Thistle Hill East….revisited….

….the other day we featured our young cow “Bribery” at Bovine Genetics near Cambridge.  Actually the village is called “Bishops Itchington”.  (Much of the fun in England is in the town names.)  Now here is ” Ashott Barton Tulip“, who has also completed flushing.  Scroll down below the picture for more information.

A second shipment of embryos from both animals is flying across the Atlantic as this is being written.  (4.22.16)  All the English genetics we import, for ourselves and for Traditional Devon™, land at Chicago’s O’Hare airport.  From there they’re trucked to Adel, Iowa.

Embryos and semen are stored at Hawkeye Services until we’re ready for them.  Then, it’s back on a truck to O’Hare and a flight here, or South Carolina, or North Carolina or Georgia.   Talk about the “global economy”…..all focused on producing and protecting the best traditional English genetics at Thistle Hill….and Walker Century Farms in Anderson, SC.

We began in 2010 and it was almost too late.  After quite a bit of research, we convinced seven English farmers who had the best pure Devon we could find, to join our project.  Already three of those farms have “gone out”, the herds dispersed, the genetics blended with less pure lines.  We owe a great debt to Essington Park, Garradon and Ashott Barton.

But they’ll live on in the “America”.  We’ve set aside 25 Devon to serve as recips and the embryos will go in next month.  We trust and pray that the English Devon herd  in America will double in size early next year.