Major Leroy calves

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Doc

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 13, 2007
Messages
3,636
Location
Cottontown, Tennessee
Hey JIT, I like the looks of the couple of Leroy calves in Cagwins' sale! The pictures are kind of grainy , but it looks they really have some muscle expression & yet have some size to them also. Are you seeing that he works better on any certain bloodlines or certain type of cows? I would like to try him this fall.
 

justintime

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Joined
May 26, 2007
Messages
4,346
Location
Saskatchewan Canada
I have been pleased with our Leroy calves from any type of cow, we have. He will downsize really big framed cows, and he will put more butt on all his calves than their dams have. While some think of Major Leroy as being a so called muscle bull, I don't think of him that way. He is a well muscled bull and without any doubt, he is the easiest fleshing bull we have ever had. He may be the easiest fleshing animal we have ever had but his dam may be better ( Sparkle is pictured in my avator). I was just looking tonight at a couple of pastures of cows, and I really don't know if I could really tell you which type of cow he works on best. He really makes then uniform. An added bonus is that the Major Leroy calves are the quietest calves I have ever had as well. Our first calf crop was weaned last fall and I tied several up after weaning. They did not even pull on the halter and most led immediately. Our first bulls were performance tested last winter and were sold in our bull sale in April. I was very pleased that the Leroy sons and grand sons performed  very well with excellent weight gains on a very high roughage ration. The top gainer was a Leroy grandson who had a 3.88 lb/ day gain.

I am getting excellent reports from around the world about Leroy calves. Semex are selling his semen in over 100 countries, and I have heard that they have sold more Leroy semen in Brazil that all the Shorthorn bulls they have ever marketed there. ( By the way, Brazil has more beef cows than Canada, USA, and Mexico combined... and hundreds of thousands are AI bred). Major Leroy was the most used Shorthorn sire in New Zealand in 07 and 08.

I may be a bit biased, but I think the day I bought Leroy was probably the luckiest day I have had in the cattle business. His daughters are making excellent cows. They have excellent udders, milk well, but not too much. They have enough to raise a good calf, yet hold their condition while doing it.

I have had some breeders tell me that Major Leroy is too small framed. Well, he is exactly what I was referring to in another post, in regards to not having to get our cattle short in order to get fleshing ability. He really surprised me this spring when we took him to our bull sale to display him. He had been running on a very dry pasture with only a hay bale for feed for over 2 months, and he weighed 2740 after being trucked 70 miles. He just has an amazing amount of body. He looks even better on pasture with the cows today. He has bred over 60 females this year andlooks like we just turned him out.

After we sold the world semen rights in him to Semex, a group of their people from Canada and the US stopped in to see him. They were impressed with how strcuturally sound he was. They said he may be the most structurally sound bull in their entire beef line- up. A well known Charolais breeder said he wished he could find a Charolais sire that walked like Leroy.

There have been some Leroy calves born in the US already. Dale Wernicke, in Illinois, flushed a cow to him and his first calves were born last fall. Dale told me that the first calf ( a heifer) was the best calf he had ever had born on his farm. I have not talked to him in awhile to see how they have developed, but if they are like mine, he will like them even more as they get older. Bob Little, in North Dakota has about 6 or 8 Leroy yearling heifers and I have seen some pictures of them. They look like a powerful set.  Little Cedar have an ET full sister to Leroy and Frenchie is very high on her as well.
 
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