Crowfoot cattle herd was owned by four principles, Crowfoot Cattle Company, Jay-Jay Farms, Crowfoot Valley Ranch and WJ Ranch. In December 2006 we dispersed 1120 head of bred females. We kept all the heifer calves to rebuild the herd. Also a small number of cows were purchased at the dispersal by three of the four partners and then the heifer calves divided to individual owners. Today Crowfoot Cattle Company sales include cattle from the three separate owners. Crowfoot Cattle Company and Crowfoot Valley Ranch herds are comingled and managed as one herd while the herd of WJ Ranch is run separately.
All three herds are of the same genetic base and we use all the same herd sires. The combined herd at Crowfoot Ranch calve in February to March while the herd at WJ Ranch calve in April to May. This is a very good test for the breeding ability, fleshing ability, and structural soundness of our herd sires as well as allows us good evaluation of a large number of progeny in two diverse environments within one year.
Hello from Crowfoot Valley Ranch. We are Chris and Jen Jensen, 3-year-old Lauren and 2-year-old Daniel. Chris has been in the Jensen family cattle business his whole life. In 1996, he bought his first few purebred Red Angus cows from Dallas and participated in purchasing the start of our purebred Black Angus herd from Tom Walling in 1999. During our crazy herd dispersal in 2006, Crowfoot Valley Ranch purchased back 60 females, tattooing the calves XO. Using these cows and our share of the ’06 heifer calves, we were able to help continue the Crowfoot purebred Red and Black Angus program. Together with the rest of the Crowfoot crew, our goal is to maintain these unique, high-quality, Angus genetics so that we can continue to provide our customers with a solid, consistent product, year after year.
Hello from the Johnsen Family, As you read in Dallas’ write up we are one of the co-operator herds of Crowfoot. We are located in central Alberta, 20 miles west of Innisfail. We started purchasing red females from Dallas in 1996 and were a part of the purchase of the entire Walling Angus herd in1999. Our cattle were all registered under the Crowfoot prefix and followed Dallas’ program using the same herdsires and AI program. We moved the cows to April/May calving and supplied the 2 yr old bulls for the annual bull sale. We dispersed our cows with Crowfoot in 2006 and kept our heifers to rebuild the herd. We are now registered under WJ Ranch. We have the same genetic base as Crowfoot and continue to work closely with Chris and Dallas. We still share herd sires and like the fact that we can compare the performance of these cattle in two different environments. We are forage based and feed very little grain as our winter ration is haylage and 1st cut hay. There is no special treatment at our place and if the cattle can’t perform on our minimalist program they find their way to the cull pen. In our environment good feet and udders are essential and our main genetic focus, followed by raising thick, easy fleshing, moderate frame cattle.
