For several years, we ran a purebred herd of 100 Charolais females along with 200+ purebred Shorthorns, and we used to breed our Charolais heifers to Shorthorn bulls. The tan heifers were beautiful and we kept almost all of them to develop and sell as bred heifers. The first year we offered these bred heifers for sale, we sold about 20 of them to two different commercial producers. Both of these guys contacted us after they got the first calves from these heifers and they wanted more of them. They were impressed that these tan F1 heifers brought calves in at weaning that were as big as their main cow herd did. They became so popular that we started breeding some of our Shorthorn cows to Charolais bulls and some of our Char cows to Shorthorn bulls as well. Each year these heifers were the first to sell and they brought a very good premium price. The only reason we decided to stop making these F1 females was that we decided to reduce our cow numbers and the decision was made to disperse our Charolais herd and just concentrate on the Shorthorn herd. I don't understand why more producers don't develop a program in which the produce quality F1 females as I think there are more and more people who would simply purchase their replacement females rather than have to produce their own. I think a pretty good opportunity exists here. I know if our case, we would have expanded this part of our operation if we could have found good help on the farm, as it was a good market with people waiting in line for the F1 heifers each fall... and the tan steers produced always topped the feeder market as well.