Okotoks said:
That's interesting JIT but leads me ask about the Thomas herd. Did you or anyone see it? Cecil Staples bought two bulls out of the Thomas Gordon Draper Sales and both were Thomas bulls. The one I believe was the high selling bull one year and Cecil thought the Thomas program was the best. They used TPS Coronet Leader 21st sire Coronet Max Leader. The one bull Thomas Max 11Z was by Thomas Max 31V and 31V was out of a Carona Perfect dam and 11Z's dam was by Coronet Max Leader. I only have an old black white catalogue photo of 11Z but if I had him today .............
Did the size and thickness come from another of their bloodlines not Coronet Max Leader?
Dan, you have just mentioned another bull that was as unusual in his era as Leader 21 was. Carona Perfect was considered to be the biggest bull ever produced at the famous Carona herd of the 40s and 50s. Carona decided to put him in their annual bull sale because they still had his sire, and several sisters in their herd. Because he was far too big to ever be a show bull in the US, he sold for a very reasonable price in their sale to Dave Ball ( Ball Dee) from Edmonton, AB. After the sale, Carona offered Dave a considerable profit if he would let them buy him back, but he declined their offer. Carona Farms told Dave Ball that they considered Perfect to be the best bull they had ever bred, despite his size. I have been told that Carona Perfect was a 2600 lb bull at maturity. I can believe this to be true when you think of some of his offspring. Ball Dee Perfect Count weighed 2700 lbs and many of the Ball Dee cows that appear today in the background of many of the best cow lines here in Canada, were not small cows. Carona Perfect was a great breeding sire, and his influence is still seen today.
The Thomas herd was a very good herd. It was run on a very commercial basis and were very practical cattle. Coronet Max Leader was a much smaller bull than his son, Leader 21st. I made many trips to the Thomas herd with my dad. The top end of this herd was very good but there was a bunch of cows that were not real impressive to look at, but looking back, I now suspect that they probably bred much better than they looked.
I was not real old when Cecil Staples purchased Max 11Z, but I remember the bull and remember him selling in that sale. He was very thick, deep and appeared to be easy fleshing. He was by far, the best bull offered for sale that day. If I had to guess where he got his size, I would suspect that some of it came from the Carona Perfect line, but some of it could have come from the Coronet Max Leader lineage as well, as it did in the case of Leader 21.
When I think back to that time, there were some massive bulls that came from Scottish bloodlines as well. There were some Scotsdale bulls that were massive and very good. I remember a Scotsdale bull used by Osborns at Weyburn, who weighed over 2800 lbs. He was one of the most impressive bulls I remember from that time. He had feet like pie plates, and had never been trimmed, and he had a huge butt and was always in great condition. His calves came easily and while he was huge, his daughters seemed to mature at 1400 - 1500 lbs. We had a bull named Louada Clachan who was sired by Bapton Constructor. His dam was a Scottish import, yet Clachan weighed 2500 lbs in pasture condition. Morris Senkiw in Manitoba used Clachan prior to dad purchasing him, and I remember us having a problem getting him into our old two ton truck, as he was so long bodied. We finally got him in the truck box cornerwise and got the end gates back in, and headed for home. There were quite a few bulls like this back in that era, and many of them ended up in Western Canada as they sold cheaper and farmers could afford them. This is probably the main reason that some of the great herds of the 50s, 60s and 70s could be found in Western Canada, as most breeders did not get caught up with the meadow muffin type of the day, simply because they could not afford the smaller framed bulls. Another bull I remember was Scotsmorr Fascinator, who was another 2700 lb bull that was about as thick and easy fleshing as they come.