Why Show Cattle?

Today is show day in at Farmfair in Edmonton. Farmfair is the largest cattle show in Alberta, and because it is so close to the farm it is a great show for us to take out cattle into and market them.

I always get asked lots of questions on why we do this and what makes it so much fun, so here is my attempt as answering some of the most common questions I get asked:

Q: What does the judge look for?
A: Because these are breeding animals rather then animals for meat the judge looks for different things. The main things that these animals would be judged on would be how sound they are (what their feet and legs look like), how much muscle they have, and how long and deep they are.

Q: What do you do with them?
A: Cattle shows are very similar to a dog show. We groom and primp the animals before they go into their class. Once their class is called they are paraded in front of a judge to be placed. The judge will evaluate each animal compared to their ideal and place the class from first to last.

Q: What can you win?
A: While we do not show animals to win prizes, there can be some great benefits to doing well. For the grand champions (best overall) belt buckles, cash, gift certificates to industry business and banners are very common. A few shows still pay out prize money in the classes. The two biggest shows to win would be Farmfair and Agribition. Both shows have a supreme show and if you win those (which is very difficult) the prizes are large! For having Supreme champion at Farmfair you win a brand new Dodge Truck! At Agribition to have Supreme Champion you win $10,000 plus about $10,000 in prizes. So yes there can be some incentives to win!

Our Simmental show is today, and we will be showing 5 animals including these two girls! Stay tuned to see how they made out.

Eng's Ramble #2

As many of you folks that read Stacy’s blog know, I’m a born and raised city boy (I’ll have a blog to follow later on talking about us “dreaded city folk”).  Since dating Stacy and spending time out at the farm I have been exposed to many things that are well outside my wheelhouse.  From time to time I’ll pick some of these stories and share them with you.  Being that many of you have lived on the farm your whole life you may forget many of the “first times” and hopefully I can take you back down memory lane and remind you of some long forgotten memories.  I figured it probably makes the most sense to talk about the first time Stacy took me out to the farm.

Since we started dating I continually bugged her to take me out to the farm and put me to work.  Finally, in June some time (we started dating in February to give you an idea) she took me out while her parents were out of town.  I’m fairly confident she waited for a time when her parents were away in case I turned out to be a real tool on the farm causing her parents to question her life choices.  In any case, before we went out I told her that she better be putting me to work because I didn’t want to go out there and just sit around.  She assured me that I would definitely be put to work and she’d make sure to keep me busy.  Some of what we did was expected, but much of it was really not something I saw coming…

We checked pastures and did the usual chores, but then when Stacy let three calves into the barn, put halters on them, tied them up, and then handed me a brush, I really had no clue what the hell was going on.  And then yup, sure enough, we started brushing calves.  Really?  This is what you had in mind when I said “put me to work”?  But that’s what we did.  We worked on calves starting the process of training their hair for showing later that year.  Looking back now it really doesn’t seem too foreign and idea at all, but that’s really the last thing I would have expected to be doing my first trip out to the farm.  Since then I’ve washed cows, brushed their hair, used a massive blow-drier to dry them off, and yes I even wiped crap off their backsides when they went to the washroom on show day.  Getting involved with a farm girl I can’t say that this is what I would have expected to be doing, but I thoroughly enjoy all the experiences I have gone through so far and can’t wait to keep learning.

Kualoa Ranch

While in Hawaii I really wanted to see what their agriculture was like. We had found out about the Dole Pineapple plantation, but it was going to take up all day, and there really was not all that much to see. That is when we found out about the Kualoa ranch located about 1hr from Wikiki Beach.

The ranch is one of O'ahu's largest and oldest cattle ranches covering over 4000 acres of mountains, valleys and ocean front property. The ranch really prides itself on preserving the land and making themselves self sufficient to the land and workers.

We had to try out some of their beef jerky

While at the ranch we took part in 2 different tours. The first was the Movie Sites and Ranch tour. During this hour trip around the ranch we see the oldest sugar mill, WWII bunkers, several different movie sites, as well as a portion of the ranch and the cattle out grazing.

