Artist: Richard Stewart Halstead (born 1947)
Minnie Lou Ottinger Bradley
BRADLEY, MINNIE LOU OTTINGER (1931–2025), inducted 2014
Minnie Lou Bradley, matriarch of the Bradley 3 Ranch in the Texas Panhandle, was the second woman to be inducted into the Saddle & Sirloin Club Portrait Collection. A pioneer livestock breeder in her region, Bradley was the first woman president of the American Angus Association. Born in Hinton, Oklahoma, Minnie Lou Ottinger played on the state championship high school basketball team and showed livestock in 4-H (girls were not permitted in Future Farmers of America at the time). She was the first female student to enroll in animal husbandry at Oklahoma A&M and the first female member of the college’s legendary livestock judging team. She captured the attention of many in 1951, as the first woman to be named high individual in beef cattle at the American Royal, and she then surpassed that achievement as the first woman named high individual overall at the International Intercollegiate Livestock Judging Contest in Chicago. In 1953, Ottinger earned another “first”: the first female to complete a bachelor’s degree in animal husbandry at Oklahoma A&M. She later married fellow student Billy Jack Bradley, and they became the third generation of Bradleys to ranch in northern Texas. The future of the Bradley 3 Ranch was shaped by Minnie Lou Bradley’s successful crossbreeding of Angus and Hereford cattle. In time, she would operate the ranch in partnership with her daughter and son-in-law.
Source: Saddle & Sirloin Guidebook 2026, p. 52