AMERICAN ANGUS ASSOCIATION - THE BUSINESS BREED

Fine-Tuning

The third generation of Sitz Angus leads herd past 100-year mark and primes the fourth for what’s next.

By Sarah Kocher, Communications Specialist

February 4, 2025

In the same way people can’t choose their family, people can’t choose to be born into a ranching one. When you’re a Sitz in southwestern Montana, you’re lucky enough to be born into a family with a rich history of Angus cattle.

What has helped them and their herd survive for more than 100 years? Jim Sitz says adaptability and knowing “the only thing constant in this world is change.”

Today Bob (Jr.) and Jim Sitz of Harrison and Dillon, Mont., lead Sitz Angus as its third generation and as 2024 inductees into the Angus Heritage Foundation. They can talk the talk and walk the walk of a good cowman because of decades spent learning from those around them.

They labored alongside their parents as young men, growing a passion for Angus cattle and the cattle business.

“We were expected to be involved, and I think it got deep in our blood,” Jim says.

In their 20s, they chose to manage the ranch alongside their sweet but tough mother, Donna, after the untimely death of their father, Bob Sr., in 1989. Together, the trio guided the ranch through some lean years that included a mature cow dispersal and subsequent herd rebuilding.

“Bobby and I kind of got thrown into this,” Jim says. “But we loved it then, and we love it now.”

Tried and true

In the decades since, Bob and Jim, along with Jim’s wife, Tammi, have expanded the ranch from a single location in Harrison to three. Although the whole family works together to line up two production sales each year, Jim manages the ranch in Dillon while Bob leads the crew at the Harrison location.

Before Donna’s passing in 2015, she skillfully steered advertising efforts for the ranch, and she and her second husband, Arvin Arthun, helped to carry on the forward-thinking attitude that has been a trademark of the family. Now for years Jim has taken a lead role in marketing Sitz Angus cattle.

“My dad always said a long time ago that we have to be a jack-of-all-trades,” Jim says. “That would fit Sitz Angus ranch to a T.”

Jim says a division of responsibilities happened out of necessity during their early days, being a difficult financial period.

“I remember one of the things (our mother did that) probably made us all better managers is when my dad passed away, my mother would not let us spend a dollar,” Jim says. “There were things that we needed. We may need a pulling pickup to deliver bulls, and it might be two years before we could get that pickup. We had to go through a long process and explain to her why we really needed this pickup. But she was good.”

As pacesetters for the ranch, Bob and Jim have both prioritized customer relationships, adopted new technologies like embryo transfer (ET) and genomics, and improved the quality of their cattle.

“Our customers need functional cattle,” Bob explains. “They have to have some do-ability, gain-ability to go into the feedlot sector; and then they have to have some carcass quality to go through the rest of the system.”

Bob and Jim’s parents were early champions of performance testing in Montana and later Angus Herd Improvement Records (AHIR®). After them, the third and fourth generations have continued to collect performance data in addition to genomic data and analyze the results, especially with the pulmonary arterial pressure (PAP) expected progeny difference (EPD). Their focus on PAP alone has spanned a quarter of the herd’s century.

“If it’s something that’s going to bring value to the animal, they’re willing to try it,” Tammi says.

More than reputation

Sitz Angus genetics are sold across the country and internationally. The family offers yearling bulls each spring and 2-year-old bulls at their annual fall sale. Their sires consistently claim spots in annual lists of the top 25 sires for breed registration.

So, what’s in the Sitz name?

“The bulls have to be able to travel,” Bob says. “Cattle have to get bred, got to have some longevity. They’ve got to work in all environments from desert to high mountains to valleys from Montana to California to Texas. I guess that’s the type of cattle we’re trying to raise.”

He says many of their customers also want high Maternal Weaned Calf Value ($M) bulls, with added emphasis on heifer pregnancy (HP).

“They sell calves off the cow, and that’s their bread and butter for their programs,” Bob adds. “As technology comes along, we keep trying to adapt and produce the cattle that’ll fit their needs.”

While being well-known for their bulls, Sitz Angus maintains its status as a MaternalPlus^® herd, as it has since the program’s first year in 2012, proving their focus on producing high-performing, profit-yielding females for their commercial customers.

Jim says it is amazing what today’s cows are capable of, reflecting on the increased growth, better carcass traits and health trends he has seen.

“In the cattle business, we have put a lot more selection pressure on these cows in the last 35 years,” he says. “We keep putting more on them, and they keep exceeding expectations.”

Either way you slice it, Bob says, it all starts with the mother cow. Like Sitz Angus bulls, their cows work across a large environment.

“Our environment probably plays a big role in fertility,” he explains. “They have to go out and earn a living, and they’ve got to cover some country.”

Jim Sitz’s family gathers near Jackson, Mont. Pictured (from left) are Nolan Konen, Amber Konen, Tyler Sitz, Tammi Sitz, Jim, Tucker Sitz, Ashley Bokma, Collins Bokma and Conner Bokma.

Bob Sitz’s family poses near Harrison, Mont. Pictured (from left) are Lane Sitz, Haley Sitz, Bob, Taylre Zempel and Brett Zempel.

Big sky country

Sitz Angus operates on diverse swaths of land, totaling around 60,000 acres. About 30,000 of that is leased federal land. Annual rainfall totals range from 18 to 11 inches, and they average one cow per 40 acres in the moderate to dry regions.

Several family members talked about their dedication to land stewardship. For example, they added 55 miles of water lines through their forest allotment, which they use in the summers, to better scatter cattle. In 1991, the ranch was nominated for the Angus Land Stewardship Award, and they were recognized by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) that year at a regional level for their land management practices.

We have to leave it better than we found it, and we manage it that way. We run our cows like they’re commercial cows, meaning we don’t pamper them; and I think that’s one of the reasons why our cows work the way they do. But both Bobby and I believe that we need to be good stewards of the land.” — Jim Sitz

Some of the land they run cattle on is situated 20 miles from Yellowstone National Park. Bob says they feel pressure from common Mountain West predators like grizzly bears and wolves there and in other locations, but have good relationships with local representatives from the U.S. Forest Service and the state’s fish and wildlife agency. He also compliments his family and their employees who work to keep loss to a minimum while taking care of other priorities on the ranch.

“I think the whole crew has just done an awesome job,” Bob says. “They pull together to get things done.”

One of the greatest threats to ranching families in their part of the world is actually people and the development they bring.

“COVID and Yellowstone (the TV series) brought piles of people into this country,” Bob says.

He adds that besides people moving for the scenery or the fishing and hunting, an increasing number of landowners are making investment purchases in their area of the state.

“It makes it really hard for kids that grew up in the area to come back and to be able to live here and own,” says Taylre Zempel, Bob’s daughter.

As leaders in the industry, Bob serves the Montana Stockgrowers Association and helps discuss issues like these, in addition to being an active member of the American Angus Association. Jim followed in his father’s footsteps, serving on the Association Board of Directors from 2009-2016 and as president in 2016.

“I’d been in Angus all my life, and when I got on the Board, I found out maybe I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was because there’s a big learning curve of how things are versus the perception of how things are,” Jim says. “I was fortunate to serve with a lot of great fellow Angus breeders on the Board, and that’s probably the best part about it — the friendships that I made over that time.”

The Sitz six

The fourth generation on the ranch, known sometimes as “the Sitz Six,” are preparing to make their mark on the Angus breed as they each find unique ways to support the ranch through cattle breeding, raising crops, bookkeeping, hosting interns, influencing range management and even managing social media and promotion. They are Taylre Zempel, Lane Sitz, Amber Konen, Ashley Bokma, Tyler Sitz and Tucker Sitz.

“These kids all work hard,” Bob says.

He adds they work well as a team, too.

“Growing up the six of us were always super close, always getting into something,” Konen says.

Zempel and Lane, Bob’s kids, both came back to the ranch full-time after their education and training.

“Five years ago, I told the kids, you need to figure it out, because in five years we’ll have to figure out what we’ve got to do with the ranch if you guys aren’t interested; and these kids have just stepped up in a big, big way,” Bob says. “They organize and [have] got a plan for each day, and just can’t say how good of a job they’ve done.”

Zempel says she sees how her dad, Jim and Tammi have been influential for each of the cousins.

“They have always been willing to answer questions and direct us and guide us through the life lessons we need to learn,” she says. “I really admire my dad and my Uncle Jim for all of the hard work and sacrifice and dedication it took for them to get Sitz Angus to where it is today. They faced a lot of challenges really early on in their adult lives, in terms of both family and ranching. I really think we have, as the next generation, an appreciation for what they faced and the fortitude they had to make it through those challenges.”

With one boy still in high school, Jim and Tammi patiently wait to see what roles their kids will take and what role they will play on the ranch.

“My goal long-term is to give my kids the opportunity that I had,” Jim says. “It doesn’t necessarily mean they have to come back to the ranch, but if they want to come back to the ranch, I will provide a place for them to come back; and they will have to bring something back with them. It’s their decision whether they want to come back to this ranch and have part of it or be involved with this ranch; and if they want to go away and do something else and garner experience elsewhere, I think that’s a good thing.”

Naturally, he says he hopes it is under different circumstances than what he and Bob encountered. The brothers say they learned a great deal from neighbors, employees, others in the Montana Angus community and other cattlemen through industry organizations, who poured into them as young adults.

Wisdom and work

Bob, Jim and Tammi say they want to make the most of their opportunity to pass on wisdom and work with them side by side.

“There’s still a lot of things that I want to do, but I also want them to be actively involved and start taking more management away from Tammi and I,” Jim says. “I want them to come back to me to ask questions because Bobby and I, we’ve made lots of mistakes and hopefully they’ll ask us and learn from our mistakes versus making their own mistakes.”

He says the next stage of growth for Sitz Angus is more about “fine-tuning things” than in years prior. Although Jim says he sometimes misses the days when he and Tammi were just getting started in Dillon and his oldest, Amber, was just a baby, riding along in her car seat to check cows or in the tractor while he baled hay, he certainly recognizes these are the good days, too.

“There were people that told my mother she ought to just sell this operation, no way that [we] would succeed,” he says. “I look and to be able to see my sisters also involved in the registered Angus business and to be able to see my kids and my brother’s kids come and be part of this operation, and I see no reason why they shouldn’t be able to take it to a whole new level of where we are today. I mean, that goes a long ways with me.”

Putting on miles

William and Frieda Sitz started Sitz Angus in the Nebraska Sandhills in 1923 with the purchase of registered Angus cows from William Williams of Clarks, Neb. William and Frieda had four children: Robert “Bob”, Bill, Dolores, and Ruth.

Then in 1952, William and Frieda moved with son Bob (Sr.) to a ranch in Longmont, Colo. Their stay there was relatively short because in 1959, two years after Bob married Donna Scriffiny, the young couple purchased a ranch in Harrison, Mont., and moved the herd.

In Harrison, Bob Sr. and Donna raised two daughters and two sons: Deb, Sherrie, Bob (Jr.) and Jim. All four of Bob Sr. and Donna’s children are still involved in the cattle business through Sitz Angus, Bar 69 Angus Ranch and Stockman Angus of New Zealand.

In 1966, Sitz Angus hosted its first bull sale. The family also began offering customers free delivery of their bulls, a tradition that continues in 2025 after their fall and spring sales.

“My dad did that for a reason,” Jim says. “It was to get to know his customers. They’re as proud of their product as we are of ours, so you have to get out and see what their needs are and visit with them.”

Jim says the cattle business is a personal business. He considers customers to be more than the people they do business with. They are their friends, and Jim says he enjoys getting to know them and their families. That is easier to do when some customers stick around for 50 years or more.

Through time, the family has found a team approach works well for serving long-time and new customers.

Jim’s wife of 27 years, Tammi, says, “I always joke with Jim now that ‘Those are your customers, and these are my customers’ because we have certain people that we have pretty good relationships with.”

She says she has enjoyed seeing relationships transform from just being with Jim and Bob to the rest of their crew, and especially her son Tyler and nephew Lane.

“That’s pretty fun,” Tammi says.

Sitz Angus was awarded the American Angus Association Century Award at the 2024 Angus Convention Nov. 3 in Fort Worth, Texas.

Topics: Award winner , Success Stories

Publication: Angus Journal