Our Story

We are a family farm and ranch operation based in South Central South Dakota.

We focus on the breeding and production of high quality Registered Angus cattle.

In writing a history of Black Ink Farms, I’m reminded of the carton character Snoopy who always starts his stories with “It was a Dark and Stormy Night.”

It was 45 years ago that Ruben Littau sold me some short term registered angus cows that produced some nice calves that we decided to register. I had the notion of getting registered cows after my father’s cousin’s family dispersed a registered herd of cows because of his death in a traffic accident. His cows had gained a lot in value for that sale because they had a paper trail. It doesn’t take any more grass for a papered cow then a commercial cow, only records improve a sizable value in the cow.

I believe it was in late Fall of 1970 the Wally Ecklund family at Wood SD dispersed what many people at that time considered the best herd of “Eileenmere” bred cows in central SD. We bought the first cut of 12 head and first choice of bull calves. We now had a small herd of registered angus cows along with the ones from Littau Angus. At that time we became members of the American Angus Association.

The next plunge came at the Black Hills Stock Show, where Reuben was showing a bull I really liked. He wasn’t show champ but was the highest priced bull of the sale. I believe he cost me $1,250. In 1971 that was pretty good money for a bull.

I really am a feeder rather then a pedigree follower, so it became a family project, my wife, Jeanette had a lot of experience in the 4-H program. We already had children in 4-H. who were showing these cattle in 4-H and Junior Angus, so we adopted the farm name of “Black Ink Farms” nothing to do with money but black cattle and the last three letters of our name F(ink). Through the years we supported the Southeast Angus group by helping as officers and in planning tours of the area Angus farms and getting the group to have a booth at Dakota Festival in Mitchell to promote Angus cattle.

Our first annual Bull & Heifer sales were held on the farm just before grass time at the end of April. After having a few cold, windy nights for sales we started to have our sale at the sale barn in Tripp for the comfort of our still growing customer base.
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We always treated our cow herd as we perceived any commercial producer would handle his. The cows had to produce a calf every year on feed we produced on land that we operate. Even now we still make small square high quality alfalfa bales to take out to the corn stalks for Winter pasture.

Our herd, for the most part, had been a closed herd to female replacement. We keep the top 1/3 for replacements and now offer at our sale the next 1/3 and the balance get finished in our feedlots. We usually end up with about 1/2 of the bulls being kept and offered for sale and the rest are fed out and sold as steers

2007 South Dakota Angus Breeders of the Year

We keep the best
​ and cut the rest.

We were and still do feed and finish out both cattle and hogs. I said many times because I have an expensive hobby, we had to do normal things to live on. But the cows started to show us the way since we always got to see the finished product. I knew we were on the right track, it wasn’t often we could go to the sale barn to finish filling the lots with purchased calves that were of the quality of our own.

Our children early on got to develop their own herds of female cows, the agreement was Dad got to keep the bull calves and they got the heifer calves. “Wow” what a bunch of heifer producing females the kids had. The track record of those females more or less put the kids through their years of higher education. Most of them owned some cows after they were finished with school. Both of the girls wanted to sell their cows back to us after they were married and wanted money to make down payments on their homes.

Most of our herd sires are selected from cattle producers that have earned our respect by providing cattle that will take South Dakota conditions with a good depth of quarters. When our children were showing heifers, I often heard the judge say “your calf will make a good cow but not quite what he was looking for that day”, so we have chosen to stay with the good cows.

The angus cows have served us well even tho there were some “Dark and Stormy Nights”

It is still very much a family operation.

Family involvements keep Jeanette and Don doing the computer records and registrations with Theresa learning the ropes. We all help in giving shots, weighing calves and in freeze branding the calves. 

Don and wife Theresa are taking over Black Ink Farms as we slowly wind down our part of the operation, while we get into semi- retirement mode.

Our youngest son Orin has a group of cows on shares, as a silent partner. He has developed our logo that we use in our advertising and also manages the Web page as that is what he does from his business in Chicago Illinois. In an earlier version, the logo reinforced how practical he perceives we are. In small print across the top was something I said many years ago “We keep the best and cut the rest”. 
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Jeanine and husband Ray, (Jeanine was the former Angus queen for 79-80), live in Aberdeen and she works for EAC.

Carmen and husband Kevin live in San Diego California. She is a Civil engineer and mother of two children.  Kyra and Kyle keep a cow each as well to stay involved with the operation.

Mark is an independent computer programmer developer and lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with his wife Delight.

The angus cows have served us well even tho there were some “Dark and Stormy Nights”