If you own cows, you’re guaranteed a lifetime of learning to become a professional fence stretcher. Just when you think you have a reasonably tight barbed wire fence, it’s a sure bet that the cows are out there busily trying to figure out how to loosen it up again. With a claw hammer and a pair of fencing pliers, you can splice and tighten a broken wire relatively fast with a reasonably low amount of fuss. To accomplish this, take…
Selective Breeding and the Show Ring Livestock shows provide a good place for people to go and exhibit the animals they’re most proud of. There’s nothing that isn’t positive about that. Sometimes though, breeders tend to base their program on what’s currently popular in the show ring. This is antithetical to consistency. Also, depending on what’s currently in vogue, at times, it’s downright destructive to commercial profitability. A Moving Target Visualize a timeline of photos of the perceived ideal Angus…
Selective breeding is an art that has been practiced down through the ages. With its use, man has created diverse lines of animals that are much more useful than their original ancestors. Here’s a fact that might seem unfair to the dumber individuals among us. The one with the bigger, higher functioning brain gets to make the rules. Humans have a larger and more complex intellect than the rest of God’s creatures. Consequently, man has been domesticating and selectively breeding…
Copied with permission from Brad James of Touchstone Angus Emulous of Sangamon The recorded Emulous story starts in 1934 at Pleasant Plains, Illinois. It was a drouth and depression year. Water, feed, and money were scarce. Carlton Corbin, Charles Bates, and Lee Leachman (then with Bates) were once in Indiana looking at cows, and on their return trip, they stopped to view the herd of J. Garrett Tolan, Pleasant Plains, Ill., before a sale. As we drove in that morning,…