Minnie Lou Bradley: What She Sees, She Gets

By Ross Hecox

Uncomfortable silence fell across the room as Minnie Lou Ottinger and Rusty Bradley stared at each other across the dining table. Although it has been 71 years since that moment, Minnie Lou still vividly remembers how the Bradley family and several seasoned cowboys were taken aback by her harsh criticism of the ranch’s branding practices.

“Everybody at the table was just speechless,” she recalls. “Every once in a while, you’d hear someone’s spur rowel kind of move, and that was all. I thought, ‘I may be walking back to the bus station.’”

Minnie Lou, an ambitious farm girl competing on the Oklahoma A&M University livestock judging team, was a guest at the Bradley Ranch branding in West Texas. She was meeting the family of her boyfriend and future husband, Bill Bradley. Knowing it was the first branding she’d ever attended, Bill’s father, Rusty, had already handed her the vaccinating gun, walked her through the castration of a bull calf, and tasked her with many other jobs.

“He put me everywhere that morning,” she says. “He was a character. He was challenging me. The Waggoner Ranch cowboys were there helping, and I knew they were watching me.

“They had all Hereford cattle, so there were a lot of cancer eyes [due to unpigmented, sunlight-sensitive eyelids and eyeballs]. And they were dehorning the calves.

“Afterward, Rusty was sitting at the head of this big table, and he said, ‘Young lady, what did you think of your first branding?’ Everybody got quiet, and I said, ‘Sir, it was the worst thing I ever saw. You’re dehorning, and I never saw so much blood in my life. Now you’re going to have screwworms. And then you’ve got all these cancer-eyed cows. It’s all just a cruel deal.’”

Rusty seemed defensive at first, and after what seemed like an eternal pause, he asked the blunt college girl what she would do if she was running the ranch.

“I said, ‘I’d go out and buy a bunch of black bulls, and that would [diminish the occurrence of] horns, and you wouldn’t have to dehorn.’

His response did more than break the ice.

“He reached in his pocket, signed a check, and said, ‘Go get me some.’ That day, Rusty and I bonded like that,” Minnie Lou recalls, crossing her middle and index fingers.

That year, 1952, proved to be a pivotal one for Minnie Lou and the future of the beef cattle business. Not only was she the first woman to compete on a collegiate livestock judging team, but she made headlines by winning the judging contest at the prestigious Chicago International Livestock Exposition later in November. The recognition opened many doors for the rural Oklahoma girl obsessed with cattle.

However, excelling in the world of show steers and heifers had not educated her about the inner workings of a cow-calf operation. Despite her criticisms during her first visit to the Bradley Ranch, she observed the many practicalities and challenges of managing a commercial herd, and she began to shape a philosophy that guided her in becoming a leading producer in the Angus seedstock business.

“She is a pioneer in breeding cattle to fit ranch country, instead of the show environment,” says Mark Gardiner, an Angus breeder based in Kansas. “She’s known for her ability to speak bluntly, but speak the truth. With her tenacity and plain-spoken intellect, she’s a hero and an example to us.”

That day, her future in-laws learned that Minnie Lou was fearless, with no hesitation to work hard, try new things or speak her mind—even to an audience of dyed-in-the-wool cowboys. Those traits became valuable tools as she stepped into a male-dominated industry and built a seedstock business that has served commercial ranchers for decades.

A Keen Eye

From the age of 9, Minnie Lou Ottinger wanted to judge livestock.

“I didn’t like school, but I could read all the magazines that Daddy got in the mail,” she says. “Somehow I saw this book on how to judge livestock, and it became my bible.”

Growing up on a farm near Hydro, Oklahoma, she was influenced by her uncle Ted, who as a senior in high school would let her tag along to his FFA meetings and field trips. She began raising lambs, then hogs, and added Angus cattle by the time she was a freshman in high school.

Throughout high school, she continued to participate in FFA and competed in judging contests, traveling with a group of boys to major livestock shows.

“It’s just remarkable when I look back how those men, those FFA teachers, took care of me,” Minnie Lou says. “My daddy didn’t have any help [on the farm], so he couldn’t go to Oklahoma City and Fort Worth. And so, I think how blessed I am. I was just raised by the FFA teachers.”

As unique as it was in the 1940s for a girl to participate in FFA, it was unheard of for a college co-ed to take animal science classes. But that was Minnie Lou’s unwavering plan. She sold all her livestock to fund her enrollment to Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State University) and became the first female to study animal husbandry at the university.

She didn’t stop there. In her first semester, she took a class on evaluating livestock and noticed that it was taught by the college’s judging team coach, Glen Bratcher. Even though the team was limited to juniors and seniors, she wasted no time in introducing herself.

“I hurried down at the end of class, and I said, ‘Sir, aren’t you the judging coach?’” she recalls. “He said yes, and I said, ‘I’m going to be on your team.’ He said, ‘Well, I guess if you’re good enough when you’re a junior, I’ll let you.’”

