There’s nothing unusual about a college lecturer influencing a student’s career path. For Jason Diedrich, it was a guest speaker whose voice is more commonly heard in the rodeo arena that helped to pave his way.

Diedrich, who started riding bulls in junior rodeos and progressed to pro rodeos, attended a seminar at his college when Bob Tallman was introducing the concept of a bucking stock registry. The talk spurred his curiosity, and he stayed behind to ask Tallman more about what he was doing.

One thing led to another, and Diedrich worked the summer at the Bucking Stock Registry and then decided to transfer down to Tarlton’s college rodeo program. Upon graduation he decided to stay in the Stephenville, Texas area.

Jason and his father Bob are partners in a bull business, and while thy work together, they are separated by distance. “Dad is busy out in California farming, and I just run this part of it,” Jason said. “But we’ve been buying a few proven cows to do embryo work with.”

They started their bull program by buying semen from registered bulls and bought some cows from Bill Butler. Jason has since focused on building up his cow herd to 100 head with further purchases from Marty Foutch, Sammy Andrews and Julio Moreno. “We’ve got a bit of everything. It’s not one particular bloodline. We’ve got Playboy, Skoal, Gunslinger, Yellow Jacket and Too Legit.”

In 2002 Jason decided to expand the genetics of the cow herd by leasing Kish bulls Vindicator and Spittin’ Image who are both now owned by Marty Foutch. “We wanted to get some of that Wolfman and Mr. T blood in our herd. In 2003, we leased some bulls from H.D. Page that had the Broke Back V lines in them and in 2005 we leased two bulls off Trevor Walker that went back to Copenhagen Charlie, Vitamin Pack and Mission Impossible which are similar to Trevor’s more foundation bloodlines,” he explained.