I would say that Dividend would work on your cow. Make sure you use him on a good uddered cow.The only reason I say this is because most of the Green Ridge Robin cows, that were all flushmates, all had udders that fell apart as they got older. It may have come from the dam side as well.Most of the Irish cattle I had anything to do with had good udders, but I have seen some Dividend daughters that lost udder quality as they got older. I still maintain that Deerpark Dividend is the most impressive bull I have ever seen in any era. The picture Alden's used for years did not begin to do him justice. When we saw him at KABSU he was weighing about 2600 lb, he was thick topped, big butted and just packed full of muscle. For some reason, I never thought that he ever sired a son that was as good as he was... either in appearance or in breeding ability.
Dividend's mother was an incredible female in Ireland. Probably way too big for today as she weighed over a ton and definitely never had seen grain in her life. She had a great udder, so this makes me think that some of the udder problems on older Dividend daughters, may be coming from some of their North American heritage.
After seeing Deerpark Dividend at KABSU, we tried to buy him from Dick Judy of Beef Genetics Research, Mankato, Kansas. At this time, the Irish cattle had no registered status in the American Shorthorn Association. Judy had tried on two occasions to get the ASA to allow these animals in the herdbook, and both times, it was denied. These cattle were basically grade cattle at the time, and Judy was of the opinion that the ASA would never allow them in. He had a fair amount of money tied up in these cattle as he had brought, from Ireland, about 6 or 8 Irish bulls in, including Dividend and Improver, as well as about 8 or 10 females. Just before we left Judy's we asked if he would price Dividend and without hesitation he said absolutely no way. We then asked if he would consider getting KABSU to get some semen cleared for export to Canada. He agreed to do this and we did get a shipment of semen from Dividend and Improver. Because these bulls had no purebred status, all it said on the straws of semen was " Roan Shorthorn bull" for Dividend, and " Red Shorthon bull" for Improver.
A few weeks after we got home, I received a letter from Judy, in which he said that he had reconsidered, and that he was a person that believed that every animal should have a price at which it could be purchased. He priced Dividend to us at $30,000 and Improver at $7000.This was in 1973, and this was a bunch of money at the time. We debated this and decided that we could import several animals from Ireland for less investment. We had already imported Highfield Irish Mist and two females just after Judy had imported his cattle. One of my partners had stumbled on these cattle in Ireland, shortly after Judy had found them, when he was touring though Ireland trying to trace his ancestors who had lived there. When he returned back to Canada, he phoned me and another Shorthorn breeder who lived nearby, and said he wanted to show us some pictures of some unregistered Shorthorns he had found in Ireland. He showed us a bunch of slides he had taken, on the wall of a Regina hotel room, and that night the three of us decided we were going import some of these cattle regardless if they would ever get registered or not. We phoned Ireland that night, got an Irish breeder out of bed, and asked him to price Irish Mist to us. We purchased Irish Mist that night for 200 British pounds, which was right around $300 dollars. Our total cost of importing Irish Mist, including air fare, 30 days of quarantine on an island in the St. Lawrence, trucking him over 2000 miles to spend another 30 days of quarantine at Edmonton, Alberta amounted to $2000.
It was this reason and only for this reason we made the decision not to buy Dividend. We probably really goofed, as the prices of Irish cattle skyrocketed, within a couple of years. Aldens purchased Dividend and Improver from BGR about a year after we had the opportunity to buy them, and from what I have heard, it was a fraction of what he was priced to us at. By this time Dick Judy was convinced that these cattle would never be accepted by the ASA and he decided to bail.
Soon after, the ASA decided to allow the Irish cattle into the herdbook, and they priced registration of a bull at $5000 and a female at $2500.It cost us $10,000 US to register Highfield Irish Mist and our two imported females in the American Shorthorn herdbook.
Once the Irish cattle had registered status in the US, a number of American breeders started making numerous trips to Ireland and the prices of these cattle went through the roof. I remember Don Cagwin, purchased a plane load of cattle( about 40 head) and returned home to ILL and another Shorthorn breeder offered him many times more than he had paid for them. Don sold the entire plane load to him before the cattle arrived on US soil.... and before he had paid the Irish breeders for them. His agreement with the Irish,was that he would pay for the cattle when they were cleared to be imported.
As a result of all the people trying to buy cattle in Ireland, prices went through the roof. Our next bull we purchased in Ireland cost is $25,000 in Ireland. This was IDS Duke of Dublin. We also purchased another 7 females. It cost us another $22500 to register these 8 head in the American Shorthorn Association. So if you think registration costs are high today.... consider the fact that in the 1970s and early 80s, it cost us $32,500 to register 10 head in the American Shorthorn herdbook. We did this without hesitation simply because we needed to have these cattle registered in the US in order to sell semen from our bulls there. After displaying IDS Duke of Dublin and 12 of his offspring at Denver, in front of the Exchange building, we sold over $100,000 of semen from Duke alone,in the next year, and sold 9 of the 12 calves at over a $3000 average. This was in 1984. By the way, coyote, who is on this forum, was part of our crew at Denver that year.
I am way off topic here again and I apologize.
