Mechanized corn picker
Source: B&P Productions for 2005 Cattleman's Ball |
Like everything else in the beef industry, post World War II technology revolutionized cattle feeding. Bigger tractors, fertilizers, herbicides, and advances in genetics meant that farmers could grow more corn. And with mechanical corn-pickers replacing hand-picked and husked corn, fewer growers could produce more and more volume.
Right: Older method of hand shoveling feed
Left: Modern mechanized feed delivery
Source: B&P Productions for 2005 Cattleman’s Ball |
Feeding operations changed, too. The men in the back of a wagon shoveling cracked corn into feed bunks were replaced with wagons and trucks that delivered precise rations into longer feed bunks, allowing one person to feed large numbers of cattle in a very short period of time.
 |
With these changes, the small, farm-scale feeding operations caring for hundreds of cattle declined, and large feedlots, feeding thousands of cattle, grew. |
Huge Feed Lot
Source: Union Pacific Railroad's
Beef Rings the Bell |
Louis Dinklage
Source: B&P Productions
for 2005 Cattleman's Ball |
Perhaps the most famous feedlot owner in Nebraska was Louis Dinklage, the child of German immigrants in northeast Nebraska. Dinklage is credited with starting the Nebraska cattle feeding industry in the 1920s, with just 3,000 head near Wisner, Nebraska. He recognized the area’s qualities for feeding cattle: a dry region with abundant food sources and ample water supply. By the late 1960s, Dinklage was considered to have the largest feedlot operation in the country, with a capacity of holding 170,000 head at one time. At the beginning of the 21st century, the Dinklage operation in Western Nebraska included feedlots at Sidney, Mitchell, Minatare, Broadwater, and Alliance, as well as one in Torrington, Wyoming.
Dinklage was famous for his open heart and even more open pocket. There were many people who told stories about getting a loan from him with just a handshake as collateral. Dinklage and his wife Abbey built a park, a ballfield, and helped to build a church, an athletic field, a school, and the Cuming County Fairgrounds in Wisner. Before his death in 1984, he set up a trust that continues to fund millions of dollars to new projects every year.
A foreman at the Dinklage Feedlot near Wisner and later a feedlot owner himself, Bill Holland thought Dinklage was a genius at cattle feeding, and crucial in making Cuming County one of the premier cattle-feeding counties in the nation. "He was the first to feed a lot of protein," Holland said. "Protein brought out more of the muscling and red meat before the cattle got too wastey with too much fat."
 |
 |
|
 |
|
|
| |
|
| Click this button to print this page of the story. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Beef State
