#80 - Sale Preview and Sire Overview

Matt will go over the high-use sires in the Dalebanks 2025 sale offering, plus give an overview of the Perrier family's breeding program and genetic selection philosophies.

Don't miss the 2025 Sale, Saturday, November 22, at the ranch NW of Eureka, KS

Transcript

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Thanks for joining us for Practically Ranching, brought to you by Dalebanks Angus. We're just over a week away from our annual sale, Saturday, November 22nd Northwest of Eureka. Where we're gonna sell 150 yearling and coming 2-year-old bulls and six elite registered fall open heifers. We'd love to have you here at the ranch or invite you to watch the sale live and bid online at cci. Live. Information for the sale can be found on our website, dale banks.com, or you can email or message us and we'll get your address and mail you a catalog. If you tuned in this week to hear from one of our inspirational educational guests, well, you may have to reach back in the files and listen to a past episode because this time you've got me... and only me. And this episode is not just sponsored by Dalebanks Angus. It is pretty much all about Dale Bank, Angus, and the genetics that we'll be offering in this sale coming up on the 22nd. We've done a sale preview the last couple of years and had quite a few good comments from that, and so I guess now it's a tradition. So first I'm gonna go through several of the, um, higher use sires the bulls and heifers in this year's offering. And then I'll kind of outline our breeding philosophy and what goes into producing these genetics each year. So without further ado. We will go through the sires. We're gonna start with a bull called Tehama patriarch. We've got about 20 plus sons and grandsons by patriarch. And honestly, he probably needs no explanation to most of you. We've used the bull for several years. He's a calving-ease bull. That's just worked in a variety of different roles for us, I think. The fact that he has as many sons in the various AI studs today is what he does, speaks to his breeding precision and the consistency in his progeny and just the balance that he offers. You know, we've used a couple of different bulls from the Borror family out in California through the years, and, and they've all had this great predictability and consistency, and patriarch surely sure hasn't, uh, hasn't disappointed us. You know, going through his, EPDs again, he's a CESE bull in the top 10% of the breed for calving direct, you know, still offers top third type of growth and, um, marbling and, and so many other traits. Uh, the daughters that we have in production have been very, very good, very fertile, both the sons and the daughters. And so he just does a lot of things really well for us. He's going to sire, actually the two lead off bulls lots, one and two in our coming 2-year-old division. Both of these bulls have, have just been favorites of a lot of folks who came through the pens, especially those who are looking for cese. Uh, with, with that added punch of growth and in product merit. The next bull that we'll touch on is a bull called Yon Saluda. These will be the first Saluda progeny that we'll sail, and we'll have about 25 suns and one heifer in the sail. We're actually gonna start the fall yearling bulls with a Saluda son, and we'll start those heifers with a salu of daughter. He's a relatively new sire, a maternal brother to Top Cut, who we've used for three or four years now. And he's a son of Sitz Stellar, who some of you have purchased Stellar sons from us, um, eight to 10 years ago when we were using him. You know, these Saluda cattle have a really, really consistent type. We used him on heifers, we used him on cows. He's a moderate birth weight. Rapid early growth bull that, um, I think puts even more depth of flank and more rib shape in, in his progeny than his maternal brother. Uh, they have muscle shape. They're sound, and they just have an all around good look. You know, being a stellar son, many have asked us about the disposition of the Saludas.. We have seen absolutely no issues thus far. Uh, his docility, EPD, um, is kind of there on the bubble. And, uh, in terms of, of the disposition of these project that we've seen thus far, I, I don't see that that is going to, uh, go down at all and may even come up. So, um. Uh, I think there's a lot of good to those cattle and, and ones that we will continue to use with confidence as far as their daughters, uh, we'll have our first ones this spring. As two year olds, I would expect them to be just exceptional for their teat and utter quality. Our top cuts are very good. Uttered our stellars. We're very good uttered, and, um, I, I look forward to seeing some longevity from these cattle as well. Uh, they're fairly early shedding. They're good footed, just, just really functional cattle that I think should fit in a whole lot of different environments and programs. So we're, we're very excited about the, about the Saluda bull in, in our program Next bull we'll go to is bull called Cane Commerce. Last year was the first year that we had yearling bulls to sell from commerce, and we'll sell 30 sons and a daughter or two in the heifer, uh, division. You know, as folks have gone through the catalog, seen the pictures, watched the videos, walked through the pens, the one consistent thing that nearly everybody says as they look through the bulls and the heifers is you love the way the commerces look. The bulls are stout, the heifers are feminine. We've, we've primarily used commerce on heifers over the last three years and gotten along great calving. These, um, they're shaped right, they're light birth weight, just as his EPDs would indicate. Uh, they work really well as the calving ease bull. The commerce is, may not blow you away in any one trait, but they