Bio
Whenever the conversation turns to Hereford cattle, the names of L.L. Jones & Son and their J-O Herefords will surely be mentioned.
Founder of the J-O Ranch, Jones was known to hundreds of persons in the livestock industry across the nation. He was born in Crawford County, Kansas and received his veterinary medicine degree in 1906. He served as a meat inspector and worked for the Bureau of Animal Industry.
In 1918, he resigned his BAI position and returned to Garden City, Kansas. He built a ranch that would house several hundred head of cattle. Eventually, he acquired 8,000 acres and leased another 2,000. By 1946, his purebred herd of Herefords had grown to such proportions that he decided to get out of the commercial cattle business and devote full-time attention to the development of purebreds.
By 1952, the J-O Ranch had the largest registered Hereford auction ever held in Kansas and the largest in the United States that year. Buyers from 17 states paid $663,000 for 820 head of high quality cattle.
