Beef Friesian

[ShortGrass]

I'm fascinated by the history with beef friesians and amerifax. I'd like to learn more about the beef friesians and who was involved in starting amerifax and how that process went. From google searches, I have seen posts from @knabe posting a picture of Shandon Ali and mentioning other bulls like Hi Point or Mr. Beefy.

I've come across the names of Tim Ohlde, John A Quirk, Clayton Jennings, and Beef Genetics Research Inc. in my searches but there's not much information on the beef friesian imports aside from a picture of Moneymore Top Notch when he was first imported to the US (see https://issuu.com/i.h.f.a./docs/historic_journal_2015websize for a cool picture of page 2 for the 1970 and 1974 exports) and Tim Ohlde talking a tiny bit about it in one of his American Rancher interviews. There's also a cool red looking Amerifax bull on http://afs.okstate.edu/breeds/cattle/amerifax/index.html/ and it's not how I imagine a beef friesian and red angus would look being much more cherry red than I would expect and I'm also curious how long this was after the original imports.

If anyone has any other pictures to share or can comment on the beef friesian bulls and on the early days of Amerifax I would love to hear the stories. Even if anyone would have names or things I could google myself to learn more I would appreciate it.

Another thing I would appreciate is if anyone had any ideas how a person could find and look at modern beef friesian cattle online. I would think there's some still in Europe but don't really have a good way to find them as searches tend to just show up the milking cattle.

 

[knabe]

ohlde probably still has semen and would love to get rid of it.

he had blacks, reds, black and whites and red and whites. the red and whites were my favorite.

his angus II's are called that because they go back to his amerifax efforts.

i have an old semen catalog, but there are no color pictures

what are you really interested in?

for the day, they did great when crossed on Ildeno (moderate chianina which ohlde owned and yes, saw him too, great bull). broke, showed, helped sell etc. many a calf like that.

 

[ShortGrass]

From everything I have read they really should have caught on more. If not beef friesian directly, the amerifax cross. Mostly just interested in learning about them at this point and how the crosses looked. Would maybe one day be interested in just playing around with the cross from a hobby ranching perspective.

For example, did the beef friesians have big udders and lots of milk like holsteins? Did the F1 crosses with Angus or Ildeno immediately take most of the milk away? Were these kind of traits really unpredictable in the crosses?

The red and whites crossed with black angus made almost a solid black animal with the red color carrier?

 

[beebe]

Irish blacks have a lot of Beef Friesian in them.

 

[Hopster1000]

Are Beef Freisians similar to the British Friesian breed?

 

[knabe]

not sure who could have made them catch on more than ohlde.

 

[ShortGrass]

Irish blacks have a lot of Beef Friesian in them.

I'm curious how much overlapping pedigrees there are. I don't know when Boney brought the three beef friesians over and if any of those were used outside of his herd.

 

[ShortGrass]

Are Beef Freisians similar to the British Friesian breed?

I think beef friesian just refers to the concept that they were well muscled and easier fleshing and suitable for beef production. When I look at the catalogues today for what people call out as british friesian they seem to be a bit beefier than the ones with more NA holstein pedigree.

They don't look much like how I imagine the beef friesians that came over in the 70s looked but I really have only seen a couple of images.

 

[ShortGrass]

not sure who could have made them catch on more than ohlde.

@knabe do you know if anyone tried to line breed and improve the beef friesians that came over or did they go immediately into crosses and only used that way?

 

[knabe]

the best person to ask is tim ohlde.

he bred fullblood black and white, and red and white fullbloods.
made amerifax from them.

my favorite were the red and whites. just seemed thicker, more uniform.
i wish they were still around somewhere, but they are probably gone
maybe there are some in england.

he imported or was involved in importing a lot of the original semen in this breed.

his interest and involvement in cattle outside of angus is largely unknown.

rarely has there been a person so involved in so many breeds.

i will hunt down the old catalog i have. i wish i would have known to snag some of the stuff, take pictures etc.,when i was younger.

so sad.

he is an interesting man, and good to his local community.

his brothers are pretty interesting too.

 

[ShortGrass]

the best person to ask is tim ohlde.

Yeah, definitely. However, I'd feel bad taking up his time just to nerd out on cow pedigrees and breeding.

he bred fullblood black and white, and red and white fullbloods.
made amerifax from them.

my favorite were the red and whites. just seemed thicker, more uniform.
i wish they were still around somewhere, but they are probably gone
maybe there are some in england.

I see some pictures of the older MRIJ cattle and they really look like how you describe. I have a feeling they would be closely related to the red and white friesians as well. They also seem to be gone too aside from an effort to add genetics to a genetics bank in Holland.

he imported or was involved in importing a lot of the original semen in this breed.

his interest and involvement in cattle outside of angus is largely unknown.

rarely has there been a person so involved in so many breeds.

I remember seeing a pedigree once, I think the bull's name was Eldorado. Going off memory, I think the top half was a Power Plant amerifax cross. Bottom half I think I remember MrBeefy and Ildeno and amerifax females. Cool to see so much packed together. Really curious how predictable that bull would stamp his offspring.

i will hunt down the old catalog i have. i wish i would have known to snag some of the stuff, take pictures etc.,when i was younger.

Sounds good and I appreciate it. I like looking at the older pictures and seeing how things changed.

Any other stuff you can remember too? Were the BF easy fleshing in the hot summer? Were they easy fleshing in cold winter? How were they milk wise compared to the Holstein or Angus of the time?

so sad.

he is an interesting man, and good to his local community.

his brothers are pretty interesting too.

