Colin Chevalley
Well-known member
A quick survey to further enlighten me on the use of Tarentaise.
Marty":2dh9stmu said:We had a salesman come through a few years ago with a program involving Tarentaise cattle. He's been pretty prominent in the industry and I've seen more than a couple articles in cattle magazines on his program. I, and two other ranchers, bought into the program as it sounded exactly what I was looking for in a cross-bred program and the timing was such that I needed bulls. I won't say it was a complete disaster but it was pretty close. I figure it did set me back 5 years on herd improvement. The bulls were, for the most part, calm enough to be worked with on foot, and the calves they threw were very good, but that's about all. The calves were way too big and I put in a lot of long nights as every cow needed to be watched just in case. One of the bulls threw 130 lb calves (yes I have a scale) and the others threw 90-100 lb calves, I prefer the 85 lb wt (I have an Angus cows) which is what I was told these bulls would do. Luckily I was able to trade them in on Angus bulls from the same seller which we had better luck with. Naturally, the seller put all the blame on my cows saying they were obviously not purebred Angus (never said they were) and it was the other genetics that caused the problems, i.e. birthweight, tiger-striping, non-uniformity, reduction in premiums. The other ranchers? I've not seen the one in maybe 3 years and he still loved his, and the other still uses them although his hired hand hates Tarentaise with a passion. I had bad luck, yours may vary.