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Back in the bull pen…
…and oblivious to his achievements in the pasture…is TDA35. This young bull has sired this year’s heifer candidates. The son of Goldings Norah by Ashott Barton Falcon..TDA 35 has an outstanding background on paper. This is his first real test. David
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Let the calving begin…
…and we start with our first-calf heifers. F21 is a Bribery embryo daughter and this is first born…a little heifer by a young Thistle Hill bull out of Goldings Norah. In fact this is a combination of the herds of many of our great English partners…Cutcombe, Ashott Barton and Goldings. It’s great fun now that our English herd is maturing to begin to paint our own history with them at Thistle Hill! Only 26 more calves to go! David
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The future…
…is in good hands! Two yearling bulls we have high hopes for. In the background is one of the first calves from our herd bull Essington. He’s from a premier English herd that was the work for many decades of Brian Drake…a herd that now sadly belongs to history. In the foreground is the first American descendant of another historic English line, Champson. He’s by Champson Defender. Grandson Church came up with some Champson semen at UK Sires that, frankly, didn’t look very promising but decided to try it. He hit on the very first attempt and so we now have three pure, traditional English bloodlines on our Virginia pastures.…
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Ladies in waiting…
…have been moved to the pasture closest to the house where we can keep an eye on them. It’s interesting that none of the cows in this picture is actually grazing…they’ve all adopted that far-off stare of cows waiting for birth. That event begins in just a few days! Keeping an eye on them has suddenly taken on added meaning. Two nearby farms have been struck by cattle rustlers and we’ve all gone on alert. With the number of expert marksmen on these farms, the rustlers are playing a dangerous game. Son Church, while standing in front of our house, once hit a fox 300 yards away running across this…
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Time flies…
It’s hard to believe but it was 10 years ago when we saw the first results of our traditional English Devon project. TDA 7 was the first calf we selected from our first English flush and she remains today one of the mainstays of our herd. “7” is the daughter of the great English cow Tilbrook Cashtiller by another great, Cutcombe Jaunty. Three years running Cashtiller was the Grand Champion in English shows and three of her sons topped later Devon national sales. In a few weeks ”7” will be calving again…always an exciting event. David
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The class of ‘21…
…welcomed to the Perrine’s nearby Slainte farm by the year around dog in charge, Molly. This group of 14 includes both heifers and steers. The Perrines and their neighbors, the Ferro’s, have been taking our young calves for a number of years. That larger calf to the right is a Devon-Senepol cross…a testimony to the magnifying effect of heterosis or out-crossing. The mama cows remain at Thistle Hill and they’ll be delivering new babies in about two months. Separating these calves enables us to bring bulls to the main herd for rebreeding. Incidentally these calves aren’t the entire class of ‘21. There are another 7 that have moved under the…
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Closing the circle…
Bribery is her name and we spotted her grand dam on our first visit to Ashott Barton farm in England 10 years ago. The breeder, Shiamala Comer, didn’t want to submit her best cow to the rigors of flushing. Fast forward 5 years and on our last trip to England , Wooz and Church convinced Shiamala to part with two heifers, one Bribery’s daughter. What followed then was a convoluted journey to overcome England’s export ban. In brief, we sold the heifers to a friendly English cattleman…flushed them…bought back the embryos…and shipped them to Thistle Hill to implant in our cows. And here stands the result…our Bribery, in an unbroken…
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It’s been almost a year…
…since the birth of what we hope will be another line of pure, traditional English Devon at Thistle Hill. H364 was sired by Champson Defender via AI ten months ago and is now ready to be weaned. He was an early success story for Church, who is now waiting for Defender #2 to calve in October. Pure Devon genetics are increasingly difficult to find. Even some English breeders we know have given up because bulls are in such short supply there. Seeing what was happening, in both England and the States, Wooz and I decided we would create a living archive here in Virginia. David
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The time capsule…
…F212 carries genetics from many of the milestones in the 20-year history of Thistle Hill Devon. 212 is the daughter of Lakota 180…a natural daughter who until she died recently at the age of 19, had produced some of our best bull calves. So when 212 came along we grabbed her and now have great hopes for this young cow. On the other side, her sire was Highwayman…an English cow by Ashott-Barton Millenium Falcon. And now, to top it off, she is expecting a calf by Lakota P60, one of the finest meat sires in the breed! So if there’s a legacy cow on our pastures it is 212…with an…
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The happy marriage…
…of two great English herds at Thistle Hill. TDA 31 is an embryo heifer from Goldings Farm in Cornwall and Ashott Barton Farm in Somerset. 31 is Exhibit A in what we hoped to achieve with our pursuit of pure traditional English Devon genetics. We would be hard-pressed to find some way to improve her. The dam was Goldings Norah who we discovered in Ivan Rowe’s pastures at Lands End. Ivan told told us to select any cow we wanted from his herd of more than 100 Devon. He’d wait for us back at the house. Wooz and I trudged back and forth in the rain all afternoon before settling…