I am old enough to remember a time when Angus cattle were not real popular. My family had very good friends who lived a few miles away, that raised purebred Angus cattle. I can still hear my dad saying that he felt sorry for those Angus breeders who had such a hard time selling their cattle.This seems hard to believe now, but I remember those days as if they were yesterday. The Regina Bull Sale was one of the biggest bull sales in the world at the time, usually selling 1300- 1600 bulls. The Angus always had the lowest average of all the breeds sold there. I can also remember my dad saying that he would love to have 20 good black Angus cows, but it was so hard to sell them in those days that he never did buy any. He came very close to buying some when our family friends dispersed their herd in 1970. They had excellent cattle and the sale was a disaster. I think they averaged under $300 on a powerful set of cows. If I had been smart enough to buy that herd and continue to raise the type of cattle this man had, I would be sitting on the top of the world today. There were some truly amazing cows in that herd and very few of them sold for more than $400.
I was in college at the time, and this man offered me 10 quarters of land ( 1600 acres) for $80,000. I went to Farm Credit( the major ag lender at the time) and I my loan application was turned down. The loans officer told me that I could never pay for it by farming and he told me I had too much education to farm. My dad had even put another 10 quarters of his land up as security but the loan was still rejected. I have not ever since then seen my dad as mad as he was that day. Within 5 years of this, I could have sold 2 quarters of this land and paid for the rest of it. I drive by that land today and see approximately 80 oil wells on it and almost cry.The person who was able to buy it is a very wealthy man now. As usual, timing is everything in this business. I sure wish I could meet that ag lender today and give him a swift kick in the slats!
Getting back to the black hided issue, while I do agree that the black hided supremacy is a total myth, I also agree that the only way it will ever be overcome is to prove that cattle of other colors are as good or superior. The Angus breed did not win this war by telling everyone that other breeds were not as good as they were. They won it by convincing people that Angus cattle offered an advantage. The CAB program was just in it's infancy about the time we quit feeding cattle, but I already could see that this program was going to have an impact. I take my hat off to the Angus breed for simply being smart and designing a program that basically ensured their future. I would be the first person in line to say that Angus cattle do not offer any more quality of carcass and meat than many other cattle of other colors. I would also say that there are still lots of black hided cattle that are very inferior to some other cattle of other colors. That said, perception is often everything, and the Angus association has done an excellent job of convincing the consumer that Angus beef is the highest quality possible. I think this is pure cow do-do, but the fact remains that the Angus breed outsmarted every other breed out there. Now we see most breeds trying to develop black branches in their breeds, just to stay in the competition. Here in Canada, I am starting to see a slow movement away from buying just black bulls by cattlemen. Angus bull sales are still good, but I see a widening gap between the bulls that sell well, and those that pass with no bids. Being black is just not enough anymore, and cattlemen will move to a bull of another breed if they feel they have more to offer.
As I wrote in a previous thread a few weeks ago, I think the " black myth" is more pronounced in the US than in Canada. Here in Canada, our beef grading is based on marbling so we have seen good marbling cattle start to move to the front of the line that are not necessarily black hided. The CAB program in Canada is a very effective breed promotional tool, but I do not think it is even close to the monopoly it has in the US. When you go to other countries, there is no real benefit to having a black hide, so it appears to me that this is simply a " man made" marketing scheme that has worked beyond anyone's fondest dreams. The road to changing this is long, and it will require a large group of people banding together to prove that a black hide is not everything. We cannot get mad at the Angus people who came up with their superior marketing ideas. They were true visionairies, and they deserve the credit for outsmarting everyone else.