Old Shorthorn semen

Hilltop said:

Okotoks said:

JIT the Carona Perfect bull was a result of his dam being bred back to her sire Cherry Hill Royal Oak.
The result was a pretty prepotent breeding bull!

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That gives me an idea to sleep on tonight..

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Okotoks said:

oldhorn said:

I learned very early in li fe that trying to apply cause and effect to a correlation will get you in trouble.  That said, as one of the contendin bidders o Leader 21 when he sold in Omaha, I know why I bid, and it had nothing to do with the show ring.  The shorthorn breed had been so bred down in size, thanks to the show ri ng success of Lynwood farms and what the local coffee shop called red and roan berkshires, a reference to Charlie Lynn's other hobby.  My dad convinced me I didn't have the money to ouitbid Souris, and since he controlled the checkbook, I CONCEDED .  When it was learned that thousands of amps of semen had been sold tocommercial ranchers , the rush was on and the show ring followed the crowd.  please excuse my typing, but my 85 year olf finers don't always do what I ask.

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This is pretty great, someone who was there and saw it all! What were the other options at the time? I would love to hear more about the bloodlines as you knew them. I sat and talked to Bob Gordon and Edgar Phillpott at Agribition about 5 years ago which was very interesting. Edgar was in his 90's and sharp as could be.

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justintime said:

Okotoks said:

r.n.reed said:

It would have been interesting for me to see how old 21 compared to the rest of the calf crop at TPS that year.Did he fit in or was he an outlier.If an outlier he was definitly a prepotent one whether you like his type or not.After studying his extended pedigree I have to wonder if he wasn't a throwback to Whitehall Sultan as he goes back to him many times on both sides of the pedigree.

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That's interesting that Whitehall Sultan still has a connection. Do you know if he is in any other backgrounds of bulls used today?

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There may be some other older lines that go back to Whitehall Sultan, but as RN Reed said earlier,Leader 21 certainly had Sultan's blood flowing through his veins.
I was at TPS twice in it's later years, and I remember Harold Thieman telling me that Leader 21 was most unusual right from birth. He said that he was always the biggest calf in the pen, and he did not know whether he would ever sell him or not. Harold said that when he stood last in class at the American Polled Congress were he sold, he thought some of the interest in him might move to other bulls.  He said that despite standing at the bottom of the class, the interest in him remained and he sold to Bob Gordon.

I never saw anything at TPS that even resembled Leader 21st when I was there. My last visit was several years after Leader 21 was dead, and there were no bulls in the bull pen that could match him. They were very small framed and quite wasty in their make-up. Many of the cows left in the herd were much the same. They were flat topped with no muscle expression and lots of waste on them. For this reason, I would have to agree that Leader 21 may have been a throwback to some earlier genetics like Whitehall Sultan

If you ever have a chance to read Bob Gordon's book, he tells about buying Leader 21. He said he did not have the money to buy him at just over $2500 and he borrowed money from several people he knew to gather up enough to pay for him. Shortly after Leader 21 arrived at Kinnaber, Edgar Philpott called to see if he could buy into the bull. That was the start of a partnership that lasted for many years.

In later years, Edgar Philpott developed a very successful Charolais herd. His Butte Lee Charolais were internationally renowned and he was still breeding Charolais cattle well into his 90s. Two years ago, Edgar was awarded an Honour Scroll by the SK Livestock Association for his years of service to the livestock industry in Saskatchewan. I was presenting the awards that evening so I met with Edgar and his wife along with the other people being recognized that evening. Edgar said he wanted to show me something, and he reached into his suit coat pocket and he pulled out a picture of a yearling Charolais heifer he had recently located on a farm. He said to me " I want you to see this heifer... I think I might have just found the next great female in the Charolais breed"  He may have been 94 years old, but he was really a young man at heart and he still possessed the passion of breeding better cattle that he had for all of his life.

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justintime said:

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?

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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.
CArona Perfect, resulting of sire daughter mating was purchased as a yearling by th C.s.Thomas , in spring 1956, in summer 1961 Dave Ball purchased him,  Dave said he was smooth as an apple and was what the polled cattle needed, he weighed 1800lbs on pasture. He was sold June 1964 to C.J Versluys of Olive Grove. Thomas's lways advertised him as a sire of outstanding milking females.... 

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