Our Entries to Transcon’s 2014 Red Deer Simmental Bull Sale
Javar – one of our three bulls on offer in Red Deer
Our Entries to Transcon’s 2014 Red Deer Simmental Bull Sale
We are pleased to present three herd bull prospects at Transcon’s 2014 Red Deer Simmental Bull Sale on March 17th at 1:00pm at Westerner Park, Red Deer, Alberta. This is our fourth year at this event, and we are proud to be included in the strong offering that is always presented by this progressive group of breeders.
This year’s group features the Dora Lee Christina cow family. Christina was one of the founding females we selected from Dora Lee (with daughter Caitlin at side) to form the core of our herd. She has two daughters working here, but is probably best known for being the dam of APLX Santana, the $11,000 bull selected by Vaughn Gibbons at Cow-A-Rama in 2011. Christina sends a Dora Lee Jake son to town this year – ‘Javar’ is a really intriguing dark red, heavily pigmented, moderate frame bull that has developed into a real head turner (and is pictured above). Her daughter Caitlin also has a neat bull on offer – ‘Bradshaw’ a dark red Bronson son, loaded with volume and style. We think you will be impressed with what this cow family has to offer.
Our third bull, ‘Elway,’ is this years’ standout smooth polled Dora Lee’s Equinox. Like his sire, Elway showcases the tremendous volume and length of spine that sire Equinox is known for. We may be biased, but we believe Equinox to be the best homozygous Fleckvieh bull available. Now with four calf crops on the ground, his daughters are also coming into production, suggesting that Equinox also excels as a cow maker.
Our 2014 offering also showcases a glimpse into our breeding philosophy. We firmly believe that the future will bring an increased herd size on the same amount of available labour. This means that with less labour available on a per cow basis, birth weights will come down to improve calving ease, and that gradually more and more horns will be bred off the cattle. Our goal is to try and accomplish this while maintaining the strong performance and mothering ability the Simmental breed is known for.
We also want to ensure our bulls will work for many years, so feet, legs and temperament are very important traits for us. The bulls are housed in a 5 acre paddock to ensure lots of exercise, and have been developed on a ration of free-choice quality first cut hay, combined with a forage based pellet by Country Junction. All three bulls are quiet and have been tie-broke. We like working and walking through docile cattle, and feel the herd bull should be no exception.
Individual pages (short-cut links are located in the right-hand column) have been created for ‘Javar’, ‘Bradshaw’, and ‘Elway’. Please note that all three of the bulls are later born (Jan 27-Feb 7) so they will be almost a month younger than a lot of their peers at the sale barn. The tightly grouped birth dates, and moderate birth weights (92-95lbs), should allow for ready appraisal of the different characteristics these three bulls possess. On the individual pages, we have also pictured the sires, dams and grand dams. Maternal lines are very important to us, and we feel that behind every great bull is an outstanding cow family. As some people prefer paper copies, we also have individual bull profiles available in PDF format that can be e-mailed and printed, or sent by regular mail. Please let us know if you would like any additional information on any of our animals.
Applecross Cattle 