Five iconic individuals who’ve impacted the Angus industry and cattle business discuss how they initiated change, sparked controversy, and how their individual and collaborative efforts contributed to society. They evaluate what it means to be great, and whether they consider themselves great. Portrait artist Richard Halstead offers insight based on his time spent with each individual to paint a life-size portrait for their induction into the Saddle and Sirloin Portrait Gallery.
These five icons don’t necessarily fit livestock industry “norms”. They’re outliers; exceptional people who deviate from society’s normal understanding of achievement or greatness. That’s how Malcom Gladwell, author of “Outliers; The Story of Success” defines an outlier. They operate at the extreme outer edge of what is statistically plausible.
They’re leaders chosen by their peers, the highest compliment one can receive, according to “Originals” by Adam Grant.
Richard Halstead painted each individual’s portrait after they were selected to be inducted into the Saddle and Sirloin Portrait Gallery. The gallery is the crème de le crème of the livestock industry; many see it as the ultimate honor, and only one individual is selected every year.
Halstead painted every person, putting scrupulous effort into each portrait. With meaning behind every painstaking detail, Halstead aimed to portray each individual in their truest sense. He captured their energy, how each person held themselves, how they interacted with others, their personality. It’s all there, in each stroke, if you look close enough.
A documentary exploring the meaning of greatness through the portraits of five icons in the Angus cattle industry. #IAMANGUS
The Bradley 3 Ranch is tucked in the Texas panhandle about an hour east of Amarillo, down winding dirt roads that stain trucks a rusty red. It’s big country where ranchers still ride horseback on cattle drives, everyone calls their father “daddy”, and steaks are country fried. Minnie Lou Bradley still lives on the ranch she started with her husband more than 60 years ago.
As a young woman, Minnie Lou saw the gallery for the very first time the day before she won the Chicago International Livestock judging competition in the early 1950s. Her judging coach told the team that the portraits represented the greatest bunch of men in the livestock industry that there ever was. Decades later, her portrait hangs alongside the industry legends she admired as a teen.
It’s hard to put a finger on the many contributions Minnie Lou’s made to the cattle industry, but forging a path for women in ranching was a big one. Although she might deny it, Minnie Lou’s accomplishments inspired today’s generation of women involved in agriculture to be heard, seen and respected.
Growing up, Bradley never felt different because of her gender. She spent countless hours in the barn and on the road looking at livestock with her dad and “granddaddy”. But she didn’t realize that wasn’t typical.
When her family got a shipment of 1,000 lambs in, her granddaddy let her pick 10 from the 1,000 to feed and ready for the Junior livestock Show in Oklahoma. He told her she had to do the selecting as it was her project. Several months later, she and her granddaddy loaded them up and headed east to her first competition at the age of nine.
The judges were walking around inspecting each pen. “When the judges stopped at my pen, my granddaddy said, ‘No you shouldn’t go on any longer; I’ve looked around, and she already won it.’ I was so embarrassed; I about died,” Bradley laughs. But her granddaddy wasn’t wrong. “It wasn’t too long before the judges came back and gave me the blue ribbon.”
That was just enough to hook Bradley. She then started in the Hampshire and Berkshire hog business. By 13, she owned her first Angus cow. “I got so I had more stock than my dad did,” she recounts.
“My daddy always told me my limit was what I determined it was. He said, ‘If you wanted to get it done, go do it. Don’t depend on someone else.’”
Minnie Lou became the first woman to major in animal husbandry at Oklahoma State University, then Oklahoma A&M. There, she was the first woman to mark cards for the college judging team. At a naïve 17 years old, she visited Oklahoma A&M and started her college career.
“There had never been a girl in animal husbandry classes,” Minnie Lou recounts. “I guess they really didn’t know what to do with me. I kept saying just treat me like you would anyone else.”
Dr. Hilton Briggs became her advisor for two years before moving on to become president of South Dakota State University, and Minnie Lou later found out that he was on a mission to get rid of her.
