you probably won't find another chi bull of any color that will put as consistent a look to him. he was used a lot on black cattle. of the chi's i saw, he seemed to be a moderate bull, but have seen some pretty heavy calves out of him, up to 140, but it seemed most were around 110-120. when on the rail, his ribeye's were small, ie 13-14 for steers weighing over 1500 not shrunk. there are a couple of linebred sons of his, with semen around $5-7 you can probably scarf around. to me, he didn't have a classic draft chi look. i looked through the 3 years of pic of the italian chi site and did't seen anything that really stood out.
a lot of the pics on the website posted had problems with their front feet and needed trimming badddd. they tended to round on their rear, had long cannon bones, neither of which ildeno had. to me, they seemed tight muscled, again, he was not. one thing he threw were slightly sunken spine. i didn't think he was as cresty a chi as the rest seem to be. he was relatively devoid of leather, had decent bone compared to the italian pictures. remember, this bull was chosen as he was a balanced bull for the "american" market.
here's a link on this site about him including an ad of him, and one of my steers by him with jarold callahan mussing up my steers hair. he drug his hands all down his side to see if anything rubbed off and kinda looked at me to see when i would whip out the comb. we didn't hair spray his hair to make it stiff. we used the foam back then which is probably out of date now. we also died him a little more silver for this show. it was at the la county fair. i'm pretty sure from the pic, you can see my white ildeno steer looked pretty good compared to the others which were mostly chi crosses, ie this was the heavyweight division and they didn't look as nicely patterned as him. look at the rear feet of all those steers. the first one is bowlegged, the second is forced wide cuz there's nothing there, the 3rd is benched and he's got no but, mine is set ok, he moved his front foot when he was talking to me and rubbing on him, the 5th steer is good, the 6th was a chi hereford something on our team who was overboned and tight made. to me, the best ildeno crosses were on amerifax cows. on straigt angus, they just seemed to be all over the place size wise. another neat thing about him even though it may not look it from his pic, he could add some length to steres without making them weasel gutted.
he was probably a freak, as i don't remember a son better than him. then there was sugar ray.... who some probably still use.
http://www.steerplanet.com/bb/index.php/topic,628.0.html
back then, a lot of jocks tried to get started by trying to make black polled more moderate framed high percentage chi bulls. chi's wound up in a lot of strange places supposedly even in charolais. i used to think a birth spot about 6 inches to a foot in diameter one charolais bull through a lot was because he was part chi. the spot was the same brownish chi color. cows out of that charolais bull were over 2000.
attitude wise, i found the chi's to be mostly ok, with the oddballs thrown in, that were usually curly haired with the curls in about a 1 inch diameter all over their body. saw one take of with a clipping chute. another jumped out of a washrack with a wall about 5.5 feet high. he didn't clear it, but drug himself over. the stable mate to the white one in the link, was a pisser as well.
seemed back then, people used chi's as cleanup's so the late calvers would catch up to the rest so they could be sold as a "consistent" group. then the feeders found out they weren't consistent. harris then had a big r&d powwow to identify their "perfect" pecentage of genetics they would grid for and of course would keep that secret. i got the feeling back then, they really tried to feed consistent cattle. it was a great learning experience to be in the locker at harris. it was where i learned for the first time holsteins were to be respected, both for their carcass, but also for their profitability.
