Ray Dittmer, Lacona, is one of two new members of the Iowa Hereford Hall of Fame. He and the late Tom Murray, Oxford Junction, were honored during the Iowa Hereford Breeders Association’s (IHBA) banquet during the Iowa Beef Expo.
The Iowa Hereford Hall of Fame honors people who have had a significant impact on the breed in the state.
When Ray Dittmer joined 4-H at the age of 12, he had every intention of showing hogs. Fortunately, his father, Iowa Hereford Hall of Famer Lester Dittmer, convinced him to show Hereford cattle as well as Landrace hogs. Ray started his show career at the county fair, then in 1954, he took heifers to the State Fair, where he showed for four years.
From those first 4-H heifers, Ray began building a registered herd, which he first kept on a rented farm a half mile from where he was born. When he was still in high school, he began handling the registrations for his dad’s herd; when he moved to his own place in the spring of 1966, he bought his own membership in the Polled Hereford association.
In the 1960s-‘80s, Warren County had both a county Hereford Association and a county Polled Hereford Association, both of which held annual sales. Ray served as secretary-treasurer of the Warren County Polled Hereford Association for 13 years, till the two groups merged. At one time, he consigned bulls to seven different association sales – the Southeast Iowa Polled Hereford Association, Hereford Breeders of Warren County, Wayne County Hereford Association, Hawkeye Polled Hereford Association, Io-Ne-Mo Polled Hereford Association, Iowa Beef Improvement Association and the state Hereford sale.
By 1977, his herd had grown to 140 registered cows, but with the advent of the CRP program, Ray says he started “slacking off” and trimmed the size of the herd. He and his son Jason now have around 25 registered cows plus an equal number of commercial ones.
He has enjoyed studying ways to make improvements in his herd and says that DNA testing and EPD’s make it much easier, especially in determining what traits are most heritable. When he started his herd, he didn’t buy a calf puller because he was determined to breed a herd that doesn’t have calving trouble – and he’s been successful at it. “Some people think if you have easy calving cattle, they’re not good show animals, but that’s not true,” he says. “You can have both.”
Perhaps Ray’s greatest contribution to the Hereford breed in Iowa has in the form of preserving and promoting its history. He has been chairman of the Gammon Barn since 2013. In this capacity, he is in charge of staffing the museum for the 11-day duration of the Iowa State Fair every year. He spends a lot of time calling and lining up volunteers and fills in any vacant shifts himself. He “lives” on the State Fairgrounds for the entire fair, staying at the Youth Inn. Ray has put a lot of time into organizing the museum, cleaning it and maintaining the exhibits. For the last few years, his project (in the off-season and during the fair as well) has been to mount more than 100 Pioneer Breeder pencil portraits (by state) onto a flip stand so they can be viewed by visitors. He strives to document the number of visitors each day, maintaining a guest book.
Ray has also installed lighting in some of the cabinets and made improvements on existing lighting. He also works to identify pictures and other artifacts in the museum and has been researching ways to cool the museum so visitors will stay longer and look at the exhibits.
Ray is also one of two IHBA members who voluntarily mow and maintain the original site of the Gammon Barn near St. Marys, Iowa, during the spring and summer.
A very active Farm Bureau member for most of his life, Ray has served his county association in various leadership roles over the past 50 years.
Ray married his first wife, Rosemary, in 1971, and they had two children, Jason and Karen. She died in 1988. He married Jan, an orchestra teacher for Indianola Schools, in 1990 and they have two daughters, Heidi and Chrissy, both of whom have taken shifts in the Gammon Barn museum over the years.