Gerber Watchfire

[CPL]

He has sired many good cows and bulls. I wonder why he wasn't used more though. I like the 009K cow and the the gerber kaiser bull. Carcass EPD's look great and so does he's progeny ratios on 105 calves.

 

[KNERSIE]

I like his pedigree, the few progeny I've seen looked good, but he didn't sire much pigment.

 

[farmwife]

Had several great calve out of him last year - 3 heifers and a bull. We just bred of the heifers to our Moler son -- anxious to see the result.

 

[greenwillowhereford II]

I've liked him for years, and there are quite a few power cows out there with him in the pedigree, such as the RWD cow I posted on recently.

 

[Herefords.US]

If I was going to use a 517 son ....or any bull with a lot of Felton genetics, it'd be Watchfire.

Highly proven!

George

 

[smnherf]

I have a heifer on the ground by him now, 4 months old, and cow sired by him fromt the Dixie family I purchased at Doug Gerbers sale. I liked her enough to go back and use him some. I would have to say at this point the heifer is average in my herd, but she did get off to a pretty slow start. I used him some more this spring. I visited with a commercial outfit in Ne a couple years ago and they had good luck with their Watchfire calves.

Brian

 

[herefordchick]

Watchfire is an OK bull to use but don't be suprised if you get a little more BW on some of them than the numbers imply.

I had my first crop of calves out of him in '99. No assists but was a little shocked when a 2 year old had a 112 calf out of him - my herd ave usually runs closer to 82 on BW's. Can't recall assisting any and the vigor on all the calves was good but I used him with more caution after the first big one, most were closer to 90 lbs. I do see a lot of snow and cold but don't feed my cows much other than corn stubble and second rate hay - no grain. I continued to use him a little bit for several years. The cattle all fed out well but they tended to be a little smaller framed than I would like. Hard to get the steers much over 600 lbs on dressed wts unless you have some big stout cows you are using him on. I blamed this on 517. I know several other folks that used him a bit and everyone seemed to agree you would get a few top end females out of a better cow here and there but out of your average cow he just didnt move them forward. Most of mine were pretty short marked.

I did end up with one very nice cow out of him - she has had 8 bull calves in a row for me & still has an excellent udder. Really hoping she has a heifer next spring - guess she figures she doesnt need a replacement yet.

I used WF initially because of his dam, I ending up using 412T much heavier and just dont think WF was near as good as 412T. The 412T calves smoked the WF on growth. Both of them will make pretty uddered daughters. If anyone wants to know more about WF call Kesling up about him and make his day.

 

[herefordchick]

412T - GK Explosion 412T - maternal brother to watchfire - there may be a couple of straws of him selling at the DeShazer dispersal but other than that I don't know where you will find any for sale and if you do its probably priced high enough you would only consider it in a flush. Only complaint I had with him was that in 2 years I only had 2 heifer calves. I see where his REA number has crashed in recent years - there was never a problem with that on the calves I had, and I did follow them to the rail.

 

[tlmcr]

I used Grainger a few years back and got 3 calves. I was hoping for heifers to add to the herd and got all bulls.

They were very correct and eye appealing and I sold all of them for show steers.