Brangus grazing on the front pasture

Film location from Jurassic Park

Footprint from the "Godzilla" movie

The second tour that we did was of the ancient fish pond and gardens. On this tour we seen the ranches 125 acre fish pond that is stocked from the ocean. We also got to tour around and see the flower gardens as well as the fruit orchard.

cracking macadamia nuts

fresh coffee beans

Thinking of Home

Dan and I have been in Hawaii since Friday afternoon. The weather is amazing, and it is stunning here. If it were not for these guys we may never come home!

Elle up to her knees in mud

Elle x Joker Bull Calf- Wildcard

Sweet Talker heifer

This guy has the baldy gene! He was 90% this year

Farmer Dan and his dog Bud

See all of you next week with lots of updates and pictures!

Funny Face

One of my favorite things about Simmental cattle is their markings. Other then the solid coloured ones, no 2 Simmentals are marked the same. My favorites are ones with a perfect blaze, but the ones with weird markings are a very close second.

This is a little girl that was born at the farm last week. Her dam is red and her sire is a black baldy and this is the result.

This little girl has a white face and a black body. But the really funny part is when you look at her from the side. This is a marking that I have never seen before...

If you look closely you can see that she has a red dot in her white. It almost comes up like milk mustache. To get an animal that is both red and black is extremely rare. The black colour is the dominant gene to the red.

Dad's thought that this marking should make her a sale feature somewhere this fall!

2012 Sale Bulls

It is officially that time again, bull sale season that is. With the Simmental sales already have started, we are busy getting our bulls ready for the sale that they will be consigned to.

Each year we sell about 1/2 of our bulls off the farm. The other 1/2 will go to a consignment sale as we do not have enough animals to have a sale of our own. This year we will be again selling at the Red Deer Bull Sale on March 19th.

We will have 6 bulls in the sale this year; 1 black and 5 red bulls. All of them have been semen tested and will be halter broke.

Joker x 2N Bull

Revolution x Talladega daughter

Revolution x Caesar daughter

Revolution x Cosmo Daughter

Revolution x Master Link daughter

Revolution x Talladega Daughter

For more information on these bulls please visit www.highcountrycattle.com or call 780-696-3643

Big Bad Bulls

Ok well the bulls really arn't bad, but they sure are getting big. We have 6 bulls left in the pen, and these ones have been carried over to sell in the Red Deer Bull Sale in March. 5 of these bulls are paternal brothers to the $40,000 RJY Rival bull we sold at checkers.

Over the next few weeks we will continue to clip and tie these bulls up. All of our bulls are sold tie or halter broke for easy handling. Once I have a few more pictures I will be sure to post them, but for now here are a few shots of the bulls from this past weekend.

Revolution son that will sell in March

Getting Rival ready to head to Alta Genetics

Calving 2012

Calving has officially begun at the farm with over 20 calves now. They are looking great and I will have more updates and pictures in the coming weeks. For now here is a little taste of a few of the calves.

Tie Outs Morning and Night

While we are at Farmfair we are lucky enough to be able to tie our animals outside at night. This helps to keep them healthy and it also allows us to remake the stall each night. 

The crew at Northlands takes care of putting down clean straw each day for the animals to lay in at night. We then take hay out for them to eat at night.

Tie-outs during the day

At 6pm each night the barn doors open and cattle start moving outside for the night. It is pretty neat to see 500 head of cattle walking around the horse track towards the tie-outs. 

While the animals are stalled there during the night they have both a halter and a neck tie to secure them in place. A neck tie is an additional rope that goes around there neck and is secured with a ring and clip. The halter is then tied to the left side and the neck robe on the right with the animal in the middle.This keeps them in place and from not getting tangled up with other animals as well as a back up measure encase one of the ropes comes undone during the night.

Tie-outs at night filled with cattle

Making the Bed

At the shows we are not immune from doing chores. The animals need to be fed and watered, the aisles need to be swept, the cattle need to be kept clean, and this all needs to happen while we are talking to potential customers marketing our cattle.

At the end of each day we take out cattle outside to another stall called tie-outs. They spend the overnight there where they have lots of clean bedding and fresh air. After the animals are all lead out to tie-outs there are more chores to be done. We need to prep feed for the next morning and straighten out the stall for the animals to come back the next day.