I'd definitely read a book of his experience. Seems like it would be very interesting.

 

[knabe]

i led mr beefy in a halter a few times. he had a cool son, 034. but he got rid of him, both nice bulls. tim was teasing me saying, go ahead, put the halter on, i was like saying to myself, he's a big bull, he's got his head down, got the kubrick eyes going on, and tim was just laughing. he took him to south dakota state fair i think for the amerifax national show. i remember tim helping out other breeders behind the scenes sell cattle. just a gentleman.

i have a couple of pics of ino's perfection (fullblood chi) butting a black bull, can't remember his name. ino hurt his shoulder i think. he was such a pretty bull.

another funny story was the bull collector, his name was lyle, he was sort of awkward, i think he worked for select sires or similar, he would sound out the phlemen response sound to get the yearling bulls to jump a cow in a stanchion to collect. we used to say "lyle" while doing the phlemen response.

lots of good times

he also had cattle out at next to a bombing range that he rented/leased. they flying a7 attack jets, i remember one pilot angling his jet over us as we were gathering cattle pretty close, we sort of imagined he was laughing at us while he scared the cattle.

went to kabsu to pick up ildeno, the dwarf shorthorns were still there, i was too ignorant to look at the other bulls or take pictures.

 

[Hopster1000]

I think beef friesian just refers to the concept that they were well muscled and easier fleshing and suitable for beef production. When I look at the catalogues today for what people call out as british friesian they seem to be a bit beefier than the ones with more NA holstein pedigree.

They don't look much like how I imagine the beef friesians that came over in the 70s looked but I really have only seen a couple of images.

The traditional British Freisians would have started out as dual purpose and in the past the pure breed would have been a lot beefier. Like everything else they have been forced to specialise, whether that is from selecting lighter more milky animals or introducing Holstein.
A pure traditional British Freisian bred to the old standards would be pretty rare now.
You could possibly find some pictures on line, but I don't think many of the semen companies would carry the traditional animals.
Were these Beef Freisians a pure breed?

 

[knabe]

found this pic of friesian.

i would call the rear end typical of the ones I saw, including the red and white ones. they also had a little more spring to rib/volume

 

[knabe]

found my 1983 friesian catalog. any sires of interest or just general

 

[GM]

Add a few pics of the best representations

 

[knabe]

couple pics. can't find my other catalog yet that has shandon ali, mr beefy and several other friesian and amerifax bulls.

 

[knabe]

ino's perfection (in lower right corner, fullblood chianina)

i have a picture of ino's perfection and black answer head butting in a pasture somewhere.

ino's perfection was an absolutely spectacular bull past his time

 

[ShortGrass]

couple pics. can't find my other catalog yet that has shandon ali, mr beefy and several other friesian and amerifax bulls.

Funny you list those ones cause those are the ones I had in mind. I basically wanted to see the original Friesians (like the 1912 one above) and then how they looked crossed. The 1912 one looks nothing like the holsteins in the catalogues today.

I have tried to find some names in the past but it's surprisingly hard since I don't know of any Beef Friesian or Amerifax Animal Search. Anybody know of a way to animal search for either of these two breeds?

Best I was able to do to track down some of the pedigrees and come up with some of the names through the American Simmental Association. Not all the percentages look right and sometimes you find two entries for the same animal but at least it's a starting point.

Here's a few names that standout in the pedigrees and would be curious to see any of them especially to see how they change in time:
GROVE ADEMA 2ND 1967-01-01 ASA #: (8720279)
MONEYMORE TOP NOTCH 1965-01-01 ASA #: (8741119)
SHANDON ALI 1970-02-17 ASA #: (8713364)
TUREPO KING ADEMA 1971-01-01 ASA #: (8713894)
TROYCASTLE GYMNAST 45TH 1971-01-01 ASA #: (8741181)
TROYCASTLE GYMNAST 68TH 1971-01-01 ASA #: (8720476)
HORWOOD ARCHON 1971-01-01 ASA #: (8741127)
BIG NOTCH 1972-04-05 ASA #: (8720320)
TROYCASTLE ALI 2 1973-09-08 ASA #: (8720482)
HERMAN THE GERMAN 1976-03-15 ASA #: (8714004)
GEST MAURITS 12TH 1978-05-16 ASA #: (8714203)
LAVENHAM MINOTAUR 1979-01-03 ASA #: (8714308)
GROVE BRUTUS 1980-09-10 ASA #: (8714382)
FAF MR BEEFY 920 1982-03-04 ASA #: (8714568)
FAF KNOCKOUT 034 1984-04-03 ASA #: (8714681)
O C C HI POINT R300 1983-01-27 ASA #: (8714674)
OC RED BARON 313T 1985-02-05 ASA #: (8721207)

 

[ShortGrass]

ino's perfection (in lower right corner, fullblood chianina)

i have a picture of ino's perfection and black answer head butting in a pasture somewhere.

ino's perfection was an absolutely spectacular bull past his time

Thanks for posting. Nice to see the purebred Chi's and The Black Answer cross too.

Was ino pretty similar to ildeno? I guess Tim had both ino's perfection and ildeno on his farm at the same time? ino too?

Looks like The Black Answer is 3/4 Ildeno and 1/4 Amerifax. Was it pretty typical for a first or second Chi cross to look like that? Hard to tell from the picture I'd have expected you'd get a the smokey colored grey offspring or do Chi's not dilute?