Rick Coffman receives Lifetime Achievement Award

DOUDS — The Jefferson County Cattlemen honor a local cattleman each year with a Lifetime Achievement Award, and this year that honor was bestowed upon Rick Coffman of rural Douds.

Coffman has a Red Angus cow herd, and recently served on the Jefferson County Cattlemen’s board. Coffman is a veteran of Desert Storm, and locals may know him from the horse rides he gives at Old Threshers, Bentonsport, Eldon and other places. Local cattlemen have gotten to know Coffman as an expert in artificial insemination, something he’s done for the last 50 years.

Coffman said he was pleasantly surprised to learn he would receive the Jefferson County Cattlemen’s Lifetime Achievement Award earlier this year.

“I felt very honored,” he said. “They’re a good group of individuals, and they’re cow people. They want to encourage the cattle business, and they do a fine job of it. The people on the board are good people, and they take the cattle industry seriously. I’d like to complement them for that.”

Coffman was born and raised in Davis County on a farm near Pulaski. He attended the Davis County School District, and was active in 4-H and FFA. His father ran a purebred Angus business, and even before Coffman graduated from high school, he had his own herd of 12 cows.

“That was a pretty good number for a senior in high school,” he said. “I was running a purebred cow-calf operation, and I sold bulls and replacement females.”

At that time, Davis County had the largest FFA chapter in Iowa, and Coffman was its president.

“We had 174 members, and that was all boys, no girls,” Coffman said.

In 1969, the National FFA Organization held a convention where the Davis County FFA Chapter was invited to represent Iowa. Coffman got to be part of FFA history that year.

“At that convention, we voted to accept girls into FFA starting in 1970,” he said.

Coffman graduated from Davis County High School in 1970. Though he came from a farming background, his father encouraged him to find another career.

“Dad sold out before I graduated, and when he retired, he didn’t want me to farm,” Coffman said. “He thought the economics were not right back in the 1960s and 1970s. He didn’t think you could make it farming.”

After graduating, Coffman worked at an elevator and for a few farmers in the area. He’s worked on several feedyards, ranging in size from 120 head to about 4,000 head. He managed a Red Angus cow herd for three years in Van Buren County when one day the owner announced he was calling it quits and ordering a farm sale. Coffman struck out on his own in the Red Angus business, and got up to 125 head before selling some land and reducing that number to 50, where it is today.

In addition to raising Red Angus cattle, Coffman started doing artificial insemination 50 years ago while he was a ranch-hand. He kept up with the practice over the years, and started doing custom work in 1995. He travels to farms within a 150-mile radius of Douds to perform AI.

“I fill about 75 nitrogen tanks, and that’s about how many places I visit,” he said. “That covers 3,000 to 4,000 head of cow per year.”

Coffman is well respected in the industry for his years of experience with AI, and he teaches classes on the subject, because he wants to pass along his knowledge to the next generation.

“I tell them that I’m not going to be here forever, so someone else will need to learn how to do this,” he said. “I teach my customers so they can carry on with their own operations, but they still ask me to come back.”

Coffman will turn 71 in a couple of months, and he has no plans to retire from raising cattle or from his AI work.

“I’ll just slow down little by little,” said Coffman about his retirement plan. “I think everybody needs to keep on going. I plan to keep working for a long time.”