What Exactly Is a JLC Lease Bull?
Jorgensen Land & Cattle ·
What Exactly Is a JLC Lease Bull? Where He Comes From and How He Gets to You
Ask Andy Tegethoff what a lease bull is, and he starts at the very beginning: JLC's own registered cowherd. On The Source, he walked through the whole process, "from nuts to bolts, tail to mouth."
The Genetic Base
JLC runs a registered cowherd of roughly 1,100 to 1,500 cows, which provides the genetic foundation for everything the company does. Those cows produce around 600 or more bull calves a year, and JLC whittles that group down to the top 200 registered yearling bulls, which go into the Top Cut Angus yearling bull sale held the third Monday of every April.
Genetic Partners
The bulk of the lease bulls come from JLC's genetic partners, a group of about 18 to 20 cooperator herds that JLC has hand-picked. Many have been in the program 20, 30, or 40 years. They buy JLC's top-end bulls out of the April sale, breed their own cows (which have been heavily influenced by JLC genetics for years), and keep replacement heifers back. Then JLC buys the bull calves back from them, starting with fall calves in July and weaned calves in the fall.
Fully Documented
Each of those bulls is DNA tested through AgBoost and Zoetis as part of the Ideal Beef Evaluation. JLC knows the sire and dam through parentage matching, and every bull carries a full suite of EPDs, including carcass traits, weaning weight, and yearling weight. As Andy puts it, "It's not just some commercial bull that we don't know anything about and we hope he works out for you."
That's what separates a JLC lease bull from the stigma that lease bulls are leftovers. These are bulls built to be lease bulls, not bulls that missed a sale and got held back.
Stage One: Weaned Bull Calf
The bull arrives as a weaned calf from a genetic partner and is fed up through the winter. JLC culls out the poor ones, which Andy says isn't many, and keeps the rest.
Stage Two: The Yearling Lease
As a yearling, the bull gets a semen test (and a trich test if he's headed to a state like Texas that requires it, even on a 14-month-old virgin bull). He then goes out on lease for 60 to 90 days, anywhere from the Midwest to Texas.
Stage Three: Back to JLC
When he returns in the fall, he goes through the feedlot, gets reconditioned, and is semen and trich tested again. Then comes the culling process: JLC checks feet and soundness, treats any injured bull that might recover, and cuts a bull loose if he fails a semen test twice.
Stage Four: The Two-Year-Old Lease and the SmartBull
The bulls that pass are leased again the following spring and summer as two-year-olds, in the same way. When they come back, the survivors, now about 30 months old, enter the SmartBull program, where they're sold in the South and West: Texas, Louisiana, Florida, California, and beyond. JLC's sale season runs through the year, ending in April.
By the time a bull reaches that final step, he has been culled two or three times. What's left is, in Andy's words, "just a rock-solid bull that's gonna work for you."