Small Livestock is a family run Charolais cow/calf operation, owned and operated by Wade and Cara Small, in cooperation with Cara’s parents, Dennis and Marcia Bieroth.

Both Wade and Cara come from long lines of ranching families. Wade developed an early interest in cattle and the cattle industry, while working alongside his parents, on their backgrounding yard in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Cara (a fifth-generation rancher) grew up raising cattle on her family’s purebred Angus ranch in northern Nevada.

Starting modestly with five head of Charolais cows (purchased in 2001), our opportunity to truly expand came in 2011 when purchasing a Nevada cow/calf ranch with Cara’s family. With 50 pairs, we packed up and relocated to this high desert ranch, which borders the Bieroth Angus Ranch, on which Cara grew up. With room to grow, we quickly began propagating desirable genetics through embryo transfer and selective purchases of high quality stock.

The ranch headquarters in Mountain City, sits at a base elevation of 6,000 feet. During the summer, cows graze on Forest Service allotments, running to nearly 9,000 feet. When calving begins, cows are rotated through private meadows. Each calf is weighed, tagged and recorded when it hits the ground. In fall, cows are again brought to the meadows to be synchronized and AI’d.

To better manage the cattle and resources during the regions extreme winter climate, our herd moves from the home ranch, to Winnemucca late in the fall. There, pairs graze crop aftermath with hay supplementation until spring, when they load up and head back home.

With careful genetic selection and a mountain landscape ideal for developing rugged cattle, we have slowly built a solid genetic base, with a focus on consistency, uniformity and longevity. Our bulls are designed to complement todays English based cowherd and built to work for the commercial cattleman.