The Foyle Food Group’s ‘Farms of Excellence’ in Co. Tyrone, hosted a farm walk on Wednesday, April 10, with a US cattle rancher, renowned for his work in breeding feed-efficient cattle, in attendance.
The guest speaker was Jim Jensen who is the owner of Lucky 7 Angus, a 6-generation family ranch located high in the mountains of Boulder, Wyoming in the US.
He graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Ag Business from the University of Wyoming in 1988 and then went on to be a Professional Rodeo Cowboy where he lived and travelled with World Champions.
In 1993, Jim began to put his efforts full-time into his home ranch where he began to focus on breeding functional, efficient cattle that could perform in the harsh conditions where his home ranch is located.
Jim has expanded his farming operation over the years and also has a ranch in Oklahoma. His cattle-breeding operation encompasses approximately 2,500 breeding cows.
Jim was invited by Foyle Food Group as a guest speaker to this year’s British Society of Animal Science (BSAS) Conference which took place in Belfast during the week.
Ahead of his appearance at the conference, he visited the Foyle farm and spoke to a number of stakeholders in the beef sector in Northern Ireland about his views on beef farming, sustainability and the environment.
After his presentation, many of the questions from the audience asked the rancher for his views on the relevance of his work in the US and how applicable it is to farming in Northern Ireland and what traits he believes a functional breeding beef cow should posses.
Longevity of breeding cattle and feed efficiency were two traits he places huge emphasis on.
One farmer in attendance asked him for his views on cow size. The US cattle rancher said: “When you get into feed efficiency, it’s always the common misconception that feed efficiency is the size of a cow. That’s not right, it’s never been right at all.
“Scientifically you must find out how many pounds [of feed] the cow eats per bodyweight.”
The US rancher, who is renowned for the efficiency of his breeding Angus cattle said: “Our cows are right in the middle [as regards size]. They’re probably smaller than a lot of the cattle here that we have seen.
“We would be in the middle-framed cows, we’re finding that really big cattle, what we call the terminal-cross cattle, don’t last, especially in our conditions.
“The middle-framed cow, we’re finding that cow can be feed efficient in the feedlot, she can be feed efficient on grass and can stay in the herd for a long time.”
“We have studied the small-framed cattle that some of the world has said were feed efficient and they’re not good at all.
“When you do feed efficiency, you can test from your environment, that’s the beautiful thing about it.
“If you have an environment that requires big cows, you can have big cows, just find the feed-efficient ones. If you have an environment that has to have small-framed cows, just find the feed-efficient small-framed cows. The answer is, our cattle stayed in the middle [for size].
Another farmer asked him what the calving interval is on his farm and what age he calves down his heifers at.
He said: “We calve our heifers at two-year olds, a lot of them will be actually younger than two years old. We calve our heifers early which would be January/February and then we calve our cows in March and April therefore a lot of those cows’ calves which would be heifers now have to calve at 21-22 months instead of 24 months.
Commenting on the calving interval in his herd he said: “They go 365 days but they may move past that because they purposely calve in January the first year and purposely calve in March the second year.
“It’s not as easy as you would think, it takes a little bit of management. It probably could even be done better, we don’t like to put a lot of extra feed in our cattle and the grasses we have are considerably less quality than you guys do [NI farmers] but we can not graze out cows out in the winter we have to feed them because we have snow so we actually are able to feed more energy when we need to.
“With the right genetics it’s not real difficult [calving at 24 months].
Another farmer asked him if he could use genotyping to determine his more-efficient animals.
He said: “I’m going to say no and this is going to be controversial because the rest of the world hasn’t done enough feed-efficiency testing to really know what they’re doing.
“Genotyping in America even in the traits that everybody thinks are really good, a lot of those traits aren’t that accurate and genotyping as you go forward without phenotyping will loose its way. In three generations, genotyping without phenotyping will loose its way.
Commenting on the marbling traits in the beef from the cattle he breeds he said: “We’re creating animals that make the rancher money, cows that can live longer breed and raise a good calf year after year.
“We never chased marbling, only after we tested our cattle for feed efficiency that the surprise came we had the carcass traits of some of the best breeders in the world, we had no idea.
“I’m not sire exactly where our marbling came from, I’m not a marbling guy. I don’t think marbling is the greatest thing in the world. I think there’s a way and a reason for it but I’m not that guy. I don’t know why our cattle are marbling so well but I can tell you that feed efficiency didn’t eliminate it like some people might say it would.”
The US-based cattle rancher praised the work of beef farmers in Northern Ireland saying “you guys are doing a lot of things right” and added that he believes the farmers he has met in Northern Ireland “are much more willing to try and go forward than the people in the US”.
