How’s it going? Don’t you love seeing how the new calves turn out each season, especially when using a new bull? As we’re looking over this year’s calves, we are just so impressed with the offspring of Cantagree Felipe N P, our newest polled, native, A2/A2 sire. Here’s a sampling of ours:
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They’re born easy, they’re growthy with straight lines and good dispositions, and yes, their colors are really flashy.
And honestly, the colors might mean something more than just looks. Old-time Milking Shorthorn breeders that were serious about milk production tended to favor the “funny-colored” cattle—the light roans and whites, the spotted and white-legged ones—as those colors seemed to be linked with more milk, not because of the colors themselves, but because of the associated genetics.
We’re hearing from some of you that are pleased with his calves, too. “We are blown away by Felipe,” reported Travis and Lynzie from southeastern Washington, and they sent us this picture of one of his calves in their crossbred beef herd (hence the black nose and eyelashes, which are not characteristic of Shorthorns).
Why Native genetics?
We’ve found that breeding truly dual-purpose Milking Shorthorns, with a good balance of milk and meat traits, requires careful selection from both sides of the spectrum. For us, this has meant seeking out the best milking bloodlines of the “Native” or “Heritage” Milking Shorthorns to use on our linebred Meriville Peerless bloodlines.
Our go-to dual-purpose breeders for outcross genetics that keep the dairy qualities of old-time Milking Shorthorns have been Gene Hiibner and Darren Wold of Cantagree Farm in Utah, breeders of Felipe, Daosta, Fanfare, Finocchio, and others. All those whose names start with “F” come from the same cow family, so we asked Darren to fill us in on the story:
“The foundation cow of the F family was Mattsons Fla (born March 10, 1992) that we purchased July 30, 1993 from an old breeder in the next valley to the east of ours. Her highest record was 10,960 lbs milk with a 4.7% butterfat and 3.8% protein. She caught each breeding with only 1 straw of semen. A very calm cow. She would always calve in March and spend her dry period in the winter with the beef herd. The family has always been a solid family for us.”
Interestingly, Mattsons Fla herself was line bred, as her sire and dam were both sired by the same bull, Vanhaven Sweet Design. Cantagree continued to do some line breeding of this family, with excellent results. Felipe’s dam herself has offspring of Mattsons Fla on both sides of her pedigree. A sure sign of a cow family’s superiority is when you double up like that and get great individuals. Here’s another example, Cantagree Festa, sired by Fanfare and out of a sister to Felipe’s linebred dam. You have to be impressed with the width and length of her capacious yet snug udder along with her strength and depth.
Stay tuned and keep in touch as the Felipe calves grow and mature. Thanks for reading!
We’ll talk to you next month.
Take care,
Winnie and Martha