As a junior, Minnie Lou and hundreds of other students vied for the collegiate judging team, and through a series of tryouts she consistently scored in the top five. It was clear she had a good eye for evaluating and placing hogs, sheep and cattle, and she was articulate in reciting her reasons for how she placed each class. However, when it was time to select the team to travel to the 1952 National Western Stock Show in Denver, Colorado, she was left out.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” she says. “Mr. Bratcher said, ‘You know, you have the numbers to go. But I called all the professors in, and we talked about it, and we don’t think that you’ll get a fair shot when you give your reasons [to contest officials].’”

Although disconcerted, Minnie Lou continued working out with the team and stepped up her game.

“I just kept coming out to work, and by then I was hitting No. 1 all the time,” Minnie Lou says.

The next collegiate judging contest was held at the Fort Worth Stock Show. When Bratcher posted the sheet listing which students would make the trip, Minnie Lou saw that her name was included this time. He explained that he had just finished a long meeting with the president of the university and several other high-ranking faculty members.

“He called me into his office,” she says, “and he said, ‘We have met all morning long. We cannot find anything in the rules that says a girl cannot travel with a team of boys. So, I guess you’re going.’

“And then he said, ‘I told you when you were a freshman, if you were good enough, I’d haul you. And it broke my heart that for Denver I broke my word.’”

With modest sensitivities still in play, the school made sure her hotel room in Fort Worth wasn’t near the boys’ rooms.

“They put me on one floor and the boys on the other floor,” she says, rolling her eyes. “If I would have been interested in the boys, there was an elevator running back and forth.”

Shortly before the contest began in Fort Worth, the head of the animal science department, Al Darlow, pulled Minnie Lou aside.

“Dr. Darlow was one of those that liked to scare everybody,” she recalls. “The boys were scared to death of him, but I wasn’t. He said, ‘You’re the first, and you will be the last if you don’t come through today.’ I’ll never forget that. Later he became my biggest cheerleader.”

Minnie Lou performed well that day.

“I didn’t set any records, but I placed. And from then on, there wasn’t anything said about me going with the team.”

Minnie Lou competed well in several other livestock judging competitions during the early part of 1952. In November of her senior year, she and others represented Oklahoma A&M at the Chicago International Livestock Exposition, the most prestigious stock show in the country. Again, she was the first woman to compete in livestock judging at the International. A few agriculture teachers from different parts of Oklahoma drove to Chicago, just to wish her well.

“I was feeling a little more pressure than some people,” she says. “But if you’re not nervous, you’re not going to do any good.”

After judging classes of cattle, draft horses, hogs and sheep, Minnie Lou was announced as the individual champion of the contest.

“I didn’t know that it was that big a deal, but I guess everyone else thought so,” she says. “I just happened to be the first one.”

She recalls her story appearing in Chicago and New York newspapers, and she stayed in town for three extra days in order to be interviewed on the “Today Show.”

She says all the fanfare opened opportunities she wouldn’t have received otherwise. The American Angus Association, based in Chicago, offered her a job upon graduation. Later she was approached by the Texas Angus Association to be its undersecretary. Although the $250 per month salary was significantly less than what American Angus offered, she opted to work in Fort Worth over Chicago.

Eye-Opening Experiences

Minnie Lou worked for the Texas Angus Association from 1953 to early 1955. She traveled to many cattle shows and sales and worked with producers throughout the state. Encounters associated with the job opened her eyes to the beef cattle industry.

She remembers two wealthy breeders who separately asked her to manage their ranches. But her previous visits to her boyfriend’s family ranch helped her recognize that she wasn’t ready, and she turned down the offers.

Early on, one rancher had asked her if she could find some Angus bulls for him to buy.

“I was greener than a gourd,” she recalls. “I said, ‘Sir, I’m sure I could.’ And he said, ‘Are they the kind that will make me money or lose me money?’ I thought, ‘Is there a difference?’

“I got to investigating, and I went from loving show cattle to hating everything about them.”

Overall, she wasn’t enamored with the nature of the registered cattle business at the time. Genetic disorders such as dwarfism, shady auction practices, and politics in the show arena were some of the things that turned her off.

Meanwhile, Bill Bradley was serving in the infantry in the Korean War. Shortly after he finished his tour, he and Minnie Lou were married. The young couple formed a partnership with Bill’s family on a recently purchased 3,500-acre ranch southeast of Memphis, Texas. They named it the Bradley 3 Ranch, with the 3 signifying the third generation of Bradleys to run a ranch in Texas. After struggling with drought and poor market prices on some crossbred calves, Bill and Minnie Lou decided to convert their operation into a seedstock business, raising registered Angus bulls.

“We wrote out a plan to produce bulls that would work in every phase of the cattle business,” Minnie Lou says. “We wanted to run our purebred herd like most commercial ranchers.”