This is what our stall looked like one day after the animals being in it. There is hay that has been pulled back and not eaten, the shavings are all messy, and the mats that the animals stand on so they do no paw are messed up too.

Once we get all of the night chores done this is how the stall should look. It is all clean and ready for the animals in the morning. This saves us time in the morning and allows us to sleep in those precious few moments.

Farmfair 2011

Farmfair is always a really fun show for us. Not only have we done well at this show, but it is also right in our backyard so it is great to see lots of old friends. We do a lot of business at this show and sell a few animals either out of the stall, or have cattlemen come to the farm to see the bulls we have for sale.

Here are just a few of the pictures from the show this year, and our Reserve National Champion bull RJY Rival 13Y.

RJY First Time 18Y

This weekend we sold yet another bull out of the bull pen. This calf has a pretty neat story, and will have a great future both at High Country and with his new owners BS Ranch.

RJY First Time 18Y is an In Dew Time out of our future donor Joy's First Date 1W.

We were really wanting to use In Dew Time in our herd to get some replacement females. The semen we ordered was sexed female semen 90. This means that the semen will produce 90% heifers and 10% bulls. When AI was done we were to expect 5 calves out of this sire. Once the calves were all born, we were left with 4 heifers and 1 bull! Guess we learned our lesson that you cannot play around with science to much and just have to let mother nature take its course.



Joy's First Date and RJY First Time at Agribition


This fall we took First Time and his mother out on the show road. They placed 2nd in class at the National Show at Farmfair and 4th in class at Agribition. We were then able to connect with BS Ranch who ended up purchasing this bull out of our show string.

RJY First Time 18Y

  

Along with BS Ranch we will be using this new herdsire on our heifers this spring. We are excited to have such a maternal and calving ease sire to implement into our herd and can't wait to see the effect that he will have on our first calf heifers.

We will be selling semen on this young sire this spring. You can contact Rob Young at 780-514-0758 or show12win@yahoo.ca for more information.



Top 10 of 2011

This past year was pretty awesome. I know it is the cliche thing to do, but time really did fly, and I have to say it was one of the best years yet! Here are the Top 10 things according to me.

10. Home Reno- My living room was the last room that needed to be redone. Thanks to a work bonus I can officially say it is completed! And yes I still love my white couch.

9. Year of Concerts- Taylor Swift, Michael Jackson the Immortal Tour and Keith Urban made this year pretty awesome. What great performances these all were.

8. Canmore/Banff- "The Eng" decided to plan a trip to Canmore/Banff for the weekend. If was awesome to get away and spend some time together. Golfing Silver Tip was pretty cool too.

7. Work Achievements- I had a killer year at Delta Hotels and Resorts. I made top 25 in the company for Quarters 1 & 2 and 4. Along with some bonus's along the ways it feels pretty good to be on top of my game.

6. Vegas- I love Vegas so it was great to go back with Brett this year. Garth Brooks was amazing and it was pretty awesome to meet "The Eng" and his friend Kevin down there too.

5. New York- New York is another soft spot of mine. Only a few months into dating a boy we jumped on a plane together for 5 days in the Big Apple. A Yankee's game, amazing food, a kick ass hotel and some great company made this a pretty awesome time.

4. Cattle Time- I had an amazing year with my cattle. In March I sold 2 bulls at the Red Deer Bulls sale for $5000 and $5500. Top that off with Elle embryo's selling in Louisville and being able to show Southern Elle all fall and I am ready to see what 2012 brings!

3. Rival- As a family we had a pretty fun ride with RJY Rival 13Y. He was Jr Champion Bull and National Res. Champion Bull at Farmfair and then went onto be Jr. Champion Bull at Agribition a few weeks later. A big thanks to Kopp Farms and the Rival Syndicate for purchasing this herd sire at Checkers for $40,000!

2. Rings and Weddings- In May we got a awesome piece of news when Jon finally proposed to Crystal. We are really excited to travel to Iowa this spring for their wedding, and it has been great getting to know Jon and his family this year.

1. "The Eng"- While in Vegas I met a pretty awesome guy myself. We have spent the last 10 months travelling, showing cattle, hanging out at the lake, and becoming best friends. Stay tuned for 2012 as some exciting things are coming!