Dover Ranch Corp

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justintime

Well-known member
Joined
May 26, 2007
Messages
4,346
Location
Saskatchewan Canada
Bob... I have been to Dover Sindelar's ranch at Billings, Montana several times over the years. This is one of the oldest ( if not the oldest) Shorthorn herds in the US. It was founded by Dover's grand father in 1881 and the first purebred Shorthorns were purchased in the 1880s. It is a beautiful ranch and a beautiful setting. It is located on the Yellowstone River just a few miles outside Billings. The ranch is operated by Dover and his son Frank.

The herd consists of over 300 cows, all red in color, moderate framed and very trouble free. I have never seen a poor udder in this herd. They calve the cows and heifers in a very tight calving period. They have bred their cattle for low birth weights, easy fleshing ability and to be trouble free. The cows look like someone cloned an entire herd from one or two animals. They are very uniform. For many years they closed the herd and only used bulls raised on the ranch, but they have purchased some herd bulls in the past decade or more. The herd is intensely line bred to LR Randolph 14th, who was a son of Remitall Randolph, and he was bred by Wendell Lovely, Wilsall, Montana. In the mid 90s they purchased a couple sons of Millbrook Ranson G9 from Sutherland Farms in Kentucky. I saw both of these bulls there and they were doing a good job.They also used some herdsires from the late Don Hoyt's herd in Wyoming, which had some Weston bloodlines in them. This herd would be a complete outcross to almost all Shorthorn bloodlines today.

Dover Ranch quit registering their cattle several years ago as they were keeping all their females for their own herd replacements and also using the top end of their bulls in their own herd. They also supplied bulls to the large Padlock Ranch in Wyoming for many years. I think Padlock had about 12,000 cows at one time. I stopped there once and it is not often that a ranch has it's own town, with it's own school, stores and everything else required for the ranch staff . In recent years, there has been renewed interest in the Shorthorns at Dover Ranch and they have started to bring most of the herd back to fully registered status. They were able to do this as they have an incredible set of records that verifies every animal on the ranch.

You do not have to go back into the background of the cattle in this herd , to see bloodlines from the 50s and 60s. LR Randolph 14th was born in the early 60s. He was a horned bull and there is a lot of horned breeding in the background of this herd. I remember Randolph `14th very well and I would love to find some semen from this bull. I know there was semen from him many years ago, but I have not heard of any being found for a long time. He was a very good bull... about as structurally sound as any bull could be. 

The Dover Ranch is 10,000 - 12000 acres in size. They have a beautiful well planned set of pastures. One part is seeded to tame grass and is divided into about 25 different pastures. They have trenched and laid over 15 miles of water pipe to take water to all the pastures. It is a well managed operation and the cow herd has sustained the family for over 120 years.
 

ROAD WARRIOR

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 9, 2007
Messages
1,865
Location
Iowa
Kind of a side note - My great, great grandmother had a highly respected shorthorn herd in Iowa in the 1880's. My mom has an article written about her in an old newspaper. RW
 

bcosu

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 22, 2008
Messages
853
Location
Ohio
uluru said:
Thanks Grant
You are just a fountain of knowledge.

When is that book coming out??????

.............Bob
agreed. never ceases to amaze me.
 
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