oakbar
Well-known member
I didn't mean to get on my soapbox but I would like to see everyone let up on the personal insults, etc. As Red Green would say--"We're all in this together"--so my hope is that we can try to accentuate the positive in each others view points, etc. We certainly all have more challenges in common than we do with each other. Every time we feel ourselves "rising to the bait", we should probably write a letter to one of our elected representative instead and ask them to clean up all the regulatory agencies who seem to be trying to put us out of business. I have had extensive experience with politicians and regulatory agencies and, believe me, for every letter, email, phone call we don't bother to send they make up for it tenfold!!
Concerning Salute!! I was one of those who was pretty much blown away by him when I saw him in Denver so I planned to use him a lot in my little herd. A few weeks after Denver I was talking with a cattleman who I have a lot of respect for and he made the comment that Salute had really gotten a lot taller when he saw him at the stud and that he thought he would probably throw calves with plenty of frame. He also said he wondered about calving ease when using him. Because of this conversation, I tempered the amount of Salute semen I used that year. I did use him on some large framed cows(all of my cows were large framed then) and I was dissapointed in the resulting height, etc. of the offspring. I'm not saying this was Salute's fault totally--I'm sure the cows had something to do with it as well. He just didn't seem to "nick"well with my cows. At that same time, several of the clubby guys in the area were using him and, overall, they also felt the calves were too large framed and that calving ease was an issue for their smaller cows. I still have Salute in the tank, but I have a little problem figuring out where I want to use him. I shy away from the smaller framed cows that could probably use his help on frame size and structure because of calving ease concerns. I also shy away from using him on my larger framed cows because they don't need help getting plenty of frame on their calves. I still think he puts out some really good calves--the spectrum of cows I feel comfortable using him on is just very narrow.JMHO
Concerning Salute!! I was one of those who was pretty much blown away by him when I saw him in Denver so I planned to use him a lot in my little herd. A few weeks after Denver I was talking with a cattleman who I have a lot of respect for and he made the comment that Salute had really gotten a lot taller when he saw him at the stud and that he thought he would probably throw calves with plenty of frame. He also said he wondered about calving ease when using him. Because of this conversation, I tempered the amount of Salute semen I used that year. I did use him on some large framed cows(all of my cows were large framed then) and I was dissapointed in the resulting height, etc. of the offspring. I'm not saying this was Salute's fault totally--I'm sure the cows had something to do with it as well. He just didn't seem to "nick"well with my cows. At that same time, several of the clubby guys in the area were using him and, overall, they also felt the calves were too large framed and that calving ease was an issue for their smaller cows. I still have Salute in the tank, but I have a little problem figuring out where I want to use him. I shy away from the smaller framed cows that could probably use his help on frame size and structure because of calving ease concerns. I also shy away from using him on my larger framed cows because they don't need help getting plenty of frame on their calves. I still think he puts out some really good calves--the spectrum of cows I feel comfortable using him on is just very narrow.JMHO
