GM said:
I've never seen a pic of Leader 16 or Tournant Sir Ivor...does anyone have one they can post? JIT, you mentioned Leader 16 looking like he was built by a committee and it makes me think of some of the Improver 2nd progeny i've seen.
I can't remember ever seeing a picture of Leader 16th ( probably for obvious reasons). He was a horrible looking beast, really! I wish I could print the picture of him that is etched in my memory. As scary looking as this bull was, I do remember seeing some pretty decent daughters of him.
I think there was a picture of Tournant Sir Ivor, but I would not have any idea of where I would find it. As I mentioned, he was sold to a commercial herd in Kansas and that is where we saw him. He was an even roan bull with more thickness and capacity than most of the other Irish sires that were imported. When we were at Beef Genetics Research, Dick Judy was pretty upset as to why he had imported all these Irish Shorthorns as the ASA had just rejected letting them in the Shorthorn herd book at any level... for the second time. That was why he had sold Sir Ivor to a commercial herd as he did not think any of these cattle would ever be allowed in the ASA herd book. The Irish Shorthorn cattle actually were accepted into the appendix herdbook in Canada before they were allowed into any herd book in the US. In my opinion, they should have remained in the Appendix herd book as I am pretty certain some of them were not even close to being pure Shorthorn genetics. Probably some were, but I don't know how you would ever figure out which ones were, as some of the pedigrees of these cattle seemed to be designed at a moments notice. As I have mentioned on here before, I remember talking with 3 Irish breeders on individual occasions about the pedigree of a particular animal and getting 3 totally different answers as to the sire and dam of the animal I asked about.
Don't take my opinions the wrong way, as I think these Irish Shorthorns helped the breed turn a very important corner in their history. At the time they were first imported, the breed was spirally downward in popularity, and the Irish influence helped immensely in recapturing breed acceptance.
At the time my partners and I decided to import some Irish Shorthorns to Canada, these cattle had no registration status in any country ( including Ireland). The Irish government was just developing their program to recapture many of cattle in Ireland that had no registration status. I have heard many stories of how political some of this process was, and many cattle were placed into the herd book if a good bottle of Irish whiskey was involved. One American told me about finding a few cattle in Ireland that had not been accepted into the Irish scheme, and he was told that the cattle would get registered. They met the government official at a pub and after a few glasses of whiskey, all the cattle were in the Coates herd book.
One of our group, Don Murphy, had just returned from Ireland and had invited my dad and I as well as Craig Andrew, to come into Regina and see some of his pictures of the Shorthorns he had found in Ireland. He had stumbled onto the Deerpark herd while travelling through Ireland to some of his ancestors farms. We sat in Don's hotel room and viewed slides on the wall for several hours that night and by the time we left, we had decided we would purchase and import some of these cattle regardless of them having no registration status. We all agreed that from what we could see from the pictures these cattle offered a few things we could not find in our Shorthorns at the time. They had excellent testicles and they hung straight. At that time, most of the popular Shorthorn lines had poor formed testicles and also had an issue with one or both testicles being tipped. The Irish cattle appeared to have excellent udders. Don had pictured dozens of cows and we did not see a bad udder in any of these cows. They also appeared to have excellent thickness from hooks to pins which was also a trait we were having problems finding in many Shorthorns here at that time. We decided that these cattle might be an answer to us being able to design Shorthorn bulls that commercial producers would like so we felt it was a worthwhile venture. Besides this, the prices of these cattle were very minimal and if they didn't work, none of our group was going to be out much money. We purchased Highfield Irish Mist as a weaned bull calf for $300 and we also purchased 3 weaned heifers at $250-$500. The $500 heifer had been named the Champion female at several Shorhorn shows in Ireland and we felt she was worth the extra money. This female was Highfield Kate 3rd ( by Deerpark Leader 18th). After quarantine in Ireland for a month, shipping to Canada by boat, quarantine for 1 month on an island in the St Lawrence River, air travel to Edmonton, followed by another 1 month in quarantine at a government facility near the Edmonton airport, Highfield Irish Mist cost us under $2000. I can't even imagine what this would cost today! I am in the process of sending a tank of semen and embryos to Ireland and the air freight for the tank ( one way) is $1200. This shipment will be the largest shipment of Shorthorn genetics to Ireland from North America in history and includes over 800 straws of semen and 50 embryos.
I will also say that I don't think the Shorthorn breed is alone in having history such as this. I am pretty certain that all breeds have some questionable history in their genetic make-up. When I was in Scotland, I had a privilege to visit with some older breeders who seems pretty certain that Shorthorn genetics were used in some Angus herds over there, as late as the 50s and 60s. They told some stories of red Shorthorn bulls being used on occasion in some well known herds of the time. There really is not breed that can claim absolute purity, but when one thinks about this, what does it really matter? The quality of the cattle and what they offer the industry should be one of the most important considerations. I think the industry would be in a much healthier position today, if everyone accepted quality when they find it.