Lucky Seven Angus Ranch – Friendly Cattle
Lucky Seven Angus Ranch – Raising Environmentally Friendly Cattle
This Wyoming cattle outfit began in 1895 when Jim Jensen’s great grandfather James Jensen came from Denmark and homesteaded near Boulder, Wyoming. “The first winter, he had a few cows and horses and lived in a dugout, and daily shoveled snow off the grass nearby, to keep them alive that winter,” explains Jensen. From that meager beginning, his grandfather eventually owned a big part of the Boulder Valley. “We have a 5th generation on our ranch today,” he says.
“This area is called the Nation’s Ice Box because it’s above 7000 feet and usually the coldest place in the U.S. for recorded daily temperatures. It’s one of the toughest places to make a living in the cattle business. Probably the only reason settlers stopped here was because they were outlaws and this was where they could stay safe!” he says.
This is a rugged environment for raising cattle, and they have to be hardy. “Most purebred breeders sell over-fat bulls that make a pretty picture. They also just tell you what they think you want to hear, but we do things differently because our cattle have to survive and thrive in our tough conditions.”
The ranch had Herefords at first, just like all the ranchers in that area did in earlier days. “They needed hardy range cattle and there weren’t any other breeds at that time that could handle it. When I was 14 years old my dad had about 20 registered Hereford cows. I put my 15 head with them and we bought the best Hereford bull we could find.
We spent more than $4000 for him, which was a lot of money at that time. After he’d been out with the cows that summer and we brought him back in, he looked like an anorexic milk cow! He’d been overfed, and melted when he had to go out with the cows. That bull ruined every one of those cows; their off spring had no milk and no fleshing ability. The bad part is that you run a bull 2 or 3 years before you find this out—after the daughters grow up and start producing calves.”
That bull probably should not have been kept as a bull, but the seedstock industry tends to keep cattle in an artificial situation. “As a young kid, getting burned that badly, I had a bad feeling about the seedstock business. I started changing this about 30 years ago after I got into Angus and bought some registered cattle. We not only lived in the roughest place to make a living, but I decided I was going to make my cows tougher than any of the neighbors’ cattle,” says Jensen.
“If I raised a bull, I wanted to know that he would work in my environment because that meant he would definitely work anywhere else. That was my philosophy, and as we grew, our customers were having great luck with our bulls. The bulls were working very well at high elevations and doing what they were supposed to do,” he says.
“We grew and grew, and couldn’t produce enough bulls for the demand. As we were growing, we started feed-efficiency testing–about 20 years ago–using vertical mixers. Actually, without knowing it, we were feed-efficiency testing all along because we were running cows in extremely difficult conditions where the grass was sparse. Our breed-up was controlling the feed-efficiency. The cows that weren’t efficient didn’t get pregnant and fell out of the program. It was easy to find 20 to 30% open. I ran them in that tough a situation on purpose to sort them,” he explains.
Les Dunmire, a rancher at McFadden, Wyoming, has similar ranch conditions and very rough country and started buying bulls from Jensen. “After his cow herd was all our genetics, he called me one day and told me he doesn’t have to start a tractor in December anymore to feed cows. He doesn’t start feeding until February. He increased the number of cows he was running from 1200 to 1800. I realized we had created something special; we’d created feed efficiency without even knowing it.”
At that point he began pursuing this in earnest and bought a GrowSafe system to test the cattle. “We were the only seedstock Angus producer in the U.S. at that point that owned a GrowSafe system. We also continued to test with our vertical mixers. This doesn’t test a specific individual animal but can test a herd and see how they did this year versus last year, on the exact same ration. We’ve done that for many years now and the results have been phenomenal,” he says.
“We diligently study genetics to find any outside genetics that can actually be feed efficient with our conditions and work in our herd. That’s how we’ve gained the efficiency we have today,” says Jensen.
At high elevation, the herd has also been receiving PAP-testing for many years. “We were the first ones to come up with standards. Most people don’t want standards; they just want to sell a bull with acceptable numbers. We have moved those standards up and we believe that cattle have to be at the higher elevation for a minimum of 70 days before being tested—and they have to be at 7000 feet or above, for an accurate test. After years and years of PAP-testing I don’t think there is any doubt that we’ve had more bulls PAP-tested above 7000 feet than anyone in the world. We’ve done a lot of research, and today we run our bulls at 7600 feet for 120 days prior to testing,” he says.
“Very few people with a registered herd would try to run their bulls at that elevation for 120 days because too many would die. It’s just an everyday operating procedure on our ranch, however, and that way the tests have maximum accuracy.”
Since these cattle are so feed efficient, this year he decided to change the focus to “environmentally friendly beef” knowing that many of the people that buy beef believe in global warming. “Regardless of reality, this trend is not going away and we need to be telling people that we have environmentally friendly beef. Because of what we have done, we have databases that can prove that we have cattle that are 30% more feed efficient—and they will create less greenhouse gasses and smaller carbon footprint,” he explains.
“There has not been very much done in terms of feed efficiency in beef cattle, but if you look at feed efficiency in pigs and dairy, they have changed. Today in dairy cattle, they believe they have 74% less carbon footprint that they did in 1944. We know we have created cattle with less carbon footprint but we don’t know what that number is because nobody is really measuring feed efficiency in beef cattle,” he says.