just consistently do so many things so well. Low birth. Early growing calves that, uh, just stand on all four corners and, and like I said, just look great from about every angle that you look at'em. Uh, we're having our first commerce daughters this fall and they look like they're going to be very productive females, very feminine, good uddered, And, um, again, when, when cattle can offer the balance of EPDs. And the phenotypic look and balance that commerce cattle do, uh, they're gonna fit in a lot of different environments. The fourth bull we'll go go to is Yon top Cut. We'll have just shy of 20 progeny of top cut, um, both in the older coming 2-year-old and yearling bull divisions. Like I said, a maternal brother to slu. Uh, bred in Kevin and Lydia Yawns heard there in South Carolina and we're really excited to be using both of these Yon bulls in our program. Um, we first used top cut years ago for what I would consider one of the, um, he stacks just absolute unbelievable. calving ease direct marbling, frame moderation, heifer, pregnancy. When I first saw these EPDs, I'll be honest. I knew that he couldn't hold all of them and that one of these kind of antagonistic trait areas was bound to fall. But they haven't, they're, they're still exceptional marbling, and we've seen it here with the IMF scans, uh, of his progeny. Uh, they're fairly low intake cattle. They're very lean in their makeup at yearling time. Yeah, but we've got two and 3-year-old daughters in the herd now, and they are not thin or hard keeping there, I would say average for their fleshing ability and better than average in terms of their fertility and their, their conception rates here. Uh, we've gotten along very well. Like I said, our oldest daughters are three year olds. Uh, we're actually gonna have at least one of them, uh, that will flush this year in between calving and breeding. We're, we're just. Really excited about those top cut females. They have tremendous udder quality. They're good footed. They shed exceptionally early, one of the earliest shedding sire groups that I've maybe ever seen, and his EPDs will indicate this. Uh, for hair shed, like I said, very moderate framed, and plus they offer breed leading cies marbling. I think he's in the top 1% of the breed for heifer pregnancy and dollar maternal. Top 2% for marbling. They're not gonna be the biggest status cattle in the, in the pan or in your herd, but I think they just stack up a lot of traits that drive profitability and, um, and do it in a package that's, that's just pretty unique. We will move now to HF Safe and Sound. We've been using Safe and Sound for several years. We'll have about, uh, 12 or 13 yearlings in fall, yearlings, both bulls and then one heifer in the sale. And a lot of you know this story, we tried to buy Safe and Sound as a yearling, as a turnout bull here, and, uh, didn't get him purchased. But, uh, shortly thereafter, we started using hem ai on, on heifers and a few cows and he is just done exceptionally well. Uh, top 2% c he's direct top 3% dollar maternal, um, top 4% teat quality. Uh, he's still, you know, in the top 10% of heifer pregnancy in the top third for marbling and rib eye. He's just one of these bulls that fits in a lot of areas. They're, they're easy fleshing, I'd call'em just deep range ready kind of stock. They, they are free moving cattle. They have a ton of function and hardiness to them. We've really liked our safe and sound daughters and the sons have been well accepted as well. Now as his EPD will indicate. A person needs to use a little bit of caution in terms of docility and disposition. We have never had a problem with the cattle, but they are just a little bit watchy as you go into a pen or a pasture and they're gonna protect that calf. They're gonna make sure that they know everything that's going on around them. And like I've said before, you know he is not super flashy in any one area. These are just solid cattle that should add a lot of function and sustain profitability to, to a cow herd. A couple newer sis that all highlight, Sticklers Bull Armstrong, s Armstrong will have, uh, just over 20 fall yearlings in the, in the bull sale. And an Armstrong daughter, uh, he was bred up in North Dakota. We, we chose to use this bull for his high dollar maternal and maternal characteristics kind of an outcross pedigree for us. His EPDs indicate, and we haven't caved any armstrongs yet, but his EPDs indicate that he should improve udder quality and fertility. Foot and leg soundness. Um, you always got a big scrotal circumference EPD, and we saw that in the suns. They're, they're good footed. The hair shed EPDs are still in the top. 10% or so, just a lot of traits in that five to 15%, uh, range. Top five to 15% range of the breed. Um, big scrotal, long bodied, uh, most of these are going to be cow bulls or right on the bubble for calving. Ease a few of them if they, if they were mated to the right cow. Um, but they ought to offer really good weaning and yearling performance. Plus a lot of maternal traits, uh, as, as folks look at, uh, a heifer rebuild and, and keeping those heifers back. The other new or bull that we've got, um, got seven or eight yearling bulls and one yearling. Heifer is a bull called EZAR step up. He was bred out in California and, and, um, like Armstrong, he's, he's not gonna be a heifer bull. Okay. But these cattle are gonna usually be standouts there as calves and as, as weaned calves and, and going on through yearling. Uh, they're also pretty long bodied. They're higher performing, big scrotal cattle, uh, that, that offer a little more marbling and docility. His EPDs also indicate that they're fairly low feed intake and they're sound footed. Um, so, you know, if you like, if you like big, long bodied growthy type cattle with, uh, with plenty of marbling and plenty of growth, I