Idle Wind Farm

Idle Wind Farm Idle Wind Farms operates near Union MO raising Red Angus and Akaushi Wagyu beef and Heritage Berkshire pork. We look to provide quality products for your family

09/30/2026

We recently got the Beef Pro package with our Halter virtual fencing (VF) collars. This is one of the features that have been interesting to see. It really tells the tale of how the cattle graze at night along with resting during the day and how that changes depending on where the sun and time of day is. In the morning all the cows walk to the top of of pasture (east) to catch the first rays of the sunshine in the morning before retreating to the shade and water hole to rest during the day

We can also see how a cow (orange dot) behaves before she calves and how she acts after giving birth. she retreats to a shaded area to calve alone although there is one or two cows that come check on her. This play back also helps to find where they may have hidden their calf for tagging and other tasks related to birth. cows and the calves are great for hiding and this really help sluth out where she has her calf stashed!

Finally, you can see how we shifted the cows to their new paddock in the larger pasture. in the past we would string up polywire to move them across different pastures to get them to where we wanted them. that could take 15-45 minutes depending on the distance and how we needed to move them. then we would have to take that all down again. Since we've deployed the Halter collars we have weaned the cows off using poly for these moves and now make connecting VF "alley ways" to move them. We just get on the UTV drop the current paddock VF and then start calling to gather the cows/calves once the transition starts we just lead the way and the cows follow bringing their calves. The VF boundary keeps them together. As you can see they have taken to that really well. A task that would have taken us 30 to 90 minutes to complete take about 10 - 15 minutes once the fence drops. Has been working like a charm.

Tools like this (VF technology) across beef's cow/calf sector will definately make/provide some meaningfull insights and potentially new traits and EPDs or change the way we evalute EPDs in the future as Troy Rowan and others at University of TN are looking at. This direct look at commercial herd data taken directly from working farm/ranches that can be collected indirectly will be increasingly valuable!

Will have a few more insights to share that we have seen now that we have been able to gather some really interesting individual cow and pasture metrics and how we can use those to manage our herd and land even better. Stay tuned!

09/04/2026

Just out here during the hottest week of the year making haylage feed for our cattle for this winter. This is just one of many tasks on the farms that it takes to bring beef to your family’s table.

Here's an update to the little white piglet that has captured the interest of others too. I did reach out to my almater ...
08/28/2026

Here's an update to the little white piglet that has captured the interest of others too.

I did reach out to my almater University of Missouri-Columbia and spoke with Dr. Tim Safranski who works at the Mizzou College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources - CAFNR as the State Swine Breeding Extension Specialist to better understand what might be happening genetically with the white piglet.

As I discussed in my prior post the parentage of the piglet is from Heritage Berkshire parents. Additionally, the white piglet had 7 siblings that are all the right phenotype of the berkshire breed. and all other piglets from the boar when paired with other berkshire sows are also exhibiting the berkshire phenotype coloration. The speculation/hypothesis is that this is a uniquie genetic mutation that occured to make this a white berkshire pig.

To confirm this two lab members/graduate students made their way out to our farm this week to collect the necessary genetic material to determine the origins of this white piglet's phenotype. They collected ear tissue samples (3x) from the white piglet as well as from all 7 siblings and the sow and boar (mother and father). You can see the process on one of the piglets in the pictures

It will take a bit of time for the swine lab to work out what might be going on genetically with this little white piglet but will be excited to share the details of what we find out!

A great big thank you to MU extension and CAFNR, the Safranski swine lab for doing this work and finding an interest in this novelty

08/14/2026

About 2 weeks ago MacKenzie Waro with the World Wildlife Fund visited our operation. She is working on a project that is evaluating how different managment practices in croplands and grasslands are impacting soils.

Our operation, Idle Wind Farms, participated in this project and was soil sampled by EarthOptics the company I work for to quantify the carbon stocks which is a measure of organic matter in the pastures

Mackenzie was in town (St. Louis) for a SWCD meeting. This was a great opportunity for her to come out and see the grazing practices we have been employing on our operation starting back in 2007 on our home farm and expanding that to other farms we rent and manage. We toured 3 properties showing her the types of practices we have and the impacts of intensively managed grazing systems.

Additionally, this was her first in person observation of our cattle using the Halter VF satellite technology. She got to see how we build virtural paddocks and shift cattle as well as how our cattle respond to the cues from the collars when they they recieve new grass and approach the VF boundary. She agreed this was a game changer. We commented it’s probably saving us 15-20 hours per week of setting up and taking down temporary fencing/polywire and moving cattle and not even at the frequency we do now!

We're exctied to see the soil results for sure, but also this sets a soil baseline for our entire operation that we can now compare as we move forward over the comming years.

It’s been a pleasure working with MacKenzie and her team at WWF and look forward to having her out again!