“He almost accomplished that mission,” she says lightheartedly. “But he didn’t.”
After her first animal evaluation class, Minnie Lou went up to the judging coach, Mr. Glenn Bratcher to let him know she was to be on his judging team. “He said, ‘You are?’ And I said yes,” Minnie Lou says matter-of-factly. Bratcher told her if she was good enough, she could be on the team, though he likely didn’t think she’d make it that far.
But he didn’t know Minnie Lou. He didn’t know her drive. “I told everyone in fifth grade that I was going to go to Oklahoma A&M and would be on the judging team,” Minnie Lou says proudly. And she was going to make good on that promise.
When she didn’t make the traveling team after consistently ranking in the top five during workouts, she was devastated. She didn’t give up, though. Instead, she tried harder to make the team for the Fort Worth judging contest.
“Mr. Bratcher called me into his office,” Minnie Lou says. “He said, ‘I made a statement to you, and I need to live up to it. We have spent the day talking to the dean of women and the dean of students, and we didn’t find anything that said you can’t go.’”
Fast forward to Minnie Lou’s first collegiate contest. The department head, Dr. Al Darlow, pulled Minnie Lou aside.
“He said, ‘You’re the first girl that we’ve ever had on the team, and I’m telling you right now, you will be the last if you don’t come through today,’” Minnie Lou says, sternly. She proved herself in Fort Worth, and from then on, she didn’t have any problems. Minnie Lou went on to win the Chicago International judging competition, becoming the first woman to win a major contest. While in Chicago, Briggs, her former advisor, asked for a visit to apologize for the many and tough hours he assigned Minnie Lou in her first two years.
As a sophomore at Oklahoma A&M, Minnie Lou met Bill Bradley. He was from a ranch near Wichita Falls, Minnie Lou recounts. “I think he told me more tall tales than the truth, but it sounded good to me!”
She went back to the Bradley ranch during Easter break to help brand cattle and quickly found out she didn’t know a thing about branding; she had never had to brand cattle on her family farm. But she caught on quickly, and soon enough, Bill’s father, Rusty, asked Minnie Lou to help castrate. Eager to prove herself, Minnie Lou didn’t hesitate. In true cowboy style, Rusty told her “you cut it, you eat it”.
It wasn’t long before she graduated from college, and Bill headed over to Korea in the service. Minnie Lou accepted a position at the Texas Angus Association and continued to visit the Bradley’s every weekend.
Before Bill returned from the war, Rusty told Minnie Lou they were going to look for a ranch. “I asked why, and he said, ‘Well Bill says he’s going to marry you when he gets home. So, we better get you a ranch,’” Minnie Lou remembers.
In 1955, the soon-to-be Bradley 3 Ranch was worn out, drought-stricken and unkempt. Driving up to the place, Minnie Lou remembers it was the longest dirt road she’d been on.
“Not a windmill was working, fences were down, and it looked really bad as far as grass. I’ll never forget when Rusty got down on his knees, opened up his pocket knife and dug up the roots. He said, ‘Well the roots are alive; I believe it’s got a lot of potential,’’’ Minnie Lou laughs, twisting her face to resemble her disbelief at the time. “He made the deal, and when Bill got back from Korea, we moved right straight up here. We’ve been trying to improve the ranch now for 63 years.”
The early years were tough on the Bradleys. There were a lot of things they didn’t know about how to improve the ranch.
“Everybody wondered about us for the longest time,” Minnie Lou smiles. “All of our water that we drank had to be hauled. Mr. Richburg would bring us 1,000 gallons every two weeks. You really learned how to conserve water.”
Minnie Lou was determined to do things differently on the Bradley 3 Ranch. She remembers when Mr. Jones, a banker and family friend stopped by the ranch. She had been meticulously keeping the books and paying the bills since they bought the place, but the ranch still struggled.
“I asked, How do all these other ranchers make money?” Minnie Lou says. “We’re not doing any good. He said ‘Oh, you’re doing good. A rancher out here, unless they’ve got oil, they don’t expect to make much money. It’s just about living, and living the life you want.’”
