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I am really looking forward to my trip next week to Ireland and then on to England. I arrive in Dublin Saturday morning, August 10th and I will spend the next 4 days there.  I will also  be attending the Tullamore show which hosts the National breed shows for all breeds. I have heard the entries...

I am really looking forward to my trip next week to Ireland and then on to England. I arrive in Dublin Saturday morning, August 10th and I will spend the next 4 days there.  I will also  be attending the Tullamore show which hosts the National breed shows for all breeds. I have heard the entries...

I enjoy seeing mature bulls either in pictures or better yet, in the flesh. I think they tell you so much more than a calf picture does. I have several mature bull pics in my picture files and I have attached some of them: picture 1 is a picture I snapped of Alta Cedar Ultimate 130K as an 8...

I have lots to learn yet about myostatin, but it does appear that it is not something new in the Shorthorn breed. Some breeders in the UK have told me, that double muscling in Shorthorns can be traced back to the very early days of the breed. When I was in Scotland a few years ago, old time...

If you are ever in the Midwest, and have time to swing by a major semen collection center like Hawkeye Breeders, Adel, Ia, you can see many of these popular clubby bulls. It becomes pretty obvious to me, why they are promoted mainly by the calf picture of them. I have saw some that are...

With their sale being so early in the year, I think that is one of the reasons they do not semen test their bulls prior to the sale. I am seeing this in several other early sales now, especially if it has been a cold winter along with an early sale. A semen test is only a snapshot of the semen...

My experience with Duke of Dublin was that if he was bred to a good milking cow, he would sire a good milking daughter. If the cow he was bred to was moderate milking, he would sire a moderate milking daughter. I never thought of Duke as being a bull who would add milk to any of his offspring...

Yup. Duke was horned, but we seemed to get polled calves if the dam was polled. This was also the case when we used Irish Mist on polled cows. Duke had been dehorned when we got him in Ireland, but we did have some full Irish calves from him that had horns, but they were loose, that is, they...

I know I have a picture of Krakotoa someplace as well. Unfortunately I do not have it on my computer so I will have to try to find it in some old magazines and scan it. I remember this bull very well and wish I could scan my mental picture of him to my computer. I think you would really like...

You are probably correct. I did not do any calculations as I have no idea what interest rates are on machinery, or anything else really. I only heard this second hand, but I have heard it now from two people, both of which are very good farmers and usually not people to make stuff up. In any...

Ryan, I really don't care if you believe what I say or not.  Despite what you think, there was some pretty good prices paid back in this era for breeding stock. I have spent my entire life in this business and I do remember a few things yet. So I plead guilty to being a bit of a storyteller...

I'm not totally sure what frame he would have been. I am thinking he would have been a 5 to 5.5. He certainly wasn't small but he had a massive amount of body on his frame. Most people think that all the cattle back in the 60s were small framed. Most were, but there was some big framed cattle as...

Red Max Prince was a bigger bull than most in that era. He was raised by George Zelonka, Redvers, SK and we went down to try to buy him when he was about 6 years old. George did not have a scale on his farm, so he loaded him in his grain truck and took him to the grain elevator to weigh him. He...

Like I said, it was a very hard decision to make. We were running a 1200 head feedlot, had over 200 cows at the time as well, and we were constantly looking for workers to help. We could not compete with the wages offered in the near by oil patch, so we were always dealing with those who...

In the past year, I have just started to test cattle for myostatin and the results have been interesting to say the least. Overall, I am surprised at the number of animals that have one strain of myostatin. I have only tested two, that have two strains. One of the cows I have tested is the dam...

I agree with much of what has been said here, but I do not think it is entirely the job of a breed association to do this. It would be a big help if the breed association did provide the information to assist the actual producers to do the foot work. Printed material is only a part of the...

I have a cane of Hub's Director semen that I have been wanting to use for awhile. I also have some semen from a few other bulls from the 60s and early 70s. I also have semen from a few of the older Lincoln Red sires from this era as well ( Gotho Signal 3rd, Claydene Ever Reddy, etc) I have some...

I have 13 water bowls from very old to new, and from 4 different makes. None of them are fool proof when you get very cold winters like we are having right now. Six years ago, I started putting in- line heat tapes in the water bowls and since installing them, I have not had any problems with...

I think Hopster is closer to the truth, that it is the packers that are leading this campaign for cattle like this. I don't think any producer in North America would want to raise cattle like this, and I see some breeds in the UK starting to make some regulations regarding cattle that carry the...

There has been some research done on this and Jan Bonsma from South Africa did quite a bit of measurements of the length and width of heads and how it should correlate with different measurements of cattle. I heard Bonsma speak once, probably back in the late 60s and it was fascinating how he...