'A network of cattle people': Minnis Family farm a five-generation operation

Jul. 23—As Bill Minnis hits the side of a plastic feed bucket, about 40 head of cattle begin to trot out from under the shade of trees.

Each bears a number tagged to an ear and a unique brand on their side — MF over the top of C — for the Minnis Family Cattle.

"You shave their hair and put alcohol on there and hold liquid nitrogen on for about 20 seconds. It freeze brands them. The brand is actually white hair. Once you kill the black hair, white hair comes in its place," Minnis said.

The Minnis Family Cattle farm, owned by Bill and his wife Jennifer, is near the Illinois/Indiana border, about 14 miles southeast of Paris, Illinois. The farm raises registered black Angus cattle and is a fifth-generation family operation. The farm focuses on Ohlde, Duff, Griswold, Advantage, and Rudow breeding. The ear tags show lineage of cattle with some breeds extending back 25 years on the farm.

"Those are the blood lines. Griswold has about 3,000 head of cattle and are very famous in Oklahoma," Minnis said. "Advantage is in Kansas and Rudow is over in Pana [Illinois]," he said. "Duff is in the panhandle of Oklahoma ... and Ohlde is kinda the base that all of us here have drawn from for our herds, from Kansas.

"Even though we raise restaurant Angus, there are varying lines of Angus. Last year we went to Dunlouise Native Aberdeen Angus in Scotland ... and have used some of their semen from their bulls here," Minnis said.

"It is a network," he said, "of cattle people."

Nationally, Illinois ranks No. 30 in cattle with 1 million head in 2022, which is 1.09% of all cattle in the U.S. for 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The figure includes cattle and calves.

That 1 million head figure for Illinois is down 5% from 2021. The highest number of cattle and calves in Illinois since 2013 was in 2017 at 1.21 million head.

This month there are 75 head on the Minnis Family Cattle farm, which had been as high as 110 head in the winter.

Calves come in the fall "and I sell my calves in March and if I don't sell them, I keep them and will sell them next year as adults, as breeding animals. I think 40% end up in the food chain, sold as calves," Minnis said.

The rest of the herd is sold for breeding.

"The people locally who buy bulls from me, there are probably five herds of 25 cows, so there is probably 150 calves locally being born out of my bulls every year," Minnis said. "It is probably more than that locally.

"We have a particular kind of Angus. Mine are more what I consider traditional Angus. They are shorter, they have low birth weight and calving ease, have very good feet and they convert dry matter very efficiently," he said.

Other cattle grow faster, he said, "but mine finish faster, which means the cattle are fatter, bred for grass-fed" beef.

"I flush my cows and have the eggs frozen," then the eggs are put into another cow "so one of my cows can have six to eight calves a year," Minnis said. "I have five calves coming all out of the same cow from four different bulls."

He pointed to one cow.

"That cow has had over 200 calves for me and three other people. She spends more time being flushed than having calves of her own because she is a very good [producing] cow," he said.

Jennifer Minnis said the farm hires Amish who cut and chop hay "and stuff that in this long bag like a sausage," which is used to fed the cattle in the winter. The farm still has part of a second row bag filled with hay "because we had enough pasture last year as we had rain into December and [cattle] were eating pasture in December, so we did not have to go through all our feed."

The farm typically uses about 400 tons of silage and 50 tons of hay to maintain the cattle.

Bill said the family farm is a "team effort" between he and his wife, adding he could not keep the farm going without Jennifer. And despite living in Illinois, the couple are no strangers to Terre Haute.

Bill, 70, follows a family tradition of being a professional outside of the farm. His father, Joseph C. Minnis Sr., was a dentist, as was his brother, Joseph C. Minnis Jr. While his grandfather Joseph C. Minnis was a physician, he never worked on the family farm.

Bill, whose full name is William C. Minnis, worked at Indiana State University from 1984 to 2000, serving as director of the university's Center for Research and Management Services and director of ISU's Small Business Development Center.

In 2000, he went to Eastern Illinois University to teach while finishing his doctorate degree in 2001 at St. Louis University in management and organizational psychology. He is currently an associate professor of management at EIU and he is a "10%" contract instructor at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland.

Minnis also served as publisher of the former Terre Haute Journal of Business and was president and CEO of Citizens National Bank in Terre Haute. He also previously worked at Hamilton Center.

Jennifer Minnis previously worked at the Terre Haute Chamber of Commerce and is a graduate of Indiana State University, earning a bachelor's degree and a masters of business administration. In May, Jennifer turned a second home on the farm into a vacation rental by owner, with the home now booked through November.

"She has become an innkeeper," Bill joked.

And to emphasize family farm, three years ago Bill bought Jennifer a Scottish Highland cow for Christmas — named Agnes, who is the only animal on the farm with horns.

"I bought her in New York. It was a big surprise." And Agnes has a calf named Fiona, a Scottish name, born without horns.

"I got Agnes because we go to Scotland every year. I am on the faculty at the University of Strathclyde," a public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. "I teach there 10%. I am a 10% contract instructor and teach in their MBA program."

While Minnis has talked about moving to Scotland, he has a special connection to his family farm. As his father and maternal grandfather, Cary Cooper, were constructing a spillway for a man-made family farm lake, Bill Minnis was being born at the former St. Anthony Hospital in Terre Haute.

Because of that, the 18-acre lake is named Waunetta Lake — after his mother.

Reporter Howard Greninger can be reached 812-231-4204 or howard.greninger@tribstar.com. Follow on Twitter@TribStarHoward.