Martin F. Jorgensen, Jr. was a pioneer. He once told an interviewer, “I’ve never liked tradition for tradition’s sake, nor have I feared new approaches.” Martin was always searching for a better way to do things and was not afraid to swim upstream if he was convinced that was what needed to be done.

Always analytical, Martin’s own analysis of his own commercial cattle operation in the 50s was that he had been doing things the way most ranchers did — producing good but average cows that produced good but average calves, and “average” wasn’t good enough for Martin. Since he couldn’t find the kind of bulls that would do what he wanted bulls to do, he decided to make bulls that would improve commercial cattle herds. He bought some good registered cows, found the leading geneticists who understood what needed to change, and determined to produce the kind of bulls he had wanted to use in his own commercial herd!