Our cattle are located together on the Wyatt farm south of Kisbey and managed in a consistent manner supporting our joint herd objectives.
To start the two herds a small number of females and a herd sire were acquired from Grant Alexander of Horseshoe Creek Farms, George Cleggett of Renosa Shorthorns, Muri’s of Muridale Shorthorns, Gary Rose of Gar-Lind Shorthorns and Erwin and Kathy Rosenkranz of Wolf Willow Shorthorns.
We thank these cattlemen for their support and encouragement.
We have since acquired many new additions to our herd and are very excited about their potential.
It was with great humility and thanks we accepted the Shorthorn Herdsman Award at the 2006 Canadian Western Agribition.
Our objective is to establish and maintain together a team of moderately framed, outstanding females that will produce sound, highly marketable offspring and genetics attractive to commercial cattlemen and other shorthorn breeders alike and to have fun while doing it.
We will only retain the females which we believe will help us improve our herd and the breed. These females will be matched to some of the breed’s TH Free leading sires available to us through natural and AI processes. As we move forward an ET program may form part of our program.
We will not be the biggest but we will strive to walk among the best.
During our initial breeding program in 2005 we used the natural services of our first herd sire HC Precision 67P plus HC National Guard 77N and Glenford Captain Reno 47P along with AI sires, Muridale Buster 14K and Gringo. The natural services of Wolf Willow Rocky 6R and Wolf Willow Ranchero 4R, both sons of Wolf Willow Major Leroy 1M, sired the majority of our 2007 calves.
Our first calf crop was a tremendous learning experience with the Shorthorn breed and the challenges helped us to improve our future endeavors.
Our 2007 calf crop was much more satisfying and some of our exciting prospects are below. They will make their introduction in Regina at the 2007 Agribition. Watch for them.
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| McBeth Daffodil 3T | Uluru Rocky II 5T | McBeth Buster 7T |
During the summer of 2007 our new herd sire “Red Rose Gold Spear Ruffian 22P” serviced all of our cows. Our other new sire “Foxwillow Sovereign 3S” looked after our heifers. We are looking forward to the spring of 2008 for the progeny of these two exciting sires. Ruffian’s calves have been admired by many who have seen them in other herds.
We are committed to providing our herd information to the Whole Herd Recording Program, measuring performance, and utilizing the information to improve our product. The first ultrasound scanning of our animals occurred early in 2006 and was followed again in 2007. We believe this information will be of interest to our prospective customers and essential for our future success.
In the ongoing evaluation and selection of cattle for our Shorthorn team we will support our visual observations, preference type and pedigree data with extensive assessment of EPD’s and any other performance data available to us. The use of this documentation will be essential to aid us in developing a better product.
We recognize TH is a genetic disorder caused by a recessive gene which has become a concern for the Shorthorn breed. We also believe that with sound breeding decisions, proper due diligence and common sense this problem can be minimized.
In December 2006 all cows owned by McBeth and Uluru Shorthorns were tested for TH and PHA. We are very pleased to report that, with the exception of one cow, they all tested TH Free, and all tested PHA Free. During the fall of 2006 we acquired a number of excellent calves at the various Shorthorn sales which were all purchased as being TH Free. Our recently acquired proven herd sire Red Rose Gold Spear Ruffian has tested TH Free, as has Foxwillow Sovereign 3S.
We believe our herd is now TH Free and we intend to keep it that way.
Should we have any doubts about the status of any of the new progeny they will be tested without delay. We will only use TH Free sires for breeding purposes and will only acquire TH Free animals.
We believe this is a responsible approach to this genetic disorder and we welcome open and honest dialogue on this issue.