I wasn't going to enter this debate, as many of you know my position on it. Here are some of my thoughts:
1) the past is the past. Mistakes have been made and we should not dwell on them but try to work with the genetics we have. I have been in the Shorthorn breed my entire life and I have watched the breed in both Canada and the US allow certain cattle in their closed herd books from time to time, with little thought as to the purity of these cattle. Can anyone please tell me how Ayatollah was considered a 100% Shorthorn in the Canadian closed herd book? When you consider his pedigree, he would barely make 50% Shorthorn. Many Milking Shorthorns were plunked into the closed herd book that were 50% Red Holstein. You can still find some of these genetics in the backgrounds of some fairly well accepted non appendix Shorthorns in Canada. What is important is that we should be trying to design cattle that work in the beef industry and I oftentimes wonder how much it really matters what their pedigree reads. My bulls pedigrees oftentimes contain blood from many parts of the breed. Most sell to commercial cattlemen. I have not had a single commercial producer ask me whether any bull has an asterisk or no asterisk on his pedigree. Not a single one. The only time I have been asked has been by a few purebred breeders. I have watched breeders walk by the best bull in the pen and select another because the better bull had an asterisk on his pedigree. In most of these cases, the asterisk bull has been as pure or maybe even more pure than the non appendix bull.
2) The debate regarding cattle with an asterisk or no asterisk is in my opinion, the biggest issue holding back the advance of the Shorthorn breed. I personally have talked with more than a few people who love our cattle, but are so confused after talking with different people in the breed, that they are afraid to jump in. In the past two weeks I have spoken with two Aussie breeders and they both said that Shorthorn breed associations need to put this debate behind us. The Aussies have done this, and if you check out their herd book, they have done away with the distinction between certain lines. They are now all Shorthorns in their herd book and they feel they have seen the breed move ahead since this was done. Yet there are still many Australian Shorthorns that would have problems being accepted into the Canadian herd book at purebred levels in either the closed or appendix herd books.
3) At one time, I was very much a purist and I felt the herd books should be kept as pure as possible. I watched a wide variety of non pure animals being allowed into the closed herd book and it was when the Irish Shorthorns were dumped into the closed herd book in Canada, I decided that it really did not matter if my cattle carried an asterisk or not. My partners and I brought the Irish cattle into the country, and we never intended them to ever be anything but appendix animals. I still find it interesting that we were the only ones who voted against allowing the Irish cattle into the closed herd book. There is absolutely no documentation that the Irish were pure anything. What many people don't realize is that the Irish strain does not only contain animals that can be traced to the Deerpark or Highfield herds, but it also contains lots of other cattle in Ireland that had no pedigree of any kind. Would someone please find me a Shorthorn in the closed herd book in Canada that does not contain some Irish blood in their background? Believe me, I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to find what I consider to be a true non appendix animal and I have yet to find any that do not have some genetics that I question.
Not only are the US and Canadian herd books moving further and further apart, but the Canadian herd book is moving further from other Shorthorn herd books around the world. We all have to start to think of the world as being our marketplace. It is oftentimes much easier to move genetics to far away countries than it is to producers living next door to us.
Believe me, I could go on and on, but my point is why don't we all step back and look at what we want to accomplish? The Shorthorn breed is a drop in the bucket when it comes to breeds in the beef industry. No one has a corner on having purer cattle than anyone else. Why don't we all just call a good Shorthorn a good Shorthorn like almost everyone in the industry does? Each of us could still raise whatever we want, and isn't that what this industry is supposed to be about? I have always thought that breeders should document our cattle and let the buyer decide what they want. It doesn't seem to work very well, for the seller to be constantly telling the buyer what they should be using. Personally, I think we as a breed have done a pretty darn good job of designing some cattle that will compete with any other breed in the beef industry. Of course, we can do more but I often wonder just what we could accomplish if we could get by this hurdle that seems to keep our breeders ( especially new breeders) totally confused. It seems like the cattle have done their part, and now we need to adjust the mindset of the breeders. I have worked with a lot of different breeds in my lifetime, and I believe the Shorthorn breed has so much to offer others in the industry.
I have always found it a bit interesting that the first two breeders to purchase semen from our Irish Shorthorn bull, were two breeders who now call their herds non appendix. These two breeders in fact purchased enough semen to pay for all the purchase, transportation and semen collection we had in Irish Mist. They did not seem to be too concerned that he was an Appendix Shorthorn then. Two years later, after they saw the calves, these two breeders made the motion to move the Irish cattle to the closed herd book in Canada. It is also interesting that one of these herds is still going strong, and two of their best cow families go back to some commercial red females that I put into the appendix herd book at 3/4 level. In the 70s, I was asked by the Canadian Shorthorn Association to inspect grade cattle that had Shorthorn characteristics and allow them to be recorded in the graded up herd book at 3/4 level. I inspected many cattle in that era, and after these cattle were graded up to 7/8 level ( 1 cross of Shorthorn) they were then allowed into the closed herd book again. Just recently, I was searching some well known cattle here in Canada, and I found that one line goes back to a half blood Simmental cow I bought in Ontario in 1973.
So, I think we have to just stop this ridiculous debate as to what is better and accept that the Shorthorn breed has a bunch of pretty good cattle in it. The good ones are good and the poor ones are poor. I am totally in favor of documenting our cattle. I am totally against adding cattle to our herdbooks when it seems convenient for some breeders. Personally, I would support a movement to close the herd books to any more new genetics.