think step up should work very well. Uh, we're selling a daughter that's, that's awfully fancy and has turned a lot of heads as well. And, and she will actually be a donation lot. Uh, we're gonna donate 50% of the proceeds of the lot, 1 56 Heifer. Uh, that's by step up. Uh, to the Angus Foundation to help fund their future campaign, on their work with, with youth and research and education in the Angus Breed. So yeah, the step Up sire, um, uh, one that's seen a lot of use and, um, and probably will continue to see quite a bit of use across the country. So that hits most of the sires. There's a handful of bulls that will be by some cires that we probably have used in the past. Uh, some growth fund and rival and some things like that that a lot of, you know, a lot about already. Uh, but, but these are some of the highest use bulls that I think, um, uh, folks are gonna be interested in, in learning a little bit more about and how to use those in their program. You know, I always have to remind myself and remind customers that the sire is just half of that pedigree. The cow side of the pedigree can't be discounted. She's, she's offering not only half the genetics, but um, some of the environmental and management and even epigenetic effects, and, and we can't overlook those. So. We like to talk about a SI r group thinking that they're all gonna be peas in a pod and exactly alike. And, and the fact of the matter is, um, they're not, they're anybody that's, that has siblings is going to know that there, there is going to be some migration and there's gonna be some differences there. But hopefully this will give you kind of a feel for what we've seen on average, uh, out of, or by most of these sire. So I'll touch a little bit, and I did this last year too, and this isn't going to be a lot different, but I'll, I'll again touch on kind of our breeding philosophy here at Dalebanks and, and every seed stock breeder has a similar goal in mind, I think, I hope. And that is to produce cattle that are better than either of their parents. And hopefully best suited to today's market, whether that be a commercial or whether that be a seed stock, goal in mind and, and, and we're no different. Um, sometimes with all of the different tools that we have, breeding cattle can get pretty complex. Uh, the American Ag Association today has, I think, 25 EPDs that they publish. About nine multi trait selection indexes. In addition to that, uh, we have plenty of other traits that we may manage and measure and, and look at and evaluate that don't yet have an EPD for them. It, it gets to be a balancing act with all these tools. And then we look at trying to blend pedigrees to achieve, you know, just the right amount of outcross genetics and still maintain plenty of consistency in a calf crop. So it it's a lot. It's a lot. And, and, and there are a lot of steps in addition to the selection and in addition to the evaluation, um, we, we also have to look at what's going on around us, the marketing scenarios and the management and everything else. And so when we talk about our philosophy of, of breeding practical, profitable genetics. We try to take all these complex tools and boil them down into the most simple terms for, for us and for our customers. I, I quoted Albert Einstein last year, and I'll do it again. Um, Einstein said, genius is making complex ideas, simple, not making simple ideas complex. And sometimes I think as we go to selecting sis or. Our next herd bull or next replacement heifer or donor cow or whatever the case may be. We, we have all this stuff to work with and sometimes I think we don't see the forest for the trees, and I love getting the opportunity, whether it be on sale day or leading up to it, or at meetings or conferences or conventions or through the podcast, whatever the case may be. I love hearing from you all because that grounds me and gives me the why. To what it is we're doing. And as we talk with you all with customers and colleagues in the business, one thing becomes pretty clear to me, and that is that you don't necessarily need a bull that's the best for a trait. You need a bull or bulls that are going to be good enough in all of them that you can stay in business that are going to offer you enough outputs, weaning weight, yearling weight, marbling, milk, whatever the case may be, that you can make the revenue on today's market and, and make as much as you can, but also leave you daughters that are going to be moderate framed enough, moderate milk enough moderate, and all of these things that they can survive in a forage type of environment. And, and that's, that's not easy to do. Um, and so that's where. Instead of just putting maximum figures and thresholds, when we go to selecting these, these bulls and these sis and these replacement females, we try to find that middle ground. And some of these traits we put even more emphasis or pressure on than others. And we know there are genetic correlations. We know there are antagonisms, we know there are consequences of putting too much pressure on one or two traits, and so we had. We try to keep those dynamics in mind as well as we're making these decisions. And we also have to look at the industry. We also have to look at the context of where we're at and what is being rewarded at the Packer processor level, at the retail counter, at the feed yard level, and what it is those folks need and expect in the cattle that they're purchasing from our customers. As they take them on to their customers as well. And so, you know, things like carcass weight and yearling weight growth and marbling, all of those in my, in my opinion, are a ticket to do business with that next person. And they need them to be at a certain level so they can make their dollar. And then we need to make sure that we look at our management and let Mother Nature help