news from 1920

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librarian

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I was intrigued by this picture and wondered who AJ Marshall was.
This importation came from Great Britain on 1920 and I'm assuming Mr Marshall was a Scot.
Apparently Marshall bought and bred Shorthorns, bulls especially, and exported them, hundreds or thousands going to South America and the U.S. These guys with the calf would have been the ones who got the animals across the seas.
https://books.google.com/books?id=rvNFAQAAMAAJ&dq=editions%3AQv2ccFBo_SAC&pg=RA1-PA7#v=onepage&q&f=false
This was said of Marshall in 1950:
"The largest herd in Europe is carried on by Albert James Marshall, whose
transactions, particularly in the export trade, are on the most extensive ... "

An article from 1958 referred to him as the late AJ Marshall.
From the photo
Four of the men who accompanied Wm. Hatnett's importation and Siamese Princess, the calf born on the ship. From left to right.
Captain James McGregor, J. Pearson, John Holmes, and Mr. Richardson. Captain McGregor is a cousin of A.J. Marshall, the great breeder and exporter

Mr Marshall must have seen a lot of change in the breed over the course of his life. Change in the world also.
 

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RedBulls

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Thanks for posting these links. I love the old historic stuff. Not sure about who Marshall was except for seeing the name in some old pedigrees, but the article on breeding for type of Shorthorns from 1920 is still relevant!
 

librarian

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knabe, that Scotch Shorthorn Record is so terrific. I'm posting AJ Marshall's photo from it for posterity as well as his ideas about white bulls.
I was reading Cameron today, looking for something about Marshall.
Here is a link to the page images.
https://archive.org/stream/shorthornsincent00camerich#page/n22/mode/1up
Shorthorns in central and southern scotland
This is such great read..
I didn't find Marshall, but I did find a smoking gun about Hugh Watson, the great Angus improver, breeder of Old Jock who is #1 in the Angus herd book. He was double bred to "Grey Breasted Jock" who doesn't get to be in the herdbook. Anyway, this Hugh Watson had Shorthorns before he had Angus and was in cahoots with Captain Barclay, probably the most colorful character in Shorthorn history. page 32..
The smoking gun and Hugh Watson of Keillor
https://archive.org/stream/shorthornsincent00camerich#page/32/mode/1up
 

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Medium Rare

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The White bull phenomenon is always interesting to me.

While I can't understand it scientifically, I can say the best producing set of females I've ever owned were blue roans sired by a white shorthorn. They stayed true to the original cross type even after two more generations of Angus outcrossing. I haven't been able to recreate their longevity or consistency since. Of course, after only two breeding seasons the bull was under a tree that was struck by lightening. He even carried the word lightening in his name, so perhaps it was in the cards from the beginning.
 

knabe

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this is pretty funny.


http://onpasture.com/2014/11/03/breeding-matters-part-iv-culling-for-fertility/


A Black Angus bull that was incredibly popular during the “carcass craze” of just a few years ago named GAR Precision 1680 was just such a bull. It came to pass that he actually was the source of two lethal recessive disorders, but his owners and propagators were in serious denial about that and thousands of direct and indirect progeny have had to be tested since the truth came out about the bull. - See more at: http://onpasture.com/2014/11/03/breeding-matters-part-iv-culling-for-fertility/#sthash.EYNbOZJJ.dpuf
and these are the people running the association.  sad sad sad.  they made more of a mess than all the other breed defects combined.

on the other hand, the first description i've seen of what may have happened.

Finally, the comment about Gardiners and Precision 1680 was inaccurate and unprofessional. Much like your Hereford example in an earlier article, recessive defects in that line were not immediately obvious because of avoidance of close breeding for several years. Also, GAR was sending early defective calves to IA State for analysis, and they were being told that the defect was environmental and not genetic. Perhaps they took a false sense of security in what they were being told, but that doesn’t translate to denial. It wasn’t until the spring/summer of 2008, when a commercial producer mated a group of Precision daughters to their half brothers, that it was clear that Precision was a culprit (although 9J9 was the original source). As their fall sale approached that year, there was still no definitive molecular test. In order to present the best knowledge they had at the time, they hired me (I was a graduate student at the time) to calculate carrier probabilities for every animal in the catalog, based on their pedigrees. They later implemented a sale credit program to replace defective animals, and that cost them millions of dollars. The defect was essentially purged from the breed soon after the molecular tests were developed. They had a streak of bad luck, but it was handled with honesty and integrity.
[/size]Joe Emenheiser, PhDUVM Extension Livestock Specialist[size=medium]
 

librarian

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