SECTION B Working With Mother Nature LU Ranch raises cattle with a focus on land stewardship The LU Ranch, originally called LU Sheep Company, is a fourth-generation cattle ranch in the foothills of the Absaroka Mountains in northwest Wyoming. DJ Healy, the current ranch manager, explains Dave Dickie founded the LU Sheep Company in 1899 when he bought several homesteads in the area. Over time, Dickie expanded the operation, and at one point, he ran 19,600 head of sheep and 800 cattle. “In 1935, the ranch was sold to my great-grandfather Alexander Healy, and it has been in our family ever since. Alexander’s son Dan Healy, my grandfather, took over the ranch in the 1950s and ran it until 1990 when my dad Mike took over. My dad retired in 2018, and then I took over,” says DJ. Switching to cattle For a while the ranch raised both sheep and cattle, before eventually turning to just cattle, but the corporation’s official name is still the LU Sheep Company. “In the early 1980s we sold all of our sheep. Today, we are a commercial cow/ calf operation, but my grandfather started a small herd of purebred Angus to raise our own bulls for the commercial herd as well,” DJ says. Under his grandfather’s management – from 1952 to 1990 – the ranch built perimeter fences to help manage grazing. When Mike took over in 1990, he started working on a number of projects, including water development, better range management and improving herd genetics. Over the next 30 years, the LU Ranch developed a reputation for conservation, stewardship and an elite herd of cattle. “When my dad took over, he changed the cattle genetics. We’d been having health issues with the cattle due to inbreeding with straight Angus, including brisket disease at our high elevation,” DJ explains. “My dad embraced the idea of heterosis and crossbreeding. He
worked with several bull providers and eventually settled on Leachman Cattle in the early 2000s because they focus on heterosis and data-driven performance.” “Since then, we’ve been breeding our Angus-based herd to Leachman Stabilizer bulls, using DNA testing and data-driven decision-making to ensure our herd has superior genetics,” he adds. Now the herd is a composite of Simmental and several other breeds with Angus. Current cattle operation According to DJ, cattle at LU Ranch are born and raised on the open range. More than 1,400 mother cows spend summers grazing the rough Absaroka foothills, moving up to the Shoshone National Forest and then wintering in the desert badlands of the Big Horn Basin. The mature cows calve in April and May, and heifers historically started calving at the end of February. “This year we changed to a later date, because the last few winters have been really hard,” DJ notes. The cows have good grass in summer and calves are weaned in late August and early September. “We wean early because we retain ownership of the calves, send them to a feedlot in Nebraska and sell them on the rail,” he explains. “We get paid based on carcass results and the market at the time. We try to get them fed out to synchronize when the market is the best, selling finished animals as early in the summer as possible to hit the peak of the market.” He continues, “We try to keep challenging old assumptions to see if what we are doing is the best way for us. Our cattle are like wild animals – they live in the Greater Yellowstone Area. They have to fend for themselves and deal with grizzlies and wolves. A mean, aggressive cow is a good thing.” Utilizing available technology DJ notes his father viewed ranching as a business Continued on next page
“Caring for the ranch, the people we live and work with and the land is both our responsibility and our passion. We do this by combining new ideas, techniques and technology with tried-and-true methods to constantly improve our ability to bring high-quality beef to market using sustainable ranching practices.” ~DJ HEALY~
Big country – Today, the LU Ranch runs more than 1,400 mother cows in the foothills of the Absaroka Range. Cows are moved to the Shoshone National Forest and winter in the desert badlands of the Big Horn Basin. Courtesy photo
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