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Meet the Rancher – Jerry Adamson BY HANNAH JOHLMAN, FREELANCE WRITER C herry County, Neb., is the largest county in the state, with nearly 4 million acres of prime grass country and more mother cows than any other they were in a more confined area to keep the breeding animals from getting too fat. The trip resulted in

the couple purchasing embryos and semen out of a bull called Brenton, the highest performing bull they saw. At the time, Jerry and his son, Todd, were noticing some is sues in their cow herd. For many years they had been taught that the biggest weaning weight heifer calves were the best re

county in the United States. More than 100 years ago, Dan Adamson arrived in Cherry County from Ireland, and his offspring have remained there ever since. His third, fourth and fifth generations currently live and work on the family ranch near Cody, Neb. When third-generation Jerry Ad amson was growing up on the ranch, Cherry County was in the heart of Hereford country, but it wasn’t long before Rocking J Ranch began to tran sition to black-hided cattle: Angus, Simmental-Angus, Limousin-Angus and Chianina-Angus. The Adamsons have always looked for efficient cattle, and they found them in 1999 at the National Western Stock Show right around the time Ab erdeen cattle were making their way to the United States. “[We] and some other cattlemen were interested in them and, as a result, we went over to Australia to see them,” Jerry says. “The tour was educational. We had never seen cattle as small framed as the purebred Ab erdeens.” While in Australia, Jerry and his wife, Deloris, found that Aberdeen cattle were so easy fleshing that they actually had to exercise them if

Since 2000, Rocking J Ranch has utilized Aberdeen influence to breed replacements that have resulted in a smaller-framed cow herd that weans heavier calves using less grass.

placements and that the heaviest bull calves should be retained as bulls for large-framed cows. “Therefore, it didn’t make any dif ference what breed was out there, they were going to get big, and we found that, because of that selection criteria, our cows were too big and they weren’t paying their way on this grass,” Todd says. “We couldn’t ex pect a 1,400-pound cow to eat grass and wean 50 percent of her body weight.” In Australia, efficiency was mea sured not by pounds at weaning, but by how many pounds of beef could be raised per acre of grass. Jerry began

to realize that there was a tipping point (similar to fertilizing a corn field, where efficiency diminishes), and be gan switching the ranch’s focus to the Australian method. The Aberdeen cattle he saw in Australia reminded Jerry of the first pen of Angus cattle he showed in Chi cago more than 50 years earlier that weighed 1,050 pounds. When cross bred to Chianina-Angus, bulls were capable of weaning calves weighing more than half their body weight. “Not that we will get back to doing exactly that, but we knew we had to get back to the smaller-framed cow, bred to a crossbred bull of some sort,” Todd says. “We needed to get back to that efficiency to best sell our grass.” Initially, the Adamsons crossed full blood Aberdeen bulls with their first calf heifers, a win-win for calving ease and delivering a smaller-framed cow. The best heifers were kept as replace ments, and the process continued as they worked to cycle the cow herd. Eventually, they switched to halfblood Aberdeen-Angus bulls to keep the resulting calves from getting too small to fit their end goal. “Our intent from the get go was to create a more efficient herd that would fit into the commercial indus try,” Todd says. “The [Aberdeen-influ enced] cattle are easier fleshing and, in general, they will wean a higher percentage of their body weight than the average cow.”

Adamson family patriarch, Jerry Adamson, was one of the first to bring Aberdeen semen and embryos to the United States from Australia.

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