That meant turning out each bull in a pasture with a herd of brood cows and requiring the cows to calve unassisted in open country. Their goal was to raise bulls for customers that could perform in rugged terrain and an arid climate.

“A rancher doesn’t want a show bull to put out on his cows in rough country, because his feet are going to get sore, and then he’s going to lay up under a shade tree and not get anything bred,” says Kim Lindsey, who with her husband worked for the Bradley 3 during the 1990s and early 2000s. “All the Bradley 3 cattle are registered cattle, but they’re run just like commercial cattle. They’re not stood up [in a pen] and fed. They adapt to this country.”

Of course, managing registered cattle required much more data collection and record keeping than running a commercial herd, but that appealed to Minnie Lou.

“If you do not measure, you do not improve. And we measure everything,” she says.

That meant assigning identification to individual cows and newborn calves, recording birth dates and tracking the weight of individual calves at various stages.

“Having a scale was pretty unique back then,” Gardiner says. “She began submitting data to the American Angus Association very early, and that was unheard of. But she did it because it was the right thing to do to make cattle better.”

In later years, she incorporated ultrasound to measure fat and muscle in order to develop more predictable carcasses. She was one of the first to utilize DNA testing for parentage verification and tracking genetic tendencies.

“She was always willing to try something new, whether it involved technology or a different method,” Lindsey says. “But she wouldn’t just jump off into it. First, she wanted to be educated about it.”

The standards for Bradley 3 cattle have remained high. If a cow doesn’t calve one year, or if she doesn’t wean a calf that weighs at least 50 percent of her body weight, she’s removed from the breeding program. Growing calves get nourishment from their mamas and pasture grasses, not from a creep feeder.

Decades ago, a comment from a seasoned cowboy revolutionized how the Bradley 3 managed its rangeland.

“Odell Blackwell cowboyed on all these ranches around here, and I just loved him to death,” Minnie Lou says. “He came in one day and said, ‘Minnie Lou, you and Rusty Bradley are the worst grass managers I ever saw.’ He might as well have slapped me in the face. ‘Odell, what are you talking about?’ He said, ‘You understock, but you overgraze. You’re allowing these cows to be selective, so they’re eating all the good grass and leaving the bad grass.’ He opened our eyes.”

The critique spurred Bradley 3 to adopt rotational grazing techniques that has helped its herd better utilize native forage and improved grasses.

Eye on the Prize

The walls in Minnie Lou’s office at ranch headquarters hold a variety of plaques, photos with famous people and other frames that tell the story of a decorated career in the Angus industry. She has been inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame, graces the Saddle and Sirloin Gallery, and has received a host of other honors and awards for her leadership, innovation and sustainability practices.

The 91-year-old cattlewoman carefully handles a medal attached to a worn and faded brown ribbon. The front side bears a logo of a muscular, Grecian-looking man handling a stout, horned bull, beneath the words, “International Live Stock Exposition Chicago.” The backside inscription reads, “Awarded to Minnie Lou Ottinger for Highest Score Collegiate Livestock Judging Contest 1952.”

Reflecting on the award, Minnie Lou acknowledges that it launched her into a fulfilling livelihood.

“That set it off,” she says. “I think if I hadn’t been on the judging team, and just went through college, who would have known me? Everything has just worked out for me. I’m very blessed.

“At least once a month, I get a call from somebody [in the media], saying, ‘Tell me how you’ve been mistreated by some man.’ I just tell them to go away. I’m not going to say something that is not true. I think I’ve always been treated nicely and accepted.”

Despite her many accolades, Minnie Lou spends more time talking about the Bradley 3 Ranch. Age prevents her from being as deeply involved as she would like, and Bill now lives in a rest home. But she is confident the ranch is in good hands with her daughter, Mary Lou, and son-in-law, James Henderson, managing the operation.

“I’m really proud of Mary Lou and James,” she says. “They have carried the herd and ranch to greater heights. Here lately, we have improved all of our weights with less feed.”

She adds that under their direction, the ranch has grown, adding a significant amount of acreage. They have retained many loyal customers, some of them buying Bradley 3 bulls for more than 50 years. The ranch’s annual sale last February featured 162 Angus bulls that averaged $5,497, as well as 94 Charolais bulls that brought $5,895 on average.

While those figures are impressive, Minnie Lou remains focused on what matters most to her.

“Making a lot of money is not our goal,” she says. “I knew I’d never have a large ranch or a lot of cattle. I wanted to see if I could take a place and make the land better and the cattle better every generation. If we can make a nice living doing that, and feel good about every bull we sell, that’s what we want.” ★

This article appears in the Spring 2023 issue of the Ranch Record.  Would you like to read more stories about NRHC and ranching life? When you become a member of the Ranching Heritage Association, you’ll receive the award-winning Ranch Record magazine and more while supporting the legacy and preservation of our ranching heritage. Become a member today.