Look at this little gal! A completely white heritage Berkshire piglet with all her siblings and momma pig. We think it i...
08/07/2026

Look at this little gal! A completely white heritage Berkshire piglet with all her siblings and momma pig. We think it is a novel mutation that occurred to make it his little pig all white. We will be doing some genetic testing to see what might be going on genetically and if it is truly novel.

Stay tuned!

Last week Friday we had the most unusual thing happen with one of our Heritage Berkshire piglets. A white/pink piglet!!!...
08/07/2026

Last week Friday we had the most unusual thing happen with one of our Heritage Berkshire piglets. A white/pink piglet!!! with her traditional colored siblings. Both the mother (sow) and the father (boar) are heritage Berkshire swine. So the arrival of this piglet was completely unexpected!

This led me down a rabbit hole over the weekend working with AI to understand pig genetics. I don’t really have any working knowledge of pig genetics around coat color and how that is both translated from the geneotupe to the phenotype as well as inheritance of these gene/alleles.

So I spent time sorting through this with a line of questioning with AI. I had it comb through all published scientific literature related to swine genetics encoding coat color and inheritance to figure out what might be going on.

After about an hour it was clear how unique this piglet truly is. Genes that control coat are found on several several chromosomes and as expected some are recessive some dominate and others have incomplete dominance or are recessive.

The fascinating thing is the gene that controls white colors is found on a differ chromosome than that controlling the 6 points of white in Berkshires. And that is the KIT gene and makes pigs like Yorkshires and Landrace pig breeds white. This gene cannot be hidden in the Berkshire gene pool. If it was there those pigs would also be white. Which means a couple things 1. It’s a different gene, 2. It’s an albino or 3. A novel mutation.

I was able to rule out options 1 and 2. There is only one other gene, MITF but that results in deaf pigs and this piglet isn’t deaf and the eye color is normal to rule out being an albino. I contacted a professor at Mizzou and he did some searching and talking to other scientists. Hypothesis is we think this maybe a novel mutation that occurred in the Berkshire line.

Genetic testing and future breeding will tell the story but these are the things that make agriculture interesting. How cool would it be to have a 100% white Berkshire line for processing purposes!

Stay tuned…

07/06/2026

Let’s go!!!!! Our engines are running and ready to take off. Our Halter collars are in and charging! Next up fitting these things of beauty to our cows.

Here are a few pictures of my dad, Mike, unboxing our satellite 🛰️ enabled Halter collars this Sunday. We’re prepping them by setting them out to charge and connect before fitting them on our cows.

Training our cows and heifers should only take about a week (7-ish days). We’re hoping that it might take a bit less since our herd is use to frequent moves with polywire.

Looking to have this system up and running in the next week and training our cows.

We’re pumped about the insights that this tech will bring that we’ve never been able to really see before. Grazing and breeding insights as well as new findings as we go along.

This will transform our operation and help us in search of that ideal cow. She is efficient consuming 10-20% less forage compared to her peers, she quickly breeds back every year, holds her body condition, and raises a calf about 50% her weight. And does that every year for 10-12 years.

Here’s to the future.

07/04/2026

Happy birthday America!!! Celebrating 250 years. While our family hasn’t been here from the beginning our family arrived in 1841 a mere 65 years after our nations independence.

Our family farm has been here since 1872 across 6 generations and 154 years. We’re proud of the opportunity this nation as afforded our family and privileged to pass it on to the next generation. Here’s to another 250 years!

Lastly, while not everyone has served for our nation I am proud of past family that has served in the civil war, WWII and my wife who proudly serves in the US Airforce for our nation!

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸HAPPY 4th of JULY🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

07/03/2026

Totally pumped to take our cattle operation to the next level. We are leveling up with virtual fencing collars from Halter. Just got word our virtual fencing collars will be arriving Monday July 6th! The first herd in Missouri to be fitted with the new satellite enabled collars. Big thank you to Alaina Link for getting us set up. So much to do so little time to do it! The insights, the increased management, maximum efficiency, ultimate time savings! Let’s Go!!!

06/24/2026

Heifers on the move. To me there’s not much that sounds better than cattle moving to a new paddock munching on new grass and getting to look at these beauties none-the-less!

Soon we won’t need to move these gals using polywire. We will be moving these girls and our entire herd using Halter collars in about 3-4 weeks!

These gals will start calving in about a month (end of July/beginning of August) they are starting to spring. It always amazing getting to see the fruits of your labor and how things progress over time.

Address

4482 Schoeneberg Road
New Haven, MO
63068

Opening Hours

Monday 7am - 7pm
Tuesday 7am - 7pm
Wednesday 7am - 7pm
Thursday 7am - 7pm
Friday 7am - 7pm
Saturday 7am - 7pm

Telephone

+15732391217

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