Caldwell Family

Todd has been a part of the cattle industry his entire life.  He was first introduced to livestock through weekly trips to the stockyards with his grandfather Alvi.  He would look forward to those trips each week so that he could learn the “ropes” and would study how to find good quality cattle.  

This education of evaluating livestock continued thru out his high school years.  He was involved with both 4-H and FFA.  In fact his FFA judging team was the State Champions in 1985.  In addition, his family spent countless hours and many miles traveling thru the U.S. showing cattle.  During those years he learned the value of hard work and dedication will help you succeed in achieving your goals.   It was this background that helped him continue on to Purdue to study Agriculture education.  He was a member of the AGR house, the Purdue Judging Team, and was chairman of the Purdue AGR Steer Show for four years.  

After College, Todd started teaching at his high school under his mentor, Rex Smith in the ag department.  He also started a supply business and would travel to many shows with the dual purpose of to showing livestock and selling equipment.  He continued this for several years before moving to Illinois and working for Jeff Adams Show steers.

It was during this time that he met his wife Kim. She too had been raised in a livestock family, showing Angus Cattle in Illinois.   After they were married he moved to his current location in Elmwood, and started Caldwell Show Cattle.  In 1994 Todd had his first cattle sale under his new business with 20 steers that sold to livestock youth across several neighboring states.  Since that time, Todd has expanded his sales to over 200 head of cattle sold each year to over 15 states across the country. It has been during those past 17 years that he has assisted countless young people with finding livestock projects, showing them the ropes, and helping them to exhibit.  Most importantly thru out this time he has had the opportunity to meet and help some the most dedicated livestock families in the business. 

These experiences have shaped Todd’s desire to raise his own children in the livestock community.

Todd and Kim have three children, Maddison who is 15, Olivia who is 10 and Cole who is 7.  All of their children are actively involved with livestock.  In 2007, Grant Weisinger convinced Maddison that she needed to show a pig.  Maddison immediately fell in love with the project. Todd soon became obsessed with shopping for pigs -- online. This took him just one phone call a way from creating history!

Today what started out with a 15-sale goal has turned into 300+ sales annually. What once was a two-person shop has grown to include 6 full time employees, two cattle specialists and a multitude of seasonal employees. “It’s been great to be a part of such a successful operation,” says, Brett Bowman, Cattle Specialist, “We’re extremely busy, but hey that’s a good thing!”(As of 2013)