2010 FORAGE PROVEN BULL SALE ANNOUNCEMENT

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We will host our Forage Proven Production Sale Saturday December 4th, 2010.  It will be held at 1:00 MST at the Dawes County Fair Grounds in Chadron, Nebraska.  We are offering 50 long-yearling forage proven bulls, 1 bull calf and 2 heifer calves.

JAD PRUDENCE 6100
JAD LAD S6150 W926
JAD LAD S6150 WK32
JAD LAD S6150

This bull is JAD LAD S6150.  He will have several sons selling.  The heifer pictured at the top is 6157’s last natural calf.  She is excellent!  Here is the link to her pedigree.  If you would like a catalog please go to the contact page and sign up for one.  We will have more information on the web page soon.

John & Ann Dockweiler Forage Proven Production Sale 11/21/09

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We are planning to offer 50 long yearling bulls, one bull calf, and three fall calving cows with heifer calves at side in our fall sale.  All of the pictured cattle sell.  If you’re not on our mailing list please go to the contact page and provide your address so we can send you a catalog.

JAD JR UN29

JAD JR UN29

JAD LAD S6306 UR09

JAD LAD S6306 UR09

JAD PRUDENCE T10 with heifer calf by JAD LAD S6114

JAD PRUDENCE T10 with heifer calf by JAD LAD S6114

JAD PRIDE T17 with heifer calf by JAD LAD S6114

JAD PRIDE T17 with heifer calf by JAD LAD S6114

JAD PHYLIX W6157

JAD PHYLIX W6157

JAD LAD S6306 UR12

JAD LAD S6306 UR12

Checking Water August 24, 2009

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Heifer by JAD PRUDENT LAD 6157
Heifer by JAD PRUDENT LAD 6157
JAD LILIANNE 1828
JAD LILIANNE 1828
JAD LAD S6114
JAD LAD S6114
LAD S6306 FLIRTING WITH A SHOSHONE PIVOT DAUGHTER
LAD S6306 FLIRTING WITH A SHOSHONE PIVOT DAUGHTER
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Heifer by JAD LAD S6150

I carried my camera this morning as I checked pastures.  Things look good.  Thursday August 27th will mark three weeks since we put the bulls in.  They are tired but happy.  🙂  Took a couple shots of bred heifers.  The Lilianne heifer picture is for the WYE enthusiasts among us. 

Notice anything peculiar about the LAD S6114 bull?  Like the swelling underneath.  Yes, it appears he has suffered a career ending injury.  I really liked him too.  Certainly one of the nicest looking Prudent Lad sons we have raised and a calving ