Selecting and managing highly desirable heifers is Anton Hermes’ specialty. He offers various services to develop heifers on a custom basis for customers and markets his own bred heifers.
Alongside his brother, Derek, who runs Hermes Genetics, Hermes manages Hermes Livestock, and the brothers work hand-in-hand to breed sale and customer cattle. They travel and breed around 10,000 to 12,000 head a year with their artificial insemination (AI) services. For his own herd of commercial mother cows, Hermes will purchase heifers from AI customers or ranches the brothers do business with.
“The customers bring their heifers to our grow yard where we feed and develop them, and later artificially inseminate them, then send them back to the customers pregnant,” Hermes explains.
Steps to Developing a Bred Heifer
The heifer selection process starts with their home-raised females and then buying load lots of females, often from Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming ranches. Then they do pelvic measurements, bangs vaccinations and sort non-breeders into grass cattle groups.
“We prefer to buy heifers when they’re 500 to 600 lb. in the fall, but we will buy some later in the spring if we have pasture available,” Hermes says. “About 200 of these heifers would be grown in our own herd.”
Hermes Livestock’s heifer program consists of Red Angus, F1 red baldies, black Angus and F1 black baldies. Hermes says he prefers the Hereford influence in their F1 heifers but also breeds purebred Angus and Red Angus.
When sorting heifers to the top of the group to develop and market as bred females, he looks for the feminine, moderate-framed heifers with adequate temperament.
“That’s what we’re after, and that’s what our customers are after,” Hermes says. “A lot of times there will be 500 head, and we want to sort 150 off the top to keep for us to breed. We look for something that’s structurally put together, that can walk miles out here in eastern Colorado or Oklahoma or Wyoming or wherever they will end up, and really maternal. We want these cows to live to be 12 years old and still be productive in the cow herd. We’re trying to build the cow herd in the U.S. right now, so maternal longevity is very important. We strive to develop these problem-free cattle that function in any environment.”
Once heifers are sorted, they synchronize them at the grow yard and breed heifers using AI. If they don’t show a heat, he will synchronize and AI again, so every heifer gets a chance to get bred on the AI cycle. After, they are turned out with bulls on grass.
Hermes chooses the bulls he’s going to breed customer heifers to by using them on his herd first.
“I test all the bulls on my own cows. I’ll find a young, up-and-coming sire that I really like and I’ll use them on my own heifers,” Hermes explains. “We’ll calve them out and if they pass the test we’ll use those the next year on the commercial groups. Typically, it’s all ABS genetics. They have an exceptional lineup of calving-ease bulls. We have some mainstays that we’ve used for four years in a row now that are just so popular that we can’t get away from them.”
Other bull selection criteria are liking the bull’s phenotype. Many of the bred heifers sold will go on to produce replacement females for producers so phenotype is important to Hermes.
“We’ll sell somewhere between, depending on the year, 600 to 1,100 head and we’ll market them through a couple different sales of our own as well as private treaty,” he says.
Selling Across the States
Hermes helped start the Maternal Merit Sale Group with Dan Warner of Warner Beef Genetics and Don Maclennan with Valhalla Ranch. The sale offers bred heifers through live auction twice a year in Arapahoe, Neb., and Denver, Colo., at the National Western Stock Show. The Nebraska sale sells heifers in groups based on breed, size and AI- or bull-bred sire. He hopes to add another sale in Colorado this fall.
“We identify the sire groups then; we sort off by size and docility. We are especially picky on the heifer’s docility,” Hermes says of the heifers selected for the sale. “If they’ve got too much fire, then we sort them off. We don’t put them through our sales or private treaty large groups. We’ll sort them by breed and size, and then we’ll market them through that sale, and they usually go to about nine to 13 different states; we will deliver them right from there.”
The sale has offered up to 700 head between Anton, Warner and Maclennan.
The Denver Maternal Merit Sale started after a meeting with Warner, Maclennan and Bobby Strecker, ABS Global district manager. After which Hermes wrote the National Western Stock Show a letter in 2020 and asked if they would add a commercial heifer sale to the lineup at the new facility when it was done.
“We are trying to bring a commercial element back to the National Western and this sale gave us an excuse to do that,” Hermes explains.
Maclennan says it’s given them a platform to show commercial producers the quality of heifers brought to the sale.
“We are very particular on quality and after the first year, people saw that,” Maclennan says. “They have supported us quite nicely since then. We have had nothing but repeat buyers coming and either buying or at least bidding.”
Starting with around 400 Red Angus heifers selected in May, Maclennan will sort off the top 50 or 60.
“Throw them through so many hoops that by the time Denver comes, we’ll have 15 to 20 that are just the elite,” Maclennan says. “They’ve got excited about it and we had a really good crowd.”
The strategy in Denver differed from Arapahoe in that they were showcasing their programs developing heifers and offering programing for commercial producers at a major stock show.
“We’re really just trying to showcase the front end of our commercial genetics as a marketing tool and to bring the basic commercial element of the cattlemen back to Denver,” Hermes adds. “It’s a good tool for us to use for marketing, but it’s also been a good tool for the public. We have since added speakers and educational panels addressing current industry topics.”
A large portion of the private treaty sales tend to come from southern customers in Texas and Oklahoma.
“We have a big following where they’re really looking to improve genetics,” Hermes says. “Some of our best customers for the last five years have been south. We had a ranch last year where about 300 head of bred heifers went to in south Texas.”
His advice to marketing bred heifers is to start with a high-quality animal.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re selling five over 500,” Hermes says. “Sort through them and don’t just breed every one of them. Make sure you get them pelvic-measured, and tract-scored. Do a quality sort for docility and phenotype. If you’re planning to AI them or if you’re going to buy a bull, use a sire that is really current and recognizable. Everybody really likes to know what the cattle are bred to, so I recommend finding a calving ease sire. If you buy them as replacements find out as much information as you can about the genetics.”
His best marketing tactic has been repeat buyers and word of mouth.
“We get more and more phone calls from repeat buyers and their neighbors and that’s how we’ve done a majority of our marketing,” Hermes concludes. “We have grown our brand and sales through positive feedback.”
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