It wasn’t the answer Minnie wanted. “We’ve got to do better than that,” she says. “And that’s when we went into the registered business as we believed West Texas ranchers were looking and needing a change from purebred Herefords to crossing them with Angus.”
Minnie Lou is no fashionista. In fact, she only shops using catalogs. But when it comes to ranching, she’s a trend setter.
After deciding to get into the registered Angus business, Bradley 3 Ranch received their lifetime American Angus Association membership in 1958.
“We wanted to raise our bulls differently; we wanted to raise them as a commercial man would,” Minnie Lou says. “They sell by the pound, so it’s important that we produce a lot of pounds. We have to think about things in terms of pounds per ranch and acre.”
That was before performance tracking was accepted in the industry. “It was still a nasty word,” Minnie Lou recalls. Bradley 3 Ranch was one of the first to join the performance registry international, causing some to turn up their noses. But looking back, Minnie Lou laughs at how far performance testing has brought the industry.
“Minnie Lou and Bill have been innovators from the very start,” says James Henderson, Minnie Lou’s son-in-law. “They started measuring performance on Angus cattle before most, they were early EPD users, and Minnie Lou helped shape how we use DNA, parentage and ultrasound today.”
Minnie Lou is an entrepreneur, and she passed that trait on her daughter, Mary Lou. The two pioneered the very first Certified Angus Beef Natural processing plant – setting today’s standards for the popular program.
“Everything that’s here was paid for by the cows; that’s probably the thing that’s most unique about this ranch,” Henderson says. He’s actively involved in the ranch and helps manage nearly three times more cattle than the Bradleys thought the place could run. It’s a true testament to the family’s dedication to good stewardship and quality genetics.
Minnie Lou is not a warm and fuzzy mother figure; she’ll tell you that. “I’m not a cozy person,” she says. “I know that and feel bad about it, but I’m not.” Instead, she shows that she cares in other ways.
“I have a lot of expectations for everybody. I’m probably bad about that; I can’t stand anyone without ambition. I want everybody to have a drive, to have a goal; I want them to achieve it,” she says firmly.
No matter her method, she’s touched so many lives. For years, she hosted numerous underprivileged young men and women at the ranch as temporary hired hands. She showed them tough love and taught them about more than ranching. When talking about her mentees, she says, “I think what a lot of them are missing is they don’t have any expectations.” Many of her pupils have gone on to be incredibly successful.
Recently, she started Kids Crockin, a program to teach needy kids in her local community how to cook beef and other fresh ingredients to help get away from so many processed foods and become more independent. She jokes, “I don’t know if they like me, or they like my cooking.” No matter, the program is growing every year and is making a difference in young lives.
Minnie Lou is a role model even for people who have never met her. “I get a lot of letters from young ladies I don’t even know. They usually thank me for opening some doors,” she says, shaking her head. “I don’t know why I’m a mentor to them.”
Keegan Cassady, 2017-2018 Miss American Angus, looks up to Minnie Lou and even referred to her as an industry celebrity. “She’s someone who has served as a role model to me, being the first woman to do so many things. It’s easy for me to have so many role models today, but for her, she had to be the first one to do all these things,” Cassady shares.
When she met Minnie Lou at a past Angus Convention, she was excited, yet a bit nervous. “She was so selfless,” Cassady says. “I would say something about her, and she would deflect and talk about someone else.” Afterward, in true Minnie Lou fashion, Cassady received a handwritten thank-you note that she still cherishes.
Texas-native Moriah Pohlman thinks Minnie Lou is quite the rancher. “For as long as I can remember, she’s had a big impact on the Angus and cattle industry,” Pohlman says. “She has this outstanding herd of Angus cattle that are feed efficient in tough country. Minnie Lou Bradley has motivated me and other women in the cattle industry.”
Halstead shared that Minnie Lou is the kind of person who inspires confidence. “That’s very different from a person who is confident, which she is that as well,” he articulates. “She’s one of the most admirable people I’ve ever met in my life.”
