trevorgreycattleco said:
JIT I'm curious what is in your opinion, the best bull running your place right now. Is Timeline there? What bulls are running your place? What sire group is looking and performing the best? I guess this question could be a new thread. What bull did you use last year that has given you the best calves so far this year? I have a small herd but my calves out of a bull from Rob Sneed are doing great. I plan on building my herd around this bull. I'm breeding him to his daughters next spring. <beer>
The best bull running here at this time is Major Leroy. His calves are a very solid group. They are very easy fleshing, well muscled and have the best dispositions we have ever had. One of the reasons I say he is the best is because he is the most proven of all our herd sires. I think the set of Leroy two year old females is the best set we have ever had... good uddered, fertile and actually gaining weight while raising their first calves on pasture. This set of Leroy first calf heifers are the first set of females that we have raised that have never been fed any grain in their lives, and I believe they are the best set we have ever produced. Our Leroy bulls have been very popular and they have also had the best ultrasound data when they were tested.
I am really high on Touchdown as well, but he is not yet a proven sire like Leroy. The first Touchdown calves are looking very good, and I think he is going to be a good choice to add to the Leroy females. I think we have bred almost every Leroy female on the place to Touchdown. He is also extremely easy fleshing and I have attached a picture of Touchdown taken today while I was touring some visitors. He has bred close to 60 females so far this year, and as the picture shows, he has retained his condition beautifully. We will have a much better idea about the breeding ability of Touchdown by this time next year. So far his calves have been very moderate at birth with the heaviest being 85 lbs from a Salute dam. So far all have been polled as well.
We are also running Hillside Leader X, a bull we purchased from Bill and Joe Bales in Tennessee. He is a very low BW sire and still possesses some performance. Again we have no calves from him yet, but he was used on mainly our heifers as well as a clean up sire on a group of 30 cows that were AI bred. The Bales are pretty high on his calves and we will know more about how he works on our cows and heifer by next year.
Also being used here is Fantasy Lane Pride 6U, who is a red polled son of Rockdell Pride 50K. His dam is an outstanding female sired by Buffalo Lake Highball 3H. I don't have a picture of this bull and I will try to get one in the next few days. He has been very popular with all our visitors who have seen him on pasture this summer. He is beautifully patterned with excellent muscle and style, and is another bull with a super disposition.
We have not used Timeline naturally since we sold him, as I felt that it was important for the other buyers to use him naturally first. I don't even have a Timeline calf this year, but after seeing how his last year calves developed over the winter, I was wishing I had AI'd some to him. Next spring I will have several ET calves and have several cows AI bred to him. Timeline's full sister has a pretty good Leroy heifer calf that we will sell in the Sun Country sale on Oct 20th.
I have often wondered if Saskvalley Pioneer had not died, if I would be saying he was a greater breeding bull than Leroy . We have some excellent Pioneer calves again this year, but since we don't AI as many cows as we used to, we only have a few each year. We have some very good Pioneer ET calves and it looks like we may have only had one recip repeat from the Pioneer embryos we implanted this spring. I think Pioneer was probably the most complete bull we have ever owned. He possessed so many functional traits that are so hard to find these days.
We have calves from some other sires as well this year, mostly ET calves. Possibly the most interesting ones are a set of 7 ET calves sired by Pheasant Creek Leader 4th who was a born in 1968, and was the last Shorthorn herd sire at Remitall Cattle Co , Olds, AB. Leader 4th was grand Champion at the 1970 Regina Bull Sale and sold for $7300.These calves have a different growth pattern than most of our other calves, and right now they are in a growing stage. I am really thinking they are going to be looking super by fall. They are all red and polled and all had very low BWs.
