The ranch is home to 400 registered Angus and 30 Charolais cows, and is managed by Mary Lou Bradley-Henderson, Minnie Lou Bradley and James Henderson.

“We are honored to receive this award,” Bradley said. “I have admired many of the previous winners and it is humbling to be considered in these ranks.”

The ranch was started in 1955 with the purchase of 20 registered Angus cows. Today, the herd is one of few Angus herds in the country that has maintained more than 200 registered animals for more than 50 years.

Early on, the Bradleys were committed to a disciplined approach to performance. As one of the first members of the American Beef Cattle Performance Registry, according to BIF, they maintained an emphasis on performance that is still the foundation of the herd today.

In 1986, the Bradleys started B3R Country Meats. In the next 16 years, they built the all-natural meat company to a 125-head-per-day harvest facility that harvested more than 30,000 head in 2002, the year it was sold.

Since its establishment, the ranch has concentrated its breeding efforts on the beef industry’s most basic traits — fertility, calving ease, fleshing ability, soundness, high performance and carcass value — while employing the latest technologies.

As an early adopter of performance testing and Integrated Ranch Management Records, the operation also embraced DNA technology as early as 1994. Today, the ranch is an aggressive user of DNA technology and obtains samples on every bull to further its parentage testing and use of genomic- enhanced EPDs.  

—From Beef Improvement Federation news release

PHOTO
From left, Dr. Bob Kropp of Oklahoma State University, ranch owners Mary Lou Bradley-Henderson, James Henderson and Minnie Lou Bradley, and Burt Rutherford of BEEF Magazine.