A Focus on Maternal Strength: Applecross Cattle @ Transcon’s 2021 Red Deer County Bull Sale.

We are pleased to present seven herd bull prospects at Transcon’s 2021 Red Deer County Bull Sale on Saturday, March 13th at 1:00pm at the Innisfail Auction Mart, Innisfail, Alberta. This is our eleventh 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. 

Our 2021 offering continues to showcase our philosophy of highlighting the maternal strengths of the Fleckvieh Simmental breed.  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 suggests continued strong demand for beef, we think our bulls on offer all provide the maternal characteristics that will produce tremendous replacement females. 

At the top of the pen is the third set of sons to be offered from NUG Delmonte 81D, who has clearly left his stamp on our herd. Dark red, smooth polled, non-diluting, amazing gain to feed efficiency ratio, and a quiet temperament are the adjectives that  immediately come to mind when we think ‘Delmonte’.  Loaded with hair and heavily pigmented, plenty of power yet moderate birth weights are common across the group of ‘Dalton’, ‘Dillon’, ‘Daytona’ and ‘Denzel’.  These four Delmonte sons all bend the curve, with very intriguing EPD profiles, that balance calving and maternal strength with strong performance numbers.   

We have tried something a little different this year, by bringing a couple of calving ease bulls to town.  It has always been a struggle for us to evaluate sons from first calf heifers, as they typically just don’t have the performance to stand up to our strict bull pen selection criteria.  This year we have two bulls that made the grade, ‘Gideon’ and ‘Cairo’, who both present as intriguing options for the heifer pen.  Joining these two bulls in our ‘junior division’, is ‘Watson’, who is a unique youngster with potential, having only a February 20^th, birthday.

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.  

Individual pages (short-cut links are on the right), have been created for each of the bulls.  (For those reading this on phones, the bulls name or lot number can also be entered into the search bar, to locate their individual page). On each of the pages, we have also pictured their sires, dams and siblings – hopefully, sharing pictures will provide a better glimpse into the extended pedigree.  It is also not unusual for us to have walked 4 or 5 generations of each respective cow family.  As 2021 has been an eventful spring, we also plan to have videos of each of our sale bulls the next couple days.   Please check our Applecross Cattle Facebook page for up to date info on our sales offering.   

Transcon’s 2021 Red Deer County Bull Sale promises to be another exciting event. We look forward to a great day on March 13th at the Innisfail Auction Mart!