Thanks all. I will try and post more often.
Aaron I'm quite pleased with my speckles. We have 5 total. I'm not sure that any of them are purebred but they look the part which is all I really wanted. I bought 3 with the intention of breeding them and gained 2 more that came with some lightweight feeder calves that we bought to feed over the winter. All 5 bred and did a decent job on their first calves. They were all bred to a black angus bull, 3 had speckled calves, 1 solid black & 1 brockle face. We will see how they do on their 2nd calves but so far I am satisfied. They were all good mothers, and really nice tidy udders on all but 1 of them. Seem to be efficient, moderate cows that other than their colour fit in nicely with our Angus cows.
This one is one that came with the feeder calves. Her speckled heifer calf on the left of the picture weaned at 600 lbs at 227 days (no creep). I know some people have heifers do better than that but for our operation that is pretty good. It was the only heifer calf out of all 5 of them and being speckled I had to keep her.
the other one that came with the feeders. Her colour pattern should throw 100% speckled calves bred to a solid colour bull. Her calf wasn't exceptional (probably 450 lbs) but I doubt she would've weighed 850 lbs so can't be too hard on her. Looking at her today with the rest of the herd she is still smaller than most if not all of the bred heifers and I'd be very surprised if she was over 1000lbs. She's a cute little thing but is very small framed. We will see how she does on her next calf.
This one calved a little later than the others, but her calf did well. She is probably my favorite one of the bunch.
I don't seem to have pictures handy of the other two girls with their calves.
Biggest complaint I hear about them from the buyers is that they lack frame, and there is some truth to that for sure. On the other hand there is definitely a demand for the speckle heifer calves, both private treaty and through the auction. As one guy said to us, every guys wife and or daughter needs to have a Speckle Park kicking around the farm
I think it's partly a fad but I also think that they could be useful cows to have around.