Changing the Industry One Bull at a Time 

With feed typically around 70% of a cattle operation’s total cost, Jim Jensen of Lucky 7 Angus knew this was where he needed to focus his genetics to achieve the ultimate goal: making his customers the most profitable in the livestock industry.  

“A light went off in my head — there’s no other way I can make my customers more money than focusing on feed efficiency,” Jensen said. “It’s the lowest hanging fruit, and nobody in the world is really tackling this.” 

Lucky 7 Angus went all in on this goal. 

“We got serious about working towards this because I was serious about making people more money,” he said. “The goal of our entire program has never been about us, our ranch. It has always been about the customers and how we could make them more money.” 

Pushing Industry Standards 

For Lucky 7 Angus, this seedstock operation raises and breeds Angus bulls for commercial cattlemen in what’s known as one of the toughest places in the U.S. to raise cattle — an area known as the “Nation’s Icebox” in Boulder, Wyoming. This area is rough with both high elevation and extreme temperature conditions. Jensen and his family — his wife, Jamie, and five children — are fifth- and sixth-generation ranchers, building on the family operation that began in 1895. The family ranch has grown, with ranches now in Boulder and Riverton, Wyoming, and in Oklahoma, and includes another family who runs the feed efficiency sector of the business — Steve and Delayne Stajduhar. 

“From Day One, we said we would run our cattle tougher than any other operation in the United States,” Jensen said. “We had to because of our location. We needed to raise bulls that could hold up better for commercial cattlemen, including ourselves.” 

More feed efficient was the end goal, but feed efficiency is complex with no one-size-fits-all formula. In fact, while there are genetic markers claiming to identify cattle that are associated with feed efficiency, they currently cannot replace the need for feed efficiency testing. 

“The beef industry is far behind the rest of the world in feed efficiency,” Jensen said. “It’s tough to set benchmarks and it’s a moving target. Most people don’t have the ability to test it, and if they do test for it, they have no idea how to evaluate the data to make sure that it’s recurring. There is also no EPD out there capable of creating or predicting feed efficiency. When I first started 25 years ago it was really tough for us to figure out. We still have a lot of things to learn about feed efficiency.” 

There were some key changes in their journey to more feed-efficient cattle.  

First, a transition from commercial Hereford cattle to Angus was a necessity.  

“We used to be 100% commercial Hereford for years,” Jensen said. “But we couldn’t find bulls that could take the condition they were raised in here, so we decided to create our own Angus breed.” 

Furthermore, being high-elevation, above 7,000 feet, can cause cattle to become ill from brisket disease (also known as high altitude disease) and lead to death, so Lucky 7 Angus also focused on Pulmonary Arterial Pressure (PAP) testing. To protect their high-elevation breeders, Jensen was the first seedstock operation to set minimum standards for PAP testing.  

“Almost everybody does high-elevation PAP testing, but we do it in a way that is truly accurate and have stuck to it,” Jensen said. “The number of animals tested under these standards is unmatched in the industry. PAP testing is not only important for high elevation, but what we have found is there is a lot less sickness and death loss everywhere — even at lower elevations — because of it.” 

Lucky 7 Angus also took on a bold approach to feeding. Rather than heavily supplement cattle, Lucky 7 Angus’ approach was to feed less than the industry’s nutritional requirements.  

“When you start a program saying you’re going to run cattle tougher than any other person, you are basically saying you’re going to feed them less, but we know we’re not feeding them enough if they learn how to eat barbed wire,” Jensen said. “This approach is totally different than how the rest of the world has designed their cattle, and, most often, the seedstock producer feeds more than anybody. We went the opposite way.” 

In 2002, Jensen started feed efficiency testing by purchasing large vertical mixers to know how much every cow, calf and bull on the place ate. In 2009, they were the first Angus-only seedstock producer in the U.S. to purchase a GrowSafe feed intake monitoring system. Initially, Jensen saw this as a promotional tool, but it soon became clear that their methods were working. 

“Every nutritionist thought we were crazy until they started seeing and hearing results,” Jensen said. “When talking to customers, we started finding out our strategy did work. We heard customers saying things like, ‘I’m running 1,800 cows now when I used to manage 1,200 — just by switching to your genetics.'”  

Despite this, Jensen knew that he could say they were more feed efficient from their years of data on the ranch, but he wanted to be able to prove it.  

“I decided we were going to feed out some of our genetics to offer proof other than just the data on our ranch,” he said. “We were the first seedstock operation to test for feed efficiency in real-world conditions.” 

These measures Lucky 7 Angus has taken in producing their genetics and pushing standards gave them enough confidence in their bulls to offer the nation’s first four-year guarantee. 

“This guarantee was started about 15 years ago and it is amazing how well this has worked for us and our customers,” Jensen said. “Our number one goal is to make bulls that will hold up and profit ranchers in tough conditions.” 

Since starting the guarantee, this has never been something that Jensen wanted to be exclusive to his operation. In fact, he encourages others in the industry to use their four-year guarantee for their own program. So far, few have implemented it, which is discouraging, but he’s hoping we can all work together to push seedstock producers to make this a standard — and change the industry for the better.  

Bigger Than Feed Efficiency  

Lucky 7 Angus’ approach has attracted some national and international attention. 

“We’re getting calls from all over the U.S. and beyond,” Jensen said. “Not only did we make the cattle the most profitable for the rancher, but we’re also getting cows that live longer, stay healthier, have less sickness, less death loss and produce more pounds of beef with fewer inputs. And all of this equals less greenhouse emissions, less methane production.” 

Their cattle are now seen as more environmentally friendly, which has especially drawn interest from abroad with increasing pressure from environmentalists. Recently, Jensen was hired to speak and educate for a seven-day road show through the U.K., and following, international visitors from Northern Ireland came to the U.S. to see Lucky 7 Angus cattle. The group also visited numerous feedlots and some cutting-edge facilities across Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and Nebraska.  

“But when they saw cattle with our genetics, they couldn’t believe what they were seeing — the most consistent, nicest looking cattle they had seen in the entire tour, according to the visitors from Northern Ireland,” Jensen said. “The cattle are achieving much better results than any other cattle with or without hormones, and in a much shorter time period, both days on feed and age of slaughter.”  

Jensen continues to think about the bigger picture for the advancement of the industry. 

“It’s all absolutely incredible what we are seeing, to the extent we’re changing the name of our breed of cattle to DaVinci Cattle,” he said. “In dogs, they have something called the Hangin Tree Cowdog, which is simply a dog that has four different breeds in it, but it does something different, so they called it a new breed. Our cattle do things other breeds can’t.” 

Of course, there are some days when Jensen still wakes up with doubts, but his family’s hard work and customers are the reason he keeps going. 

“If there are ever days that I doubt what we’re doing, our customers give us a reason to keep going in this direction,” Jensen said. “Every single one of our customers tells us the exact same story that I do every time — these genetics are working to make ranchers more money. This is not just my story, now it’s everybody’s story.”