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A winning combination…
…of the outstanding Rotokawa 982 and our awesome X2a! 4 is a healthy 65-pound bull calf…an ai son of 982. This sire was an unsung member of Ken McDowalls battery of great bulls. Church came up with some of his hard to find semen not long ago. We chose X2a whose pedigree goes way back among American Devon. And the 2-line has been very good to Thistle Hill…producing a string of outstanding bulls and heifers. David
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The first bull calf…
…of the year weighs exactly 70 pounds. And though mom is a heifer she has him well-disciplined. No easy task with a rambunctious little bull calf! The sire of these early calves is TDA 35…an all English bull by Falcon out of Norah. Mom is a good example of crossing our American herd with an English import. In this case grandma is R2…a calf we spotted at Lakota Ranch 15 years ago…and it paid off for us and farms throughout the East. The English grandsire was a bull we nicknamed Handsome Ransom and, while early, this guy is well-proportioned just like grandpa. Never was good at fractions but I guess…
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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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Sad to report…
…the passing of legendary Devon breeder Ken McDowall of New Zealand. Ken’s Rotokawa bulls were at the center of the great Devon resurgence at the turn of the century. While there is some dispute over just who “discovered” Ken, there is no doubt it was Gearld Fry and Ridge Shinn who popularized the great Rotokawa bulls in America like 688, 982, 667 and many more. Eventually Fry, Shinn and a partner brought the entire Rotokawa herd here to the States where they’ve settled in Hardwick, Massachusetts. Ken was a great friend to Thistle Hill and he spent many days here freely dispensing his breeding wisdom. I treasure those conversations as…
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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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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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Thistle Hill alumni club…
…features our Equinox at home at Spring Pastures farm near Middletown, Maryland. Equinox is packed with our best pure English Devon genetics…Churchill on one side…Buttercup on the other. It’s the second bull Thistle Hill has supplied to Brooke Henley and Tom Garnett. Brooke is excited by his first calves…eight so far, all vigorous and thick. We’re excited by the grass on Brooke and Tom’s pastures! The combination of that forage and Devon genetics will result in top quality meat! David
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Free at last…
…with everyone in the family safely vaccinated, I was finally able to escape my senior residence for the first time in almost exactly a year. Naturally it was this year’s calf crop that interested me most. They’re five months old now and a rewarding bunch of prospects. Church’s favorite is THF 3…the daughter of TDA Cashtiller 4 and our Essington bull. She’s the latest in our line of pure traditional English calves. I was taken by this Bribery heifer..a combination of four great English herds. She’s two-years old…and perhaps in-calf. And she was the last mating Wooz and Church selected on our final visit to England. We were in agreement…
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Breakfast at Thistle Hill…
…and Churchill qualifies as an “eager eater”! He’s also the senior bull in our herd…still active in his 10th year. Churchill is descended from the great Tilbrook Cashtiller who along with Cutcombe Jaunty were the first building blocks of our traditional pure English Devon herd. And here’s another good-looking herdmate, Essington, from Brian Drake’s former Essington Park herd. Essington has been used on the bulk of our herd for two years now and we think his calf crop this year may well be Thistle Hill’s finest ever. If you’ve been wanting to introduce something special into your herd, we suggest you contact Church to inspect Essington’s progeny…male and female! David
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DNA confirms it…
THF 1 is indeed an off-spring of the great English bull Champson Defender. He’s the second bull in partially obscured by an American herdmate. Again note the difference in coloring of a pure traditional English animal versus the American variety! This was Church’s first try at artificial insemination and it’s a great success for the farm! We now have three very separate English bull blood lines to work with. Wooz and I saw Defender on our very first trip to England in 2010. Breeder Robert James had purchased him for what was then a record price of 14,000 guineas! When we started we had no idea how difficult it would…