Ron and Shelley Terrell have been married for 14 years and have a son, Damien, who is 10. Ron was raised on a farm in Stilwell, Okla. Shelley is from Chouteau, Okla.
“Dad always raised cattle as far back as I can remember. When I was a kid, we milked cows. I milked cows when I was in high school. I would much rather run a cow/calf operation,” Ron said. After Ron’s mother passed away and his father didn’t want to raise cattle anymore. Ron and Shelley bought his cattle, combined them with their own herd and leased his land. Ron and Shelley run cattle on 300 acres with 14 ponds. “We have done a lot of work on this place. About 90 percent of it we can bale,” he said.
Ron raises mostly Saler cattle for their low birth weights and easy calving. “The calves start out small but they grow into a big calf. They are pretty resilient and are good in cold weather,” he said. Ron has tried several different breeds to introduce hybrid vigor into his herd. “Mixed breed calves just do a lot better at the sale barn.” Ron has used Brahman and SimAngus bulls. He has a Watusi he bought from his father. “We keep her around to have something to look at,” he said. “She is as docile as can be until she has a calf.
“We are right at 110 cows right now. We are fixing to add some heifers,” Ron said. He has been keeping heifers with Angus influence for the last few years. “We kind of broke it up a little bit with Angus bulls. You have to do that once in a while because Saler has a tendency to grow a lot of hair. Buyers would give you a lower price for cattle with long hair four or five years ago. We have kind of bred that out of them over the years by mixing some Angus bulls in with them every three years or so,” he said. Ron is currently running three Saler bulls and one Angus. Saler cattle are mostly black but a red calf will surface occasionally. Ron keeps bulls with his cows year round. “We do all natural. I never pull the bulls. I didn’t want to go without a calf crop and didn’t want to go through the transition of pulling the bulls,” he said.
“We raise enough wheat to drill everything back into the main pasture and raise milo to grind for feed. We use creep feeders year round and creep feed all of our calves,” Ron said. He mixes milo with ground sudex hay. “We just keep our creep feeders full and free choice for the calves. It produces a pretty fat calf at six months,” he said. “Winter wheat really helps with the hay. We probably put up 1,000 bales a year. I’ve got two barns I keep full and this year I wound up stacking 300 bales outside. I only cut once because I had everything full,” he said.
Ron put a solar well and fresh water stations in two years ago. “I think having clean water even in the hot summer time has really paid off,” he said. “If I have the cows penned in the back side of the place, they will walk all the way over even in the summertime to drink from these troughs instead of drinking out of the ponds.” Ron thinks the troughs will pay for themselves in a few years and also likes keeping his cows out of the ponds.
Ron went to school to become a diesel mechanic because he had experience working on farm equipment growing up. After working for John Deere for a number of years, Ron and Shelley opened Sundowner Tractor. They have been in business for 12 years. “We have a repair shop which is our local business. We do tractors and agricultural equipment. Our mechanics can fix anything. Everybody is certified in LS, Farmtrac and Montana repairs,” Shelley said. Customers can walk in for hay equipment or parts. Ron and Shelley also sell used equipment.
The major part of Ron and Shelley’s business is parts. “We ship worldwide. We get the same parts for tractors when the distributors have gone out of business. We sell parts worldwide to other dealers and end users for Vicon, Horst, Durabuilt, Hycapacity, Tisco, Tonutti and A&I,” Shelley said. “We still sell original equipment manufacturer parts or OEM parts for these tractors. We try to stock for our local customer. We sell in store, online and over the phone and stock in warehouses throughout the United States,” she added.
Ron and Shelley run a wildlife rescue. Shelley said, “This year we have had bat pups, a buzzard, deer, rabbits and squirrels.” Ron added, “We raised one doe deer basically in the house. The first year after we released her she had the tiniest baby. She raised it behind the shop.”
Shelley is a published author and is currently writing a series of books about children in foster care called Rag Dolls. Shelley and Ron were formerly foster parents.
