-
Reddi for action…
Not a misprint; that’s his name! He was Red Lad when he left Thistle Hill several years ago for Spring Pastures Farm near Middleton, Maryland. There, Brooke Henley immediately dubbed him Reddi. He was a well-mannered young man…one of Wooz’ favorites. Now with 19 progeny on the ground and more to come, Brooke and her husband Tom Garnett have regretfully decided he should move on. In fact since this picture was taken, Reddi has already been sold to Keystone Farms in Pennsylvania. The nice things Brooke says, coupled with “gushing” reviews of Thistle Hill bulls from Clark Farms, a commercial Angus operation in southwestern Virginia, prompts us to launch a…
-
This ain’t Kansas…
So what’s a pure English Devon bull doing in Virginia? He’s the result of the last mating Wooz designed on our final trip to southwest England a few years ago. The dam comes from the famous Tulip line…renowned all over the island. The sire the equally-renowned Cutcombe bull named Jaunty. The resulting embryos from the mating were flown to Thistle Hill for calving. This young guy is now 8.5 months old and destined for great things! David
-
Post graduate work…
As if grandson Church didn’t have enough to do running the farm and studying for an advance degree in biology…he recently took a week to attend the Frank B. Graham Cattleman’s School in Kansas. The week-long program covered every aspect of herd fertility and calving, including artificial insemination, preg checking and delivering a calf. Church, pictured below with his classmates, is second from the right. He aced his final exam with a perfect score; only the fifth attendee to do that in more than 20 years! Not long ago Church was selected by The Grassfed Exchange as one of 12 outstanding young cattlemen in the country. His goal is to…
-
PS to TDA 35…
……in the previous post “Introducing TDA 35” (see below)I talked about a moment 10 years ago when I first saw the young bull’s dam. Moments after posting I recalled Wooz was handling the camera at that moment. So I dug into the archives and sure enough there it was. Ivan Rowe, my Cornish mate, pretty much owns all the pastures around St. Just…right down to Lands End at the southwestern tip of England. The cow is Norah 14…and his herd contains 100 more just like her! Ivan gave us the pick of the herd and we chose her to mate with Millennium Falcon. Read the next post to see one…
-
Introducing TDA 35….
It was 10 years ago that I walked out in a pasture Cornwall, England with a grizzled old farmer named Ivan Rowe. Ivan was introducing me to the best herd of cows I had ever seen! More than that he was offering me my pick to breed…flush the embryos…and ship back to the States. It took at least an hour to walk through the herd but it wasn’t a difficult choice. I spotted my candidate almost immediately and said “how about that one”? “Well you did choose the best,” Ivan grumped. And from that point on he’s always called me “mate”…the highest honor I’ve ever received. Ivan is a lifelong…
-
The next generation…
…and a picture of the result of mating our oldest American cow with a young British bull. The dam is 17 years old and still producing. But Church has decided it’s time to work in her replacement. This 16-month old heifer will be filling some mighty big hooves. Mom produced a string of outstanding bull calves. So it was an easy decision to set aside F212 for the main herd. The sire is Traditional Devon Highwayman…descended from the finest bull I ever saw in England…Ashott Barton Millennium. So we feel we’ve bred the best of both worlds…English and American! David
-
A lovely young maiden at Cathy Cochran’s Oak Hill Farm.
She’s just two days old but seems older. Her sire is Thistle Hill’s King David. He spent the last breeding season at Oak Hill and contributed new genetics to Cathy’s award winning herd. Meanwhile King David is back home awaiting his next assignment. David
-
Lest we forget…
…another pure English heifer…half sister to the two below…Ashott-Barton Tulip is the mother…and a line that stretches back as far as there have been Devon record books. The origination was in the famed Champson herd. The sire is Cutcombe Jaunty. Our current plan for Tulip is to let her calve at 3 and then decide whether to flush her. David
-
Bribery update…
A few years ago, on an introductory trip to meet our partners in England, Church was given a wonderful gift by his grandmother: the right to select any heifer he wanted from the Ashott-Barton herd. The young cow he selected—-without any prompting from me—was from the Bribery line which I had long coveted. Because of import restrictions against live animals, we bred the heifer in England and shipped the frozen embryos to Thistle Hill. Five months later, here’s the result:
-
Surprise…
The oldest cow in our herd at 16, M180, greeted us with a bull calf. Baby is an 82 pound bull calf by an English bull, TDA Highwayman. M180 was purchased from Lakota ranch years ago and has produced a string of nice calves. She preg checked open and gave no sign she was expecting. In fact, she had been at the top of the list in our discussion of potential culls. Back to the drawing board. And did you notice the new green grass now that the snow has melted? David