But Minnie Lou doesn’t consider herself great. “I just think I’m another person who’s just had a lot of good fortune.” As she speaks, you can feel her inner conflict. To Minnie Lou, her success doesn’t necessarily correlate to her talent and hard work.
“I always worry about some of these things that’ve happened to me. I don’t know if I’m worthy of them or not,” Minnie Lou pauses. “I don’t want anything that I’m not worthy of. I will do what I can tomorrow to make myself more worthy of this good life I’ve had.”
A gigantic black bull with blinding letters, flashing “Welcome to Nichols Farms” greets guests as they turn down the gravel road to meet Dave Nichols. The iconic bull is a permanent fixture that visitors have come to know and expect. It lights the way to Nichols Farms, no matter what time of day or night. And Dave Nichols is proud of that. He had to lay power lines about a quarter of a mile down the road to power the figure, but it sure is eye-catching.
Step into the Nichols Farms office, and Lillian Nichols, Dave’s sister-in-law, long-time partner and employee, greets you with a smile. There are newspaper clippings hanging up, framed photos, old and new, and in the spot of honor, you’ll find a portrait of Nichols. It’s a replica, and the real canvas hangs in the Saddle and Sirloin Portrait Gallery in Louisville, Kentucky.
Halstead created the painting for Dave’s induction into the Saddle and Sirloin Portrait Gallery in 2015. Study Halstead’s painting, and you can pick up on subtleties that speak to Dave’s life and character. He’s sitting down, looking off into the distance, one hand on his suit jacket.
“You look at his eyes; they’re dead serious,” Halstead shares. “You can feel in his expression that he’s telling some kind of story to captivate you. He’s aware that he’s one step ahead of everybody, and he’s proud of it. The whole game is being the first at everything.”
Induction into the Saddle and Sirloin Portrait Gallery is one of the greatest honors of Dave’s life. At his induction ceremony, dozens of people spoke on his behalf, sharing success stories and solidifying Dave’s impact on the beef industry. “I thought, what can I say about myself that everyone else already hasn’t? What else can I tell this full house?” Dave recalls.
Those who know Dave know he isn’t often without words. He’s got a mesmerizing voice with 79 years of life experiences to share with anyone who will listen.
Dave was always destined to be a cattleman. His dad, Merrill Nichols, made sure of that. At the tender age of 9, Dave bought a black baldy steer from his dad for $90. He fed the steer and sold it for $300 the following year. With some money in his pocket, he bought two steers for $125 a piece.
“I fed them for a year, and dad made me borrow money from the bank at 10 years old,” Dave laughed. He didn’t know it then, but his dad worked behind the scenes to set the loan up. “But the market crashed, and I didn’t have enough to pay back the entire bill.”
Merrill didn’t bail his son out. Instead, he used some tough love. He told Dave to create a plan to pay back the money he owed.
“So, at 11 years of age, I’m sitting in the office of Henry Stuhmiller, the president and owner of the State Savings Bank, to negotiate what I hoped was enough money to stay in the cattle feeding business,” he says. It was an important lesson that still guides Dave to this day. But that’s just one lesson his father taught him.
Back in the ’50s when cattle were belt-buckle high, Merrill and young Dave produced bulls that were guaranteed not to sire dwarf or midget cattle. At a time when dwarf genetics were rampant, Dave smartly designed a display ad in the local paper advertising the bulls. The paper came out on a Thursday, and that afternoon, the yard was packed with vehicles looking to buy their bulls.
At the time, Dave was pretty proud of his great advertisement. But years later, he realized just what made the ad great.
“At the bottom of the ad was Merrill Nichols’ name. And whatever Merrill Nichols said was the way it was. My dad always told me, ‘If a man’s word isn’t any good, neither is his bond,’” Dave smiles. “To this day at Nichols Farms, when anyone buys a bull or anything from us, they never sign a piece of paper. We shake hands.”
