Home Consider This Pelster Angus Ranch: Conservation in the Sand Hills of Nebraska

Pelster Angus Ranch: Conservation in the Sand Hills of Nebraska

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For this mini-trip we’re headed to the Sand Hills of Nebraska in the summer. Pelster Angus Ranch was started in the 1930s and is now owned and operated by Duane and Nancy Pelster. This operation is interesting because it demonstrates how managed grazing can work on the larger scale required in the midwest and west. Cattle are rotated through pastures through the grazing season, and the first pasture to be grazed one year gets grazed last the following year, giving it plenty of time to grow great forage.

Duane received the Leopold Conservation Award in part because he focuses on managing with Nature. His careful use of water resources and moderate grazing sets him up for the best of times, and the droughts common in the west. Duane says that this is just the right thing to do for the land, and for his own bottom line.

Enjoy this summer visit to Nebraska with Duane, Nancy, and their beautiful black angus cattle.

Here’s the link for the tablet readers out there.

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Kathy Voth
I am the founder, editor and publisher of On Pasture, now retired. My career spanned 40 years of finding creative solutions to problems, and sharing ideas with people that encouraged them to work together and try new things. From figuring out how to teach livestock to eat weeds, to teaching range management to high schoolers, outdoor ed graduation camping trips with fifty 6th graders at a time, building firebreaks with a 130-goat herd, developing the signs and interpretation for the Storm King Fourteen Memorial trail, receiving the Conservation Service Award for my work building the 150-mile mountain bike trail from Grand Junction, Colorado to Moab, Utah...well, the list is long so I'll stop with, I've had a great time and I'm very grateful.