Why We Still Use Genetics from 1958 (And What That Says About Progress)
Jorgensen Land & Cattle ·
In the 1950’s, Jorgensen Land and Cattle started keeping individual cow cards.
Handwritten records. Birth weights, calving notes, dam performance, sire identification. Nothing sophisticated by today’s standards. Just the discipline to write it down, every animal, every year, without exception.
That practice did not start because someone anticipated DNA testing or genomic EPDs or computerized herd management. It started because the people running the operation believed you could not make better decisions next year than you made this year unless you knew why this year turned out the way it did.
65+ years later, that record is still running. And the genetics from the animals recorded in those early years are still present, in traceable lines, in the bulls Jorgensen sells today.
That is not nostalgia. That is the compounding result of a decision made before most of today’s producers were born.
What Continuous Records Actually Produce
Most cattle operations have records. Very few have continuous, individual-animal records spanning multiple decades with consistent methodology.
The difference matters more than it might seem.
A ten-year record tells you which animals performed well over the last ten years. A sixty-year record tells you which genetic lines hold up across droughts, market cycles, management changes, and the kind of environmental variability that any decade-long snapshot will miss. It tells you which traits are durable and which ones were artifacts of a particular period of good conditions.
It also tells you which lines to avoid. Some genetic combinations look promising in the short term and reveal problems over generations. Continuous records catch those patterns. Shorter records miss them entirely.
The angus cattle genetics that have persisted at Jorgensen from the early decades are not there because of sentiment. They are there because the records confirmed their value across conditions that no single generation of management could have fully tested.
The Difference Between Progress and Chasing Trends
The seedstock industry has seen a lot of trends over the decades. Frame size has gone up and come back down. Emphasis has shifted between growth traits and carcass traits and back again. EPD accuracy has improved substantially with genomic testing. New trait measurements get added to sale catalogs regularly.
Some of that represents genuine progress. Genomic-enhanced EPDs at yearling age carry accuracy that previously required years of progeny records to achieve. That is a real advancement, and Jorgensen uses it.
Some of it is trend-chasing. Operations that dramatically restructured their programs to chase the trait of the decade, only to reverse course when the market moved, do not have the same record continuity that a focused, long-term program produces. Their EPDs may be current. Their underlying genetic consistency is not.
Genuine progress in a registered angus program looks like incremental, documented improvement in the traits that matter across many years. It does not look like dramatic pivots. The animals that were excellent in 1975 had real traits that made them excellent. The animals that are excellent today have real traits too. The question is whether the program can connect those dots.
What 1950’s Genetics Means in Practice Today
When Jorgensen references genetics from the 1950’s, the practical meaning is this: there are bulls selling today whose pedigrees trace back, in documented lines, to animals recorded in those early cow cards. The traits that made those foundation animals valuable, fertility, efficiency, structural soundness, milking ability, were selected for consistently across every generation in between.
That is not the same as claiming that 1950’s cattle were better than today’s cattle. They were not. The genetic progress achieved through seventy years of intentional selection has produced meaningfully superior animals by virtually every measurable standard.
What it means is that the selection pressure has been consistent and documented. When a bull’s dam has a twelve-year production record and his grandam had an eleven-year record and the line traces back to foundation females with documented performance, the EPD accuracy conversation is different. You are not estimating from a small sample. You are working from a deep record.
That depth is what the Ideal Beef Evaluation draws on. It is not possible to build a framework like that in ten years or twenty. It requires the kind of record continuity that starts with someone writing on a cow card in the 1950’s and does not stop.
Why Most Operations Cannot Replicate This
Building a seventy-year record requires decisions that conflict with short-term optimization.
It requires keeping cows that are genetically valuable even when they are not the most fashionable phenotype in a given decade. It requires resisting the temptation to dramatically restructure the program when a new trend emerges. It requires treating the record itself as an asset worth protecting, which means not skipping years, not cutting corners on documentation, and not letting the data infrastructure lapse when it gets inconvenient.
Most operations, even well-run ones, have not maintained that discipline across multiple generations of ownership and management. The records get interrupted. A drought year gets skipped. Management changes and the methodology shifts. The continuity breaks, and with it the ability to make comparisons across decades.
Jorgensen has had the advantage of multi-generational family ownership with a consistent commitment to the record. That is not something a newer operation can buy or fast-track. It is the result of decisions made repeatedly, over a very long time, by people who understood that the record was the program.
What This Means for a Bull-Buying Decision
For a producer evaluating angus cattle genetics today, the practical implication is straightforward.
An EPD calculated from a deep, multi-generational record in a consistent environment is a different product than an EPD calculated from a few years of data in a single herd. The number may look similar in a sale catalog. The reliability behind it is not the same.
When you are making a decision that will influence your calf crop for the next five years and your cow herd for the next fifteen, the depth of the record behind the genetics matters. It is not the only thing that matters. But it is one of the variables that separates operations that can genuinely back their claims from operations that are selling you a well-designed catalog.
Jorgensen’s team is happy to walk through what that record looks like for any bull currently available. Reach out at jorgensenfarms.com/contact-us and ask to see the history behind the genetics you are considering.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do long-term genetics records matter when buying angus cattle?
Long-term records reveal which genetic lines perform consistently across varying conditions, not just in good years or favorable environments. They also identify which lines develop problems over generations that shorter records would miss. A bull backed by decades of continuous performance data carries a different kind of reliability than one from a program with a shorter history.
How does Jorgensen use historical records in current bull selection?
The individual animal records dating to 1958 inform current selections by providing multi-generational performance data on the genetic lines present in today’s bulls. Dam and grandam production records, sire progeny performance, and trait consistency across generations all factor into how bulls are evaluated before they go to sale.
What is the Ideal Beef Evaluation and how does it relate to historical data?
The Ideal Beef Evaluation is Jorgensen’s framework for combining EPD data, DNA testing, feed efficiency records, phenotype scores, and individual animal history into a single evaluation. The historical records provide the depth that makes the framework meaningful, connecting current performance expectations to documented outcomes across decades.
Where can I find angus cattle with multi-generational performance records in South Dakota?
Jorgensen Land and Cattle in Ideal, South Dakota has maintained individual animal records since 1958, with registered angus bulls backed by continuous performance data, DNA testing, and feed efficiency records. Contact the team at jorgensenfarms.com/contact-us to learn about current availability.