Crowfoot Cattle Company was founded in 1980 when Dallas put together a small group of Red Angus cows. The herd multiplied in the 80's and bulls were sold private treaty on the farm. Some of our original customers are still with us today.
In the early nineties Black Angus were added with the purchase of small groups of heifers from several reputable breeders. In 1999, Crowfoot Cattle Co. (Dallas), Jay-Jay Farms (brother Jackie and his son Chris), and WJ Ranch (Johnny, Wendy and Matt Johnsen ) together purchased the entire Walling Angus herd from Winifred Montana. T his purchase doubled our herd to over 800 head. It was an exciting time as we trucked 400 head down the steep and curvy road across the Missouri river and on into Alberta. Tom and Gladys Walling ranched south of the Missouri River in what they called the Missouri breaks and what we thought looked like some pretty tough country. For over thirty years Tom ran a tight ship and diligently bred cattle to suit that harsh environment. We were so impressed with the quality and efficiency of his cows and how well they adapted to our environment that we continued with even more fervour to pursue that same style and type in our breeding program.
August 19th, 1999 was a rainy day - the last one for close to three years. We were soon reminded of the value of fleshing ability, balanced traits, optimum milk and fertility. For six years following the Walling purchase we calved between 600 and 700 hundred cows from late Jan to mid March at our home ranch in Standard, AB and another 250 at the WJ Ranch in Spruceview, AB.
In 2005 we encountered a serious personal crisis which required a huge sum of money...the old adage "hang on to the cows tail and she will pull you through" proved to be valid! We dispersed our entire mature cow herd (1100 head). The Lord blessed us with a very good sale and we came up with enough money to live through the crisis. After the mature cow dispersal the three primary owners split up the 600 open heifers and started rebuilding. In addition to the 600 heifer calves we had 80 home grown embryos, a small group of cows that the boys (Matt and Chris) purchased at the sale, and 50 top cows that were purchased at the sale by a couple of good friends of mine and leased back to me.
The moral of the story is if you trust in the Lord and you have some good cows, strong family ties and a few close friends who care about your well being, you can get through almost anything. Today we are back on our feet. I am blessed with a beautiful wife Sandy, our loving family and a cow herd that is even better than the one we had before. Collectively we are calving 700 cows genetically designed to excel on grass and low inputs. We believe that it is not how much money each animal brings you but how much money each animal makes you that counts. If you have a fixed amount of land and feed resources, the bottom line is how much profit per acre do your cows provide? The source of wealth is the soil, the rain and the sunshine. The question is how well do your cows convert that into disposable income? Crowfoot cattle will help you maximize profit per acre.
Thank - you for your interest in our program and looking through our website. Please feel free to call any of us anytime. We are always delighted to visit with other cattlemen and women discussing cattle, ways to improve efficiency, bloodlines, or just the best way to sharpen pencils.
Sincerely;
Dallas Jensen
Hello from Crowfoot Valley Ranch. We are Chris and Jen Jensen, Lauren (5yrs), Daniel (4yrs), and Morgan (2yrs). 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.
