Young Nebraska cattle ranchers taking business to a modern-day level (2024)

STEINAUER, Neb. — Dana Christen and Levi Meybrunn met in 2015 when he transferred into the Lewiston Consolidated School as a grade schooler.

The daughter in a six-generation cattle ranch family and the son in a farming family that has spanned five generations were friends from the start.

They started dating three years later.

They walked the stage together in a graduating class of six a couple of years after that.

And after she earned her degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in animal science — with a minor in agribusiness — and he went through Southeast Community College’s livestock management program in Beatrice, they were married in April.

Now the newlyweds — back in Steinauer, pronounced Steener by any of the 59 residents of the Pawnee County village located 73 miles southeast of Lincoln — have plans to reinvent the family’s cattle ranch.

The first step was giving it a name.

Legacy Hills Ranch pays homage to the past — a ranching tradition that dates back to the 1840s and the green rolling hills you’d see on a postcard — as they attempt to take the family business into the next generation and beyond.

“That legacy is important to us,” Dana Meybrunn said.

And so is the future.

The Meybrunns are looking to change the outcome in an industry where the price of the meat at the grocery counter doesn’t necessarily jibe with what ranchers are making on the front end of the process.

“There’s so many middlemen in the cattle business that are taking the majority of the revenue from what you’re buying at the store,” she said. “The producers themselves are not getting much of that total.”

That’s true when you take into account it takes a year or two of daily tending and feeding a cow to bring it to market. And the final yield is pennies on the dollar, she said.

The USDA’s Economic Research Service provides annual cow-calf costs and returns estimates for the United States and key production regions.

According to 2023 statistics, annual U.S. returns over variable costs in the current cattle cycle have averaged $124 per cow, with a high of $391 per cow in 2014 and a low of $12 per cow in 2022.

“It’s hard for people to understand how much we’re having to put into raising that steak that’s been put down on their plate,” Dana Meybrunn said. “The prices are going up, but they’re also going up for us. The price of feed is ridiculous.”

It’s become one of the laments of the industry, Levi Meybrunn said. Plenty of other cattlemen nationwide are doing what Legacy Hills is attempting by eliminating the middleman.

A handful of ranches with deep pockets are building their own on-site butchering and processing centers, where they are selling their products directly to their customer base, thus eliminating those seeking to take a cut for their services.

Legacy Hills can’t make that kind of financial commitment and is instead using a local processing plant to butcher its herd, while selling the meat online and onsite.

The couple is also making deliveries.

“We’re doing everything we can to make connections directly with the consumer,” she said. “I think that’s what’s gonna be able to save us because the middlemen are continuing to take more and more.”

There is nothing — no feedlot, no packer, no grocery — between them and their customers. But while those middlemen might eat into the profits, they provide vital services, one Nebraska rancher said.

“It’s much easier to go through the existing supply chain,” said Hannah Connealy, who took a similar path with Whitman-based Connealy Angus in 2016. “... You’re not eliminating any of the work by starting to sell your own product. You’re adding in steps and a headache. It’s more expensive and much harder to do it that way.”

It took years to figure it out, but Connealy Angus is now doing well selling directly to its customer base. And with the recent opening of Ruhlman’s Steakhouse in Ashland, the Connealy family, cousins to owner Phil Ruhlman, are the exclusive beef source for the steakhouse.

That’s a good get, she said.

But having a good story is far more important, Connealy said.

“How are you going to tell your story?” she asked. “... In my opinion, this is an absolute marketing game because the people who are going to go to the effort and spend the money to buy your beef, they want a high-quality product.

“It depends on who the customer is. But what I have found is that it’s more about the story, right?”

The Meybrunns have a compelling story. A six-generation farm. A quality product. Young love. There are plenty of hooks from which to choose.

Dana’s great-great-great-grandparents settled just outside of Steinauer, near Elk Creek in the early 1840s. They prided themselves on row crops, and hog and beef production.

It’s a good story and, six generations later, a story of survival, Levi Meybrunn said.

“In order for us to keep the business within the family and keep it running strong, we’ve got to search for different ways to make the revenue that we need to continue and for us, that’s selling directly to consumers,” he said.

This is a new-school approach to a trade that has spanned generations, centuries and America’s timeline. It’s a craft that never went away, but is somehow considered in style once again.

Call it the “Yellowstone” effect, where being a cowboy is cool again.

There were cows on Levi Meybrunn’s family farm in Oketo, Kansas — just over the state line and about 30 minutes from Legacy Hills — but most of the work entailed tending to the row crops.

“I liked that we were diversified,” he said. “I liked both farming and ranching part of the farm.”

Edward and Clara (Spier) Meybrunn settled in Oketo in 1900. Edward’s son John farmed and raised livestock about 16 miles away in Summerfield, Kansas, in 1935, the midst of the Great Depression.

Thirty-five years later, John’s son, Jon, began farming his grandfather’s farm in Oketo. It’s the place where Levi was raised.

Now he spends most of his time at Legacy Hills but looks forward to being on his family’s farm from time to time.

“I love both places,” he said.