us govern our decisions. As we, um, as we look at these many tools at our disposal, I have to remind myself that Mother Nature is probably the one who tells me when I get a little out of bounds. Traits like fertility and reproductive efficiency. We've got a couple of new tra or new EPDs for these heifer. Pregnancy has been around for several years, now we have functional longevity. From a cow side standpoint, these traits are lowly heritable. Which means they are greatly affected by the environment, by feed, by management. But we try to handle our cow herd in a similar, sometimes, maybe even a little more conservative way as our, as our commercial cow calf folks do. And when we do that, mother nature generally lets us know when we got out of bounds and we end up with an open heifer or an open cow. And. Those open females go to the sale barn or go down the road to be a Big Mac or a Reci cow for somebody else, or whatever the case may be, no questions asked. We, we think that this partnership with Mother Nature is--as cruel as she can be sometimes-- is a really, really good governor. As we, as we select and um, and find and cull these genetics, that'll work. So after we've analyzed the industry and analyzed our customer's needs, we go to the American Angus Association website. We use their SI evaluation search page, and we plug in what parameters that we believe we need in sires. Uh, we make, we make these parameters big enough that we give a pretty lengthy list of bulls. I'm actually doing that right now for our fall breeding. And then comes the hard part. Uh, we have to whittle this. This list down, we pick up the phone. We call as many folks who have used these sires or, or go and see progeny or talk to folks who've seen cattle, uh, that are sied by these. And we try to find. Bulls that meet what it is that we think our and our customer's needs are both off the EPDs and off those progeny and their phenotypes. After all that, we hopefully end up with a list of about five to seven sires that we'll use during breeding season. We make these to our heifers and to our cows and, and try to match their strengths to each cow or heifer's weakness. I, I wish I could say that none of ours have a weakness, but guess what they all do somewhere and, and we try to blend those so that we can, um, we can make the most balanced set of progeny that we can. Once we get progeny, then we start figuring out how a SI works. And sometimes we realize he didn't fit our program or our environment, even though maybe his EPDs and the, and the, uh, conversations told us that he should. Other times we learned that he did certain things well, but next round we can match him up with a different type of female and brings his strengths to the table even more. Just like nearly everything that we do in this business, in our family, our, our goal to quote Coach Bill Snyder of the Kansas State Wildcats, our goal is incremental improvement. We want to get a little bit better every single day, every single breeding season, every single year. And, um, we submit the data and the information that we collect back to the American Angus Association that makes those EPDs even better for us and for everybody else using them. And it's just a circle. Uh, it's an endless circle that hopefully gets better every time it turns. So that's pretty much it. That is our breeding philosophy. There's nothing monumental. There's nothing that's that cutting edge. Our, our goal is to not produce that one great one that can change the breed or change the industry. It's to produce hundreds that offer as many of these functional foundation cow cowherd traits coupled with adequate levels, optimum levels of growth, as much marbling and muscle. As, as we can fit into today's commercial marketplace, and as I quoted Einstein earlier, the result seems simple, but the process behind it sometime is very complex. But that's what we try to do is simplify that for, for you and for us. That's what we do it. It's what we've done for over 120 years. Admittedly, my great-grandfather, Mr. Barrier, wasn't likely on the sire evaluation search page, doing sorts at 10:30 PM but he was still trying to do the same thing in that early 19 hundreds time when few people even knew what Angus were, but he was asking those questions. His, his line was,"we, we strive to produce an animal that profits its owner through its production." That's a mouthful, but. That's still what we're trying to do. We're trying to find animals that profit us as the owner, you customers as the owner, and these practical, profitable genetics hopefully can do that. So I appreciate you, uh, spending a little time with us here for the final time on this year's podcast. I'd like to invite you one more time to be with us in person or online on CCI Live for our annual bull and heifer sale. Next Saturday, November 22nd at 1230 northwest of Eureka, Kansas, we'll have 53 coming, 2-year-old bulls, uh, approximately a hundred yearling bulls. And six fall open heifers. Those heifers are synchronized and ready to breed. On about the second day of December, we've got Cedars that will be pulling out, uh, this week, and then they'll be synchronized for, uh, breeding there in early December. The cattle will walk through the sale ring and they'll also be televised on CCI Live. The catalog, searchable catalog videos, data sheets are all available. On dalebanks.com and uh, we hope that you will take a look at those. If you get a chance, if you would like a printed catalog, like I said, let me know your mailing address and uh, shoot it to mattPerry@dalebanks.com. So as always, thanks for listening. Hope to see you on sale day have a happy Thanksgiving. I thank you for your support of this podcast and our program. I thank God for all the blessings he continues to give us, and I hope He will bless you and yours as well.