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Winter Cattle Journal 2025 | McCumber Angus: Sixty years of Maternal Focus  

Chuck and Gail Tastad, along with their son Matt, his wife Cynthia and their children, own and operate McCumber Angus Ranch near Rolette, North Dakota. The registered Angus herd began 60 years ago as an FFA project, and has come to represent the highest quality maternal Angus genetics in the cattle industry.  

“In 1964, my dad, along with my grandpa started the registered Angus herd,” Matt said. “It started as an FFA project for my dad when he was 14 years old. They purchased five half-sisters as bred heifers.”  

That was their start; the next year they went back and bought three or four more females.  



“Our cattle still trace to those original females,” Matt said. “The Miss Wix cow family and the Rosetta cow family are two of the most prominent cow families in our herd today.” 

Sixty years ago, no one would have imagined these two cow families would be recognized around the world today. 



Tastads chose to use the name “McCumber” as their herd prefix name, keeping a bit of forgotten local history alive in the process.  

“McCumber was a little town just north of Rolette. In the early 1900s it was a boom town along the Great Northern Railroad.” 

As many early prairie towns, the “boom town” of McCumber died when the Sioux Line railroad came through the area a few miles to the south.  

“Rolette started at that spot, and within a few years all the businesses from McCumber moved to Rolette,” Matt said. “When dad and grandpa started to register cattle, instead of using our last name, they chose to keep the name of that town alive and named the ranch after McCumber.” 

Chuck has some unique historic artifacts from the old town of McCumber, including cancelled checks from the bank and a shipping crate. 

Perhaps unique for the northern part of North Dakota, Tastads calve in January and February. 

“It has its challenges,” Matt said, but it’s easier for us than trying to calve in the mud in March. 

Early calving dates gives their yearling bulls a little more age when they hold their sale at the end of March every spring.  

“When we go to our summer pastures, we split the cattle up into small groups and they get spread around; calving early means we can do all our AI’ing at home before they go to grass,” Matt said. “We aren’t very dry here; either we would be May calving or we have to calve when we do when it’s frozen.” 

The cows go through a heated calving barn, and are in there just long enough for the new babies to get dried off and off to a good start. 

“It’s not a big barn, we can get about 15 cows in at a time,” Matt said. “When they’re coming fast, they don’t get a lot of time in the barn; a day, usually. Once they’re dry and have nursed, out they go.” 

The McCumber ranch does have areas with good protection for the newest calves, which helps deal with the stresses of January weather in north central North Dakota.  

Good mother cows also make their job easier. 

“From the start we have always focused on breeding cattle with a focus on the maternal; making a cow that can work in any environment is our goal. We want functional, fertile, productive, easy fleshing cows that are efficient on forages and grass.” 

Tastads want females that don’t require a high energy source to maintain body condition and breed back. 

 “We really focus on breeding cattle for commercial cattlemen, cows that will go out and work in the roughest environments, yet still meet industry standards in carcass and performance. We have not strayed off that path for the 60 years we have been in the business.” 

While the focus on strong maternal performance has not changed, Tastads are constantly seeking improvement in the cattle they raise. 

“We want to make each generation better than the last,” Matt said.  

With a genetic base of Emulation and Rito lines, they focus on identifying their very best cows and concentrating those stellar individuals in the pedigrees of their cattle. 

“We don’t use a lot of outside genetics, and don’t use a lot of mainstream bulls,” he said. “We sell our very best bulls and utilize them back in our herd via AI with frozen semen.” 

Stacking the genetics of their best females back, generation after generation, creates consistency for their bull customers. But they are always trying to find a balance. 

90% of the McCumber Angus bulls sell to commercial cattlemen, and around 10% to other seedstock producers.  

“Our focus and our bread and butter are commercial cattle. We get the likeminded registered breeders that will come through too, but it’s nice to have a good commercial bull customer base that comes back year after year. That’s what makes the program work,” Matt said. 

McCumber Angus females are AI bred off natural heats for just over three weeks each spring. 

“We don’t synchronize them because of the limitations of winter calving,” Matt said. “On the cow herd we run about an 80% AI conception rate, and around 70% AI on the heifers.” 

It’s a time commitment, but the limited space in their calving facilities means they need to keep the calving dates spread out.  

“They come fast enough this way,” he said. “We do benefit from a higher conception rate, but for three or four weeks heat detecting is all we do.”  

Tastads use some of their own females as recip cows for a small embryo transfer herd. 

“We try to implant 30-40 embryos every spring, but it’s a pretty small percentage of what we do.” 

Raising their own feed crops means that getting in the field coincides with heat detecting and getting the cows bred. 

“AI is the priority, some of the field work gets a little bit late,” Tastad said. “We raise some corn silage and alfalfa hay, and plant a lot of cover crop that we can hay once and then utilize for fall grazing for the cows.” 

The cover crops and switching to no-till farming practices have been a game changer, enabling Tastads to extend their fall grazing with high quality forage instead of crop residue. Not only has it helped the cattle by providing better feed, the practice has enhanced the productivity of the fields. 

“We’ll rotate; cover crop ground will then be our corn silage ground the next year. We have been able to reduce commercial fertilizer use and maintain yields. I would say yields have definitely increased over the years as the organic matter in the soil increases.” 

Winters on a ranch only 30 miles from the Canadian border can be a real challenge, but “when you deal with it through the generations you figure out a way to handle it,” Matt said.  

Their location also poses unique market challenges. 

“We sell a few cattle into Canada, but we don’t really have a radius when it comes to our market, we have a semi-circle. Visitors have to want to come and see the cattle, as we’re not close to an interstate, or a location where people are just passing by.” 

Tastads do get quite a few visitors and are very grateful for the effort they make to come to the ranch. Internet and online auctions have expanded their market. 

“We utilized that technology early, and we definitely reached people that maybe we wouldn’t have otherwise,” he said.  

Although Matt and Cynthia are the ones making the management decisions now, Chuck and Gail are still involved. 

“They do all the bull delivering in the spring after the sale, which is a huge help,” Matt said.  

Cynthia taught science at the local high school for ten years. 

“After our third child was born, she was going to take one year off and then go back,” Matt said. “But she didn’t go back. Since then she has been full time help here on the ranch.” 

Matt and Cynthia’s four children are all involved, and have always been a big help on the ranch, although the couple is on the verge of being empty nesters as their youngest son is now a senior in high school. 

Their oldest daughter Sydney married T.J. Flax in August. She graduated last spring from Kansas State University with a masters in reproductive physiology, and hopes todo some embryo transfer work for the ranch in the future. Their second daughter, Eva, is a junior at North Dakota State University, pursuing a degree in animal science and hoping to come back to the ranch in time. Son Nate is a freshman at North Dakota State, working towards an ag economy degree and a proud member of the Bison football team. Brett has committed to North Dakota State as a football player, and plans to major in ag business.   

“Right now, help is a little few and far between because they are not at home, and at the moment we don’t have any extra employees. We stay extra busy, but it works, and we look forward to have one or more of them home and helping if they so choose. But they need to go and check out the world too.” 

Matt loves seeing the genetics in their herd at work, and being able to ranch as a family is his favorite part of the operation.  Ultimately, he wants the McCumber prefix to be synonymous with quality cattle known for the maternal traits that they have focused on producing for over 60 years.  

“Seeing the new calf crop and watching the genetics at work, and hopefully seeing the improvement, that’s what drives me every year,” he said. “Doing it as a family operation is also something I really enjoy.”