“With the high-elevation PAP test and the hardiness in our cattle, we have eliminated instances of sick and dying animals. We have less sickness and death loss because of how we have selected and raised these cattle. Thus there is less need for antibiotics, less need to put cattle through the chute, and better over-all animal husbandry. We are trying to help the consumer understand this, with the Environmentally-Friendly Beef brand that we are going to push. We want people to know that our cattle help them fix the planet. People need to have beef, to survive.” These animals can be raised in terrain that can’t grow crops for human food; people won’t have enough food without livestock turning grass into food we can eat.
“We are going to do our part, and trying to change the aura of the beef industry so that the people who now hate us will start loving us. No longer do we have ‘bad’ cows that ruin the environment. We have the new cattle that will save the world. I think we can change public perception of our industry in a positive way, and I know there is a huge market for environmentally-friendly beef,” he says.
“Every single thing we’ve done in our breeding program has been to create cattle that would make more profit for our customers so, unlike the rest of the breed that has been spending money on doing haircuts and hoof trimming to make their cattle pretty, we spend our money testing for feed efficiency and high-elevation PAP testing—not just a feel good number. We also started offering the nation’s only 4-year guarantee on the bulls we sell. I believe we have the most advanced bull-development system in the world; all our young bulls are on 50-60 acre pastures with sand/gravel/rocks and have to walk a ways to water. They are in real world conditions every day of their life, making strong feet and legs so they can go out and do their job,” he says.
These cattle dominate for profit-ability on the ranch and in the feedlot because of their feed conversion and low cost of gain. “The surprising thing is that these cattle are also on top with their carcass traits. They fit really well for the Walmart Prime Pursuit Program. Most of our cattle now go 100% Choice or better. One feedlot owner told us that these have been the number one, two and three pens he’s ever fed,” says Jensen.
“When we were creating feed efficiency, any time you try to create a trait that no one else has, you don’t really know what you are doing. Even with the PAP testing we led the way into uncharted territory and we were not sure where it would go. When there is no one willing to do what you do, you aren’t sure whether you will end up going off a cliff or going into greener pastures. We thought before we started feed efficiency testing that we probably had some of the most functional cattle in the world, but as we started trait-breeding to get into more feed efficiency, we ended up with some traits we were not excited about. But now we have cattle that will top everything for feed efficiency, high-elevation, and carcass not to mention better feet and legs. They are dominating in every area,” he says.
“After leaving the mainstream industry and going out on our own, trying to make a product no one else was going to make, we believe we now have an animal that is not only very marketable and looks good and is very functional, but these cattle are also healthier and more feed efficient,” he says.
“We are almost a closed herd; we don’t use much outside genetics anymore because we just can’t find the kind we want. When you do that, your EPDs and numbers tend to fall apart. For instance if you have a 12-year-old cow, she will never have the EPDs she deserves because she is too old. Even though the performance is there, it just doesn’t stay there on paper.”
He sent some semen to a ranch in Oregon that had a 300-head test. “On that bull, in their 300-head contemporary group, his calves blew them away on weaning weights. Those calves were 105 and 106.When you have a 300-head contemporary group, if you can have some animals jump out there and go 102 or 103% above, it’s outstanding, and these went 105 and 106. One was a 930-pound calf with no supplement, and an 868-pound calf with no supplement. These cattle will not only work right here in our harsh environment, but can go up against some of the elite sires in the breed and dominate by that much,” says Jensen.
“Real world testing is what’s important. A customer in Kansas called me up last summer and wanted to tell me that our bulls had changed his life. Now that he has 100% our genetics, he said his weaning weights went up and he had the best set of calves in the country. Even though we do not conform to all the things the Angus Association does today, the results we are seeing in the real world are better and tell us we are heading in the right direction,” he says.
Along with the way his cattle perform for his commercial customers, his goal is to brand the name “Environmentally Friendly Beef” because he knows that feed efficiency means less greenhouse gas, smaller carbon footprint, healthier cattle with less sickness, and fewer antibiotics. “We know we have that desirable product, and we are thinking about direct marketing to the millennials in the cities. I am not sure exactly where we are going with this, but we want to brand the name first—since it is true and it is real,” he says.
“For several years we’ve wanted to run with this but we were afraid to because we thought it would drive off some of our good old customers if we said anything about being environmentally friendly. We finally launched it a few months ago, however, and the response has been great so far. People understand. After the election and looking at the way the world is going, they know that we must come to the table with something.”
Cattle that dominate the industry for profitability on the ranch, profitability in the feedlot, and are as good as anything else on carcass and on the rail—that can now be marketed as environmentally friendly—are what producers want. Consumers today are more aware of where their food comes from and are interested in how it was raised.
“If you have cattle that dominate on the ranch, in the feedlot and are at the top for carcass and salability, and can add environmentally friendly to all of that, it puts you way out in front in this race, in end-game product. We want to get to where the pigs, chickens and dairy people are, with a product that does not vary much anymore. We probably have a ways to go because the beef industry is so far behind the rest of the proteins. The end result may have to be a three-way terminal cross (with a very efficient large-framed animal as the terminal sire), but we know that we have the leading product today until we can find something else to cross it with,” he says.
“We are branding our product as Environmentally Friendly Beef, but that wasn’t our goal. We wanted the most profitable animals for our customers all the way through, and because of what we’ve done, this is now the product we have today.” Testimonials from many bull customers are very convincing that accomplishing this is possible.
“The number one economic indicator on any ranch is feed efficiency, since feed is the biggest cost. A feed efficient cow is any cow (regardless of whether she is large or small) that can do more on less—and that’s what it’s all about.”
April 2021
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