HerefordSire":3ntchrx1 said:
George...
You should be proud of yourself. Hard to beat Keynote offspring. I have always thought Keynote via Enforcer was the animal to beat. Are you going to hang on to the calves to grow your herd? Are the ones with a horned sire dehorned? I believe your herd is almost as advanced as Remitall's because you started from a Keynote which represents years and years of hard physical and mental labor. What does your herd's pigment look like generally? Have you personally had a Vindi offspring you could watch everday?
It doesn't take a lot of ability to go out and buy good cattle and breed them to each other. All that takes is money and the ability to open a gate to let the bull in with the cows. It's what you do with their offspring and the choices that you make in breeding them and the subsequent generations that determines your worth as a "seedstock producer". I will admit to being pleased with some of the second generation that I'm getting - calves from bulls and females that were both born on the place. But my experiment is just beginning.
Right now, I'm still retaining all females fit to retain. If I get a couple of show heifer prospects from the fall calf crop, I have been considering letting some worthy kids buy them at a reasonable price for their projects. A lot will depend on whether I'm able to find additional lease land to continue expansion.
While I have taken advantage of the breeding work that the Latimers (and the Colyers, Holdens, Coopers, Harlands, Haygoods, etc) have done, I think it would be pretty arrogant of anyone to think that they - or their herd - was in that league until they had years of selection and several generations of cattle bred under their own direction.
Pigment hasn't been my primary focus or even secondary focus, but I've ended up with a good bit of it in my herd.
And truthfully, I haven't got a clue about Vindicator offspring so I really have no opinion one way or the other.
George