It might be old school, but it works for Nichols Farms. “If there ever comes a day when I can’t do business like that, I’m going to quit. That’s how I’m keeping the heritage of my dad.”
Dave has a very soft voice, almost a whisper at times. Halstead describes it as hypnotizing. He’s not a fast talker; he’s thoughtful. Dave’s not someone who sounds authoritative. But his presence is just the opposite. As a well-known figure in the beef industry for decades, Dave commands any room he walks into.
Dave’s involvement in the beef industry expanded when he started his undergraduate degree at Iowa State University. He went to school at a time when industry legends like Dr. Robert de Baca and Richard Wilhelm were teaching there.
The Iowa Beef Improvement Association worked with Dave to transfer his Angus performance records on a computer – the first Iowa herd to do so. That was in 1956, the same year Dave won the national FFA speech competition with a speech on performance testing.
Soon after, Nichols joined a newly founded group, Performance Registration International, to track his herd’s performance. In 1962, Nichols Farms was proud to have a Certified Meat Sire (CMS) registered by that group.
Then, when Angus Herd Improvement Records (AHIR®) was adopted at the American Angus Association®, Dave moved his records over. Looking back, Dave reflected that, when past American Angus Association CEO John Crouch was hired, performance testing became a reality for many cattlemen and women across the country.
Dave can remember spearheading the Beef Improvement Federation (BIF) along with other industry leaders five decades ago. Dr. DeBaca drove out to the National Western Stock Show and took Dave with; they were going to hear someone talk about performance testing in cattle.
The idea behind BIF stemmed from that meeting; industry leaders were looking for an organization to focus on performance testing. Dave served on the first board of directors in 1967, and ever since, it’s been incredibly impactful for his operation. In fact, BIF is inadvertently responsible for ultrasound technology.
Dave remembers, “Because of me and willing people to go along with it, ultrasound was born on a trip back from BIF, thanks to Dr. Wilson, Dr. Rouse and my idea.”
The Iowa Cattlemens Association, American Angus Association and Simmental Association pooled $100,000 to fund the first ultrasound project. Then, an Iowa State University research team ultra-sounded cattle with a machine used in human medicine.
Dave proudly recalls from his office chair, “The first cattle ultrasounded were ultrasounded a few feet from where I’m talking to you now.” The research done at his farm provided a basis for cattlemen and women to increase Certified Angus Beef ® (CAB) brand qualifying cattle across the country.
Dave’s early success wouldn’t have been possible without his brother, Lee, who was the other half of Nichols Farms. He took care of the land, crops and feeding cattle. As Dave recalls, Lee had a perfect 4.0 GPA during his Iowa State career, even though he ended up dropping out. “The closest thing I came to a 4.0 GPA was my blood alcohol level,” Dave laughs.
In the ’70s, the two were buying a farm nearly every year, and Nichols Farms was really fruitful. Dave says those days were the “salad days” for Nichols Farms.
Then the farm crisis hit in the ’80s. The farm economy plummeted, and farm values were dropping like a rock. And Nichols Farms was heavily leveraged from buying farms and hiring employees.
“Things were fine until Lee had a bad case of the flu,” Dave whispered with watery eyes. “So, he went to a specialist who determined he had leukemia. They determined it was probably caused by Agent Orange.”
Lee was diagnosed in May, right in the middle of calving season. “I came home from Houston and I walked into our bull barn full of bulls. The machine shed stacked with seed,” Dave says gravely, “And I didn’t know where the fields were.”
Dave called a staff meeting to let everyone know he was calling the local auctioneer to sell Nichols Farms. To him, it was a done deal. But one by one, Nichols Farms employees chimed in offering help.
“Mike Antisdel said he knew where the corn fields were, and he could plant the corn. Bart Mostaert spoke up and said he could AI the cows; he learned it at Hawkeye Tech. And Lillian, Lee’s wife, said she was quitting her job as the high school librarian to help out.”
But that wasn’t all. Phyllis, Dave’s wife who had been active on the school board, the state Republican party platform committee and much more, said she was quitting it all to come on board full time.
