Thank you for your interest in our program! We would love to meet you, show you our cattle and give you a tour of our ranch.
-Penny Raspotnik Jones and Tim Jones
Our Story
Raspotnik Ranch was started in 1930 by Slovenian immigrants Valentine and Tillie Raspotnik with the purchase of 300 acres in western Latimer County in the heart of southeastern Oklahoma grass country. In the late 1950s, following Valentine’s death in a coal mining accident, their son Eugene (Gene) began the registered Angus herd. My father, Gene and his wife Peggy, operated both a registered Angus and commercial herd for many years, selling seedstock private treaty and marketing commercial calves through sale barns. I was born late in life, 23 years after my parents married and followed my dad constantly, learning the cattle business and, like him, my passion was seedstock. As they neared the traditional “retirement age” my mom kept encouraging my dad to get out of the registered cattle business. So for a few years, only a handful of bulls were sold and the registered herd grew smaller. Upon her death in 2006, my dad went back to ranching full-throttle, renting more ground and buying additional commercial cows. My husband Tim and I were blessed to be able to move back to the ranch in 2008 and with Tim’s background in land management, we were able to greatly improve the quality of our forage so we could run more head. Then, in just a couple of years, Dad told me to put his registered herd back together because he wanted to spend the rest of his life doing what he loved. We traveled many miles, finding sires and dams to increase our herd numbers and spent countless hours planning matings and researching pedigrees.
In Loving Memory
Gene Raspotnik
Raised Right:
Docility, Fertility and Longevity
Dad always told me when his time came, he wanted to go out in the pasture with the herd. In March of 2018 he fed his cows one morning, went to the hospital that evening and three weeks later, he was gone. He was my best friend, my business partner, and the best cattleman I ever worked with and I learned so much from him. Dad’s philosophy of breeding and feeding still echoes today in our “Raised Right: Docility, Fertility and Longevity” method of bull and female development. In our herd, you will find a blend of cutting-edge genetics along with time-tested matings from breed-leading AI sires and our best natural service herd bulls that result in a uniform group of animals bred for calving ease, explosive growth, maternal ability and carcass quality that perform in a real-world environment. Our bulls and heifers are developed slow on grass with minimal grain supplements, ensuring proper foot growth and avoiding additional fat deposits in the scrotal and udder areas that decrease fertility and milk production. Additionally, our bulls are prepared to work. They are finished in grass traps where they have to walk to water, mineral and feed, and they spend their lives around cows so they know what a female is and what to do with her. We still maintain a herd of commercial cows, and they are serviced by Raspotnik bred and raised bulls. The resulting heifer calves are retained or sold as replacements and the steer calves are sold at market. We want to know that our bulls and females will work for us before they go to work for you.
We are blessed with many repeat private-treaty customers annually and their most frequent comment is how much they love the docility of our animals. Our bulls and females are broke to hot-wire and they see people and interact with them daily. Our cow herd is culled ruthlessly for docility because crazy mothers raise crazy babies. We don’t have the time or patience for attitudes and we don’t believe you do, either.
