Beef - Duello Style

Dave Duello is a well seasoned cattle rancher in the Pine Bluffs area. The ranch he works is better known as Duello Cattle Company. His main focus as a cattle rancher is to produce a specific quality of cattle.

The Duello Cattle Company has only been around about 10 years. This ranch is known for their breeding through AI (artificial insemination) and embryo transferring.

Duello was born in eastern Iowa. He moved to western Nebraska 15 years ago. After he graduated college in Scottsbluff Nebraska, he went to work with managing cattle all across the country. His boss bought the Bowman ranch south of Pine Bluffs and five years later Dave bought his property he is on now along with his base herd of cattle and went out on his own.

"We run about 400 cows on 1000 acres irrigated land and graze most of our cattle under pivot irrigation and rotational grazing systems. Along with the cattle we do a little bit of farming. We grow corn, wheat, beans, and alfalfa. Almost everything we grow out here is put right back into the cows through feed." said Duello. A rotational grazing system means that they will take their cattle and switch them through each paddox. A paddox is a section of land with about 360 acres of land. During the spring and fall times they run their cattle dense, about 1 cow an acre.

All of the cattle on the Duello ranch are artificially inseminated and they do a lot of embryo transfer along beside their AI work. That means they take their best cattle and mass produce them. They work with numerous breeds of cattle. They also raise a decent amount of show calves which sell all over the country. The ranch will also use a lot of their own bulls for AI but they do use outside bulls as well. "Our main focus is though, is creating females that we can sell to people who want to raise their own or start their own with value in a show cattle business." states Duello.

Duello Cattle Company's biggest business push each year is the national western stock show held in Denver. The stock show hosts an auction every year called the Western Elite Females Auction. They sell 100 cows and bred heifers, 75 to 80 cattle will be his. Bruce Bowman and numerous other local cattlemen will have more stock there. Many of the stock are sold through private treaty, be it one cow or to a truck load at a time. They will also sell many of their bulls, most of them are done through private treaty off the farm.

For being just a little ranch located in Pine Bluffs Wyoming they have managed to make a great living for themselves but to also help out future cattlemen establishing their own quality cattle. But everyone and every business has their own battle to fight. In the agriculture business there are many battles needing to be won.

Duello mentioned that " Everyone in agriculture is being faced with the labor issue, there are a lot of things that are hard to face and it's a great business but the labor issue is a real major problem whether a small ranch like mine or a large cattle company, it's a huge problem we all are facing right now."