Some 13 year olds supplement their allowance by raking leaves or cleaning the gunk out of eavestroughs.
Tee Jensen of Swift Current, Sask., sells prize-winning purebred Red Angus bull calves – or at least a half interest in one, for $41,000.
Jensen began raising the lucrative nine-month old calf as his 4-H project in January. He had raised the calf’s mother as a yearling heifer for 4-H in 2002.
This year the heifer produced a bull calf that continues to turn heads.
The mother and its calf were successful at several competitions this summer and won grand champion female, supreme champion overall breed as pair, and bull calf champion at shows including Frontier Days and Angus Gold in Swift Current and Canadian Nationals in Olds, Alta.
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All of this recognition eventually caught the attention of Ken Frazer of Six Mile Red Angus in Wood Mountain, Sask. Frazer paid $41,000 for a half interest in the bull, and Jensen will keep possession of the animal until after Canadian Western Agribition in November.
Jensen plans to show the duo three more times before handing the bull calf over to Six Mile. Agribition in Regina will be the combo’s final showing together.
After that, the 13 year old has plans.
“I want to raise another one,” he said, though his father, Bob, cautioned that producing another golden Red Angus bull calf is unlikely.
“He’d love to, but they say these are once in a lifetime,” the senior Jensen said.
Even so, this is a calling the teenager wants to pursue well into the future.
“I want to continue on in the cattle business,” Tee said. “I want to be a cattleman.”
As for his new fortune, he won’t be blowing it all in one place.
While he won’t have to part with the entire windfall, his father said some of it will be invested in the farm.
“The way times are so tough, we’ll have to take some of that money and invest it where we can … but what do you say about that? Who knows? The banker will tell us where it goes.”
No objection from the younger Jensen, since the ranch may one day be his.
In the meantime, the family will continue to earn money selling the bull’s semen. There is apparently tremendous interest in the bull, and American company Genex Inc. plans to market its semen in future sire catalogues.
Because Jensen kept a half interest, he will split future royalties from semen sales with the bull’s other owners.
Also not as common a teenage moneymaker as leaf raking, but a lot more profitable.
