After 50 years on the ranch, Heides part with herd close to their hearts

Seated in their beautiful 1888 brick home on the family ranch south of Boulder, John and Nancy Heide can see out to the fields where they devoted their lives to nurturing a line of top quality Montana cattle. It has been a lifestyle they would not trade, they say, but it has also taken hard work.

Ready to slow down after fifty years of ranching, they held their final registered Angus bull sale in early March. The registered herd they had so painstakingly built over the past 35 years was sold earlier.

But thinking of the changes as more of a “change of pace” than a retirement, the couple is keeping about 20 commercial cows.