This here is Greg Golden of Cole Creek Angus. He is the 3rd generation to farm at this 4000 acre block on the South bank of the Yellowstone River at the bottom end of Montana. He runs a herd of 170 cows, sends 50 bulls into Midland which go into his own pen (not the Midland bull test), where they are fed to gain 1kg/day 'Just a steady ration'. He has his own sale at Midland in March - where he sells 25 heifers too. I got a firm sense that Greg believes that if something has proven itself to work, then don't change for the sake of changing ....that was a pretty reliable pick-up truck we toured the ranch in! His type of cows worked well for him too... "It's all about the COW" says Gregg. "The bull is a by-product - just a way of passing on the cow's genetics. I'm breeding for maternal all the way, when most of the Angus breed are heading terminal - with poor feet and udders, too much growth and fat - and the cows aren't lasting." The Cole Creek cattle have the tightest bred pedigrees I have ever seen - he has consciously line-bred with a focus on taking out problem traits from his herd. His cows didn't look fancy - but they were sweet, feminine and correct ...good job they had ear-tags because they were a very even herd! The best thing about the Cole Creek cows were the calves they were rearing. The guy on the left is Steve Radakovich - and then there is his wife Penny and Steve Orly, their herd manager on their place in Iowa. Steve R says "It's all about the BULL." ...well, that threw me - I'd just come round to thinking that Greg Golden made a lot of sense, and then Radakovich contradicts him. I found out over a very interesting 24 hours that the folks at Radakovich Cattle Co are pretty good at making you look at things from another perspective! Steve R goes on: "Seedstock breeders around the world spend most of their time correcting mistakes. And they correct extremes with extremes, when in fact staying put, in the middle would have been better. Our breeding program is about finding bulls that don't make mistakes." The cattle are composites - the right bull is more important than the herdbook he is register on - they are run on a low-input system. Bull calves are wintered on chopped hay only - and they pick the ones that flesh up well, and have a no-frills sale on the ranch in spring. "My bulls go on and gain weight over their first breeding season" boasts Steve. So why does he say the opposite to the Cole Creek guy? Well, he actually agrees with him - Radakovich says: "Genetic progress is all about the bull - that's where the selection pressure is," so it's massively more important to get the bull right - but get him right on the basis of the cow's genetics! To round the story up, It turns out that Radakovich Cattle Co. in Iowa, had just got some calves on the ground, sired by Cole Creek semen they'd bought. Now Montana is a long way from Iowa, and they hadn't seen the bull - but I could pretty much assure them that he'd probably be a 'kind-of-a-cousin' to the one in the picture at the top, and that he'd be full of some 'damn-good-cow genetics'. |
Neil's Nuffield Adventure | Better Breeding - Beef and sheep |