Tucker Family Farms
“God is Good”
Bill is the seventh generation of Tuckers to forge an agricultural livelihood from the foothills of central Virginia. Looking at the well-worn peaks of the Blue Ridge from the circa 1780 home where Bill and his wife Claudia raised their three daughters provides a false sense of eternalness. While the Tuckers were the Beef Improvement Federation’s (BIF) 2001 Outstanding Commercial Producer, it took an “Act of God” to ensure Bill’s future as a cattleman.
The Tucker’s original cash crop was apples; animal agriculture was a co-product of the cider and fruit business. As early as the 1920s hogs were used to glean the fallen fruit. Jersey cattle provided milk for sale, feeding a family, and added fat and protein to pig diets. As the operation expanded, successive generations of Polled Herefords transformed the Jersey herd into the Tucker’s beef herd which utilized land not suited for orchards.
Such was the Tucker family business – right up until the night of August 19, 1969. Hurricane Camille had struck land 1,000 miles away in Alabama and Mississippi before traveling north to central Virginia; there the heavens opened dumping 27 inches of rain on mountainous Nelson and Amherst Counties in a 24-hour period. One hundred fifty-three inhabitants of these rural communities were killed (or never found) due to the resulting flood and mudslides.
“Our reputation is built by offering females that work for our customers. Our customers live on fescue. Our females must breed, calve and rebreed on endophyte-fungus fescue.”
Tucker Family Farms is located in Amherst County Virginia on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Tucker Family Farms Professional Replacements come in both Red and Black Angus and Angus x Gelbvieh Cross Composites.
Bill Tucker conducts a "Gentleman's Auction" at his annual Professional Replacement Heifer Sale that takes place every April.
The Tucker Family Farms' Program
Bill explains 3 decades of forage management, crossbreeding strategies, and carcass data collection employed by Tucker Family Farms.
