Seeing Dividend for the first time, is one of the memories I will have until I die. In the spring of 1978, we traveled to Mankato KS to Beef Genetics Research, Inc to see the Irish Shorthorn cattle they had imported. We had just imported our first 3 Irish cattle from Ireland. We spent two days at BGR, and saw all the cattle, exept for Dividend and Improver, as they were at Kabsu being collected. We drove over to Manhattan to see these bulls afterwards. It was a Sunday and there was no one around at Kabsu so we walked through the barns until we found them. I do not think I have ever seen a bull of any breed up to that time that impressed me as much as Dividend did. Improver was less impressive, and quite frankly of the six of us that viewed the bulls that day, all of us thought that Improver would be dead soon due to his posty legs and his inability to move around very easily. Guess we were all wrong as Improver lived for many years after this, and he did not seem to pass on his very straight rear wheels to his progeny.
We were so impressed with Dividend that we decided that we were going to try to purchase him, so I phoned Dick Judy and asked him if he would sell him. He said he would not sell him and would not even consider it. Two weeks after we returned home I received a letter from Judy in which he said that he had reconsidered and he would sell Dividend and about 500 straws of semen for $25,000. We discussed this and decided that we could bring several more head in from Ireland for this amount of money so we turned down his offer. Probably another veyr bad decision we made.
Okotoks is not totally correct when he says that no Dividend was ever brought into Canada. There actually was about 70 straws of Dividend and about 100 straws of Improver that made it into Canada. This semen was never promoted and most people found out about it by accident. Just a few weeks ago, I was cleaning out the semen from an old semen tank and I came upon 2 straws of Dividend. I think I purchased 20 straws of the 70 that came into Canada, but I never got a single calf from what I used. All it says on the straw is " roan Shorthorn bull" and it does not give a collection date, a name for the bull or the owner, nor does it say where it was collected. The Improver semen that came to Canada only said " red Shorthorn bull" on the straws as well.
