Love Affair
Marla Keown
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Marla Keown
Connie Mushrush guides a bull into a hydrolic chute working facility, or as ranchers call it a "tub and the snake". The Mushrush's re-tagged 150 bulls for their annual barn sale so prospective customers can better identify possible purchases.
Connie and Joe Mushrush met during their junior years at Kansas State University and were married between semesters their senior year. Connie said she always wanted to be a rancher while growing up on a “regular” farm in north-central Kansas. Her chance came because of Joe’s parents.
“When we got married, Joe and I had a pact,” she said. We would never live in town; we’d only have two kids; and we would never have hogs.”
They broke every part of that pact. While living in Emporia, Joe’s parents let them raise hogs on their land.
“Hogs used to be a real first generator of income,” said Connie.
Marla Keown
Jon Mushrush weighs a day-old red angus calf born on the Mushrush Red Angus Cattle ranch located near Elmdale.
During those horrid hog years the Mushrushes raised enough money to purchase their first red Angus bull, in 1981. When their son Casey was 2 years old, the Mushrush’s bought their first feedlot, room for 60 cattle, near Council Grove.
After living in two houses in town and having and six children, the Mushrushes are now living their dream, on a ranch near Elmdale.
They graze cattle on 24 pastures and use a feedlot that will hold nearly 1,000 cattle, all red Angus. Their children including their eldest sons, Daniel, 23, and Casey, 19, who often come home from K-State help on the ranch.
Laura and Cole, 16-year-old twins, have invested in their own red Angus cattle, which they tend daily. Chris, a seventh grader, does odds and ends including fixing the ranch’s fence. Madelyn, the youngest, just turned 9 and has to bottle feed her calf, Penny, every morning.
Marla Keown
As a chute holds the calf steady, Casey Mushrush, one of the Mushrush family's six children, tags a red angus calf with an identifying ear tag.
During calving season, work begins at dawn with new calves weighed and tagged and then later vaccinated before being sent to pastures with their mothers. Every week Joe Mushrush takes his four-wheeler out to the pastures to check up on his herd. In the fall, the calves will be weaned, weighed, and given another round of booster shots. During this time, the cows are also weighed and checked for pregnancy as well.
The Mushrushes’ hired hand, Grady Gibb, has lived and worked on a ranch his whole life. Gibb begins feeding cattle hay, corn or pellets beginning every morning at 7:30. Every March, the Mushrush family holds a red Angus sale, in partnership with another nearby ranch.
“I love the cattle; I love the flowers, the smells, the freedom of not having to be in an office.” Connie said. “It’s an amazing lifestyle to make a living off of God’s land and try to make it better for the next generation.”
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