I am not exactly sure what your saying here??? What did you find to be interesting? The fact that roans get discounted at the sale barn? I dont think you can blame that on the shorthorn breed. One you can attribute blacks doin well at the sale barns and markets to the Angus Association, and not because Angus are such glorius, proven better performers. In tests there are lots of breeds that can compete. But the Angus Association got a jump and outmarketed everyone else, thus creating the beliefe that blacker is better. That of course led to the judges using black everywhere, which in turn led to all but a handful of breeds magically turning black.
Another reason that roans get discounted is because that there are a couple other breeds that also produce roan...namely Coriente and Longhorn...neither of wich perform well in the feedlot. And rather than take the time to decide if the cattle in the ring are actually decent or not, or more so if they are actually Coriente or Longhorn, or a beef calf that will actually perform and just happens to be roan. The folks at the markets decided it would be a quicker and better program to just dock everything that is red or roan.
In any case I dont think you blame the Shorthorn breeders, maybe you blame all the associations for not countering the CAB program years earlier and letting black get such a jump. But the selling of pedigrees and not cattle is not unique to the Shorthorns, it is very common in absolutely every breed out there. Go to a sale and get the catalog and circle the top pedigrees in the sale and notice how absolutely everyone flocks to those cattle, while barely glancing at a lesser known pedigree or breeders pens. Those lesser knowns may be twice the specimen physically, but they hardly get noticed, because in this day an age many people wont take the time to evaluate the cattle, they glance over the offering based on pedigree and have decided what they are buying often times before they even see the cattle. And this is true in all breeds.