After weeks of treatment at the Houston, Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Lee passed away in mid-August, less than three months after diagnosis. In the meantime, the corn got planted, the cows got bred and the hay got put up. “Our loyal, hard-working employees saved Nichols Farms,” Dave says with a wavering voice. He knew that they stepped up because they were treated right.
Still, Dave had to figure out how to get Nichols Farms through the economic drought of the ’80s. He remembered back to what his dad taught him when he went back to the bank for a loan at the tender age of 10: make a plan. Dave and Lillian determined they couldn’t sell their assets and come out intact. The only way to survive was to double the size of Nichols Farms.
“In the midst of an agricultural holocaust, a school teacher and a farm boy had to double the size of our operation when our neighbors were going broke and selling the farm,” Dave says, shaking his head.
And that’s just what they did. Dave rented land for the first time and sold bulls at higher prices. At his customer appreciation day that year, he looked out over the crowd and said, “For 25 years, I’ve been telling you that I’m going to take care of you when you buy bulls. Well I want you to know, the last two years, you took care of Nichols farms.”
In the years after Lee passed away, Dave continued to embrace technology. By 1992, Nichols Farms had a website that’s still up and running more than 25 years later.
And today, Nichols Farms has one of the most extensive databases in the industry, with more than 70 data points on each animal. Dave proudly shared that his database has been used in recent years for genomic validation and U.S. Meat Animal Research Center animal breeding research.
Dave says he’s been invited to speak at approximately one program per month for 40 years. Nichols Farms has hosted more than 20 studies in partnership with several land grant universities. One of Dave’s favorite programs, though, involves youth. He has students from roughly a dozen universities visit each year.
“I just love when university kids come here. I tell them, you really, really can be what you want to be. I also tell them, if you go home and do everything Dave Nichols is doing, you’re going to fail. You will fail,” Dave says very seriously. “You need to find out what Dave Nichols is doing wrong and what you can do better, then you’ll be successful.”
Nichols’ many accomplishments don’t tell you of his colorful character. He isn’t afraid to make you a bit uncomfortable. Maybe it’s because you’d be hard-pressed to make him feel awkward or uneasy. After all, he’s never been afraid to be the center of attention.
As a youngster, Dave’s dad told him that no more folks see him whether he’s at the front or the rear of the parade. Dave thought it was a wise remark, but he smartly replies, “But when I’m a mile ahead of the parade, I can look back and see, Joyce Rice, the drum major leading that parade, and she’s beautiful! If you’re a mile behind, all you can see is a bunch of white guys picking up horse manure from the local saddle club.”
The most infamous Dave Nichols story of all is how Dave got his start in the Angus breed. To get his dad on board, 13-year-old Dave argued that purebred cattle would help the cattle industry prosper. He was convincing, and his dad agreed. But the truth of the matter was girls showing Angus cattle wore tighter jeans and were a lot better looking compared to girls showing other breeds. “I was just hoping to get some action at the tie-outs,” he laughs with a mischievous look in his eye. If you know Dave, there’s more where that came from.
At his core, Dave is a people person. He cares deeply about the cattle industry and the people in it. Talk to Halstead, and that’s apparent. “He’s very generous, he would do anything for the people who work for and with him. He has great respect for all those who work for him, he treats them as equals.”
Lillian keeps the office and database running smoothly and Phyllis takes care of the books. Dave likes to brag about Phyllis. “She works her butt off.” In the same breath, he playfully boasts, “I’m sleeping with the bookkeeper.”
All jokes aside, Dave is tender hearted and thoughtful. He’s proud of the legacy he’s worked so hard to build.
“It isn’t what you gather; it’s what you scatter,” Dave reflects on one of the most impactful nights of his life; induction into the Saddle and Sirloin Portrait Gallery. “I didn’t realize until I was walking up to that podium. There are not many monuments of people who made a lot of money or were just cheerleaders. Greatness means that everybody’s lives would have been less if it wasn’t for that person. That’s what I’m doing here.”