It takes in the region of 20 acres to run a cow-calf pair in the Sandhills of northeastern Nebraska, so a lot of ground is covered by the cow and calf.

Nebraska is home to just over six million cattle, a similar number to Ireland’s national herd. It is the state with the second highest number of cattle in the US and accounts for 7% of the US herd, which is now at its lowest since the early 1950s.

When you stop somewhere in rural Nebraska, it is inevitable that you are going to be asked about your accent, where you’re from and what you are doing there.

When you tell them that you are visiting the Connealy ranch, the next line you hear is likely to be: “I have a Connealy bull,” or: “Our ranch back home has a Connealy bull.” And if they’re not from a farming background, they still know about the Connealy bull sales that take place every March.

Owning a Connealy bull carries a status. The Connealy Angus concept aims to produce an animal that looks good, but with a practical approach to producing the final product – a high-quality carcase – as efficiently as possible.

Bull sale and auction

The Connealy ranch runs 2,000 pedigree registered cows and is owned and run by Jerry Connealy and his wife, Sharon. Their son, Jed, and his wife, Kara, are heavily involved in the ranch, where there are another six full-time employees.

Every March sees one of the best-known Angus bull sales in the world take place on the Connealy ranch. Between 450 and 550 bulls are sold on the day, with six to 10 bulls sold for AI studs.

At the most recent sale, 462 bulls were sold, with an average price of $10,512 (€7,729). The top bull on the day made $100,000 even (€73,530).

Generally, there are another couple of hundred bulls sold following the sale. However, not all the bulls are sold, as the Connealys give a one-year guarantee with all of their animals, so some remain and are delivered to the buyers if a situation arises.

On the day of the sale, the buyer will leave instructions as to where and when they want the bull. It could be 500 miles away and Jed Connealy will deliver it.

Selling females

Only one registered female per year is sold through what’s known as the “pick of the dam”. If a bull walks through their sales ring, you get the pick of any of their dams. Following the auction, you have two weeks to let Jerry know which dam you want. That’s the only top-end female that is sold from the Connealy ranch each year. This year’s pick sold for $80,000 (€58,824).

Not selling breeding females protects the genetic base of the herd.

“We are a purebred seed stock base. I can’t expect someone coming to me to buy top-end bulls if I’m selling my top-end females,” said Jerry.

He is a firm believer that by keeping his best heifers year on year, he is moving his genetics forward consistently.

The Connealys sell roughly another 200 weanling heifers each year without papers. These are second-cut heifers and they are destined for a feedlot to be finished as commercial animals.

This is exactly what the Connealy ranch is bred for – a high-quality commercial animal which results in a carcase that the consumer wants.

EPD and carcase weight

Expected Progeny Difference (EPD) is a measure that provides an estimate of the genetic value of your animal as a parent. It is a similar concept to our own €uro-Star ratings.

EPDs are calculated for birth, growth, maternal and carcase traits. Jerry’s view is that it is often the case that breeders polarise themselves and either focus too much on the EPD values or too much on phenotype (the physical characteristics determined by genetic make-up and environmental influences).

However, there is a middle ground and this is where Jerry prefers to operate, aiming to marry EPD data with phenotype.

“With the focus on a light birth weight and as much growth as you can get, having a lot of marbling, a big rib-eye and not excessive fat, there is no reason that an animal can’t look a million dollars too,” said Jerry.

The Connealys focus on the end product and this goes a step further than the bulls they sell – it goes as far as the carcase that will be produced by their bulls.

They get a DNA sample of every bull that goes through the sale and, using genomics, they can predict, for example, the size of the rib-eye, back fat and marbling of the progeny of the bulls.

So if Jerry identifies a cow that isn’t producing enough marbling, he will breed her next time to a bull that has a little bit more marbling.

“You have to keep tweaking, but you need to be consistent,” he said.

When you see the paddocks full of cows all with good udders of milk, and all similar in size, you can see what he means by consistency.

When asked what the best cow was, Jerry said: “It’s the cow that breeds back every single year on the first cycle, the first time that she is artificially inseminated.”

According to Jerry, the best cow should have a moderate frame and weigh 1,200-1,225lbs (544-555kg). She should have a lot of body, a lot of depth, flesh easy and have a super udder. She should wean a high percentage of her body weight and the calf should be phenotypically acceptable.

The convenience traits are equally important. She has to have a super disposition, never have to be handled when her calf is born, and have good feet and legs. Then she covers all the bases.

“If you go 300 miles this way or 300 miles that way, it is going to be slightly different. The best cow is probably a cow that you don’t know. She’s the one that gets lost in the herd,” he said.

Breeding

Through his breeding regime and the environment in which his cows are grazed, Jerry delivers a highly fertile and hardy animal. He artificially inseminates every one of his 2,000 breeding cows on the ranch himself.

Jerry feeds a product called Melengestrol Acetate (MGA) for a short period. MGA is not available in Europe. This suppresses oestrus and brings on a false heat. After 21 days, Jerry will start to breed the cows for a period of about 35 days.

“It gives two shots at getting the cows in calf,” he said, as they will cycle twice during this period.

Cows are run in groups of about 250, in 160-acre paddocks. Vasectomised Hereford bulls are used to help identify heat. The red Herefords stand out in the paddocks full of black cows.

With that many cows in a bunch, there is typically more than one in heat and that makes it easier to see them. Typically a conception rate of about 70% is achieved in each of the two cycles, bringing his overall conception rate up to 91%. Often he gets higher than this.

His heifers are all synchronised and calved down at two years of age. The cows that don’t breed are culled on fertility grounds.

“When you do that generation after generation, the result is a much more fertile cow,” said Jerry.

The cow’s temperaments are generally good, so he doesn’t have any problem bringing in cows that are in heat. Each of the paddocks is equipped with a handling facility for AI. The cows are brought in using a quad, so if they are difficult to handle, they don’t get bred and will be culled. This leads to a herd with good fertility and good disposition.

During the 35-day breeding period, he heat-checks at daylight every morning on his quad, on which he covers between 15,000 and 18,000 miles per year.

He brings in the hot cows and puts them in the pen. Following this, he artificially inseminates the cows that he brought in the evening before.

By midday, he does another heat check and by 4pm, he begins to carry out AI on the cows that were brought in that morning and then brings in any other hot cows that will be bred the following morning.

“I think 164 was the most that I bred this year in one day,” he said modestly. The real busy spell lasts only for about 10 to 14 days out of the 35.

How they got there

Jerry’s father, Marty, who sadly passed away two years ago, was proud to have Irish roots. His parents had travelled across from Ireland. Shortly after Jerry’s mother and father married, they moved to the Sandhills, where his mother’s family were ranchers. Jerry’s parents started out with a 1,000-acre ranch which was big enough to run 50 cows.

At that time in the States, most households had a milking cow for the home and Marty travelled the region doing AI on those milking cows as well as managing a feed store in the local town of Whitman.

Back on the ranch, he started out with 40 purebred Angus cows. At the time, the cattle in the region were predominantly Hereford. The Connealy brand started from there.

Jerry and Sharon came home from college in 1981 and started off with 270 cows. Being some of the first in the region to practise paddock rotation gave them the capacity to carry more stock.

“We leased ground where we could. We just kept a big number of heifers and tightened our belt and hoped to sell bulls at a premium,” said Jerry. The ranch has grown from there to where it is today.

Take-home message

The real take-home message is that more breeders need to focus on producing bulls that breed progeny that meet market requirements.

By keeping an eye on the progeny produced by his bulls, Jerry Connealy ensures his customers are producing stock that will grade well when his carcases are hanging up.