2) and son Jamison (4). They lost son Jaxson at age nine in an ice fishing accident three years ago, along with Austin’s dad, Mike. Austin’s mother, Kim, is also part of the business.
The 2025 sale will be held March 12. For more information, call Austin at 605.690.3319 and Seth at 406.591.5651. Information can also be found on the Berwald Red Angus Facebook page.