2020 Red Deer Bull Sale: Consistency Rules the Day

Our Seven Bulls on Offer.  From Left:  Diego, Dynamo, Delgado, Mayhem, Rockton, Durango and (peaking over the back) Dodger

We are pleased to present seven polled/scurred herd bull prospects at Transcon’s 2020 Red Deer Bull Sale on Thursday, March 26th at 1:00pm at Westerner Park, Red Deer, Alberta. This is our tenth 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.

We are proud to say that our 2020 offering will be our most consistent bull string yet – clearly showcasing 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.  We have moved slowly to incorporate the polled gene into our herd, as our goal is to try and accomplish this while maintaining the strong performance and mothering ability the Simmental breed is known for.  In a market that is always searching for ways to add value and build margin around the edges, we are also quite proud of the strong carcass traits projected in all of our bulls on offer. EPD’s certainly aren’t the ‘end all / be all’, but it is pretty cool to see the amount of ‘green’ across our CSA bull profiles.

Individual pages (short-cut links are located in the right-hand column) have been created for all seven of our bulls on offer. The individual pages also include pictures of the sires, dams, siblings and grand dams. Maternal lines are very important to us, and we feel that behind every great bull is an outstanding cow family.

Our bull pen in 2020 is dominated by a great cross section of NUG Delmonte sons.  With his third calf crop now on the ground (and his first daughters calving), Delmonte has done exactly what we have asked from him.  Sired by the very popular Starwest Pol Blueprint bull, Delmonte is adding some frame while still giving moderate birth weights.  He has developed into an impressive mature bull with an excellent gain to feed efficiency ratio, great carcass numbers and an amazingly quiet temperament.   He stamps his calves the same way, but you can still see the variances added by the respective maternal cow families.  Be sure to check out ‘Dynamo’, ‘Durango’, ‘Diego’, ‘Dodger’ and ‘Delgado’.

Joining the ‘Delmonte boys’ are two polled/scurred herdsire prospects that represent slightly different genetic twists from the bulk of the existing polled gene pool.  ‘Mayhem’ comes backed by one of our top cow families and is sired by the US bull FSS Maximus.  ‘Rockton’ will be the last bull sired by APLX Rambo to be presented at auction – Rambo was our ‘heifer’ bull for a number of years – and while he produced very successful progeny for us, simply got too big to use on heifers. Finding ‘different’ is becoming a challenge within the polled Fleckveih population, so we are pretty happy with how both ‘Mayhem’ and ‘Rockton’ have developed.

We 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 of the bulls are quiet and used to being around people. We like working and walking through docile cattle, and feel the herd bull should be no exception.

We would also like to thank Stefon Beechinor and Mackenzie Stout for taking pictures of our bulls again this year.  While they don’t watermark their work, we are quite happy with the quick and efficient high quality pictures they provide us.  They certainly reduce our historic stress of taking pictures!

The 2020 Red Deer Simmental Bull Sale promises to be another exciting event. We look forward to a great day on March 26th at Westerner Park