Blew Partnership: innovative sustainability
Blew Partnership: (from left) CJ, Rebecca, Cole, Caylee, Claire, Russell and Luke)
Brothers, CJ and Russell Blew represent the 5th generation of Blews to make the Kansas great plains their home and agriculture their livelihood. The Blews utilize some 1700 breeding-age beef cows to help manage the soil and water conservation across 24,000 acres of Reno, Chase and Barber County grasslands in south central Kansas.
Over the past 20 years, the Blews have moved acreage out of crop production, choosing grass and beef cattle in lieu of grain farming, which burns more fuel, water and capital per acre. Through this transition, the Blew cow herd grew from fewer than 300 breeding age females to over 1700. Through this process the Blews attention to resources caught the attention of observant landowners; this resulted in the family’s greatest expansion opportunities. “At the end of the day we really are in the land rehabilitation business,” says CJ. “We couldn’t have the cows without the land resource. The cows are a tool for us to help improve it.”
In 2020 Blew Partnership was recognized by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association’s (NCBA) Environmental Stewardship Award Program (ESAP) for their dedication to improving the health of their native Kansas rangeland, and the sustainability of our nation’s cow herd.
From its beginning, the Blew Partnership Red Angus herd focused on improving cow herd reproductive efficiency in order to optimize stocking rates, harvest more pounds of beef per acre and spread natural resources across more units of protein. At the same time, the Blews understood their future required they become a “price maker” instead of a “price taker.” Doing so required them to embrace those traits that increase calf value – namely, marbling, pay weight, days to finish and feed efficiency.
Artificial Insemination (A.I.) was the tool of choice to achieve the genetic gains required by the cow herd and needed to produce premium feeder cattle. A.I. provided the Blews access to bulls with greater genetic reach, higher accuracy and that were seriously out of most cow/calf producers’ price range. When this started almost 20 years ago, it was only A.I. matings for the replacement heifers, but within a decade improved synchronization protocols and portable cattle facilities made it possible to A.I. breed the entire Blew Partnership herd.
The ability to utilize A.I. across large numbers of cows which were managed in large, equal opportunity contemporary groups made possible the establishment of a carcass progeny testing program. Working together with a handful of innovative seedstock partners and a third-party database/genetic consultant, the Blew carcass testing project has grown into the largest structured progeny test in the Red Angus breed, and one of the top three in North America across all breeds.
Originally conceived to collect actual carcass data at harvest, the test has evolved and now captures weights and measures necessary to predict economically relevant traits across the entire beef supply chain, as well as phenotypic predictors of longevity, soundness and adaptability such as udder and teat scores, foot scores, docility, hair coat and body condition scores. The data structure and protocol is similar to a large progressive seedstock operation with whole herd inventory-based data reporting, three generation pedigrees, and disciplined contemporary group preservation. All data is fed into two different genetic evaluation systems which results in expected progeny differences (EPDs) and indices for the Blew Partnership’s commercial replacements.
Greg Comstock met CJ Blew almost 20 years ago when awarding them their first Red Angus GridMaster award, and has worked with the family in varying capacities ever since. Comstock observes, “Blew Partnership is exactly what their name implies: a symbiotic relationship of people and cattle working with the land. The entire family rides for the brand and works towards a shared vision. That vision is that each generation of Blew Red Angus cattle is more sustainable than their predecessors and that they leave that south-central Kansas Prairie healthier and more productive than they found it.”