My name is BUD NICHOL. I am 73.  The seventh of eight children.  I spent my early years herding my dad’s beef cattle on the thousand of acres of open range and vacant farms that lay throughout the wooded hills of northern Michigan. I got my education in a one room school, Mrs. Hopper taught kindergarten through the ninth grade, never more than 14 kids in the whole school, 3 of them were her own children. She picked up the rest

up in an old van.  Since I lived in the opposite direction, I rode a horse to school; I made it through the fifth grade. The rest of my education I got, not out of books, but hands on doing. 

 

                 By the time I went into the Army at 18, I had been an electrician assistant, deputy sheriff, worked on a natural gas pipeline, and worked my way up to foreman for Heath Tree Service, in Mich.  After the Army, I worked for Heath Tree Service again , then Wilson Tree Service in N.C. where I met my wife.  In 1959 we bought this place, here in middle of Mark Twain National Forest, 200 acres all trees, brush, green briers and rocks.

                 We cleared the fields with chainsaws, picks and shovels. We raised 4 children here, two boys and two girls; we brought them up to be honest, hardworking and to respect others. And I am proud of the way they turned out.  Over the almost 50 years we've lived here we have had most all kinds of animals and livestock, including alligators and monkeys.  From the beginning we raised feeder pigs.  In the early 1980’s we got our first red wattle hogs, from Mr. Wenglar in Texas, and fell in love with these gentle giants. We raised both registered and crossbred until the feeder pig market went out, here in Southern MO.

                 About four years ago we got our first pair of wattle back, and are now working on trying to bring back, as close as possible, the original animal that the Creator placed here on mother earth. Within each of these pigs, that are born today, lays the dormant genes of the original animal.  I cannot bring the great animal back., only the Creator can awaken the genes, and then if its is his will, give me the knowledge to recognize them. Then one by one, add them to the building block of the magnificent animal it once was. We are not in this to raise pigs for sale, rather the pigs are a byproduct of what we are trying to do.  We sell only to help finance the great cost of trying to bring the great beast back.

The Diamond N Ranch

  with Watusi Cattle

A mama Red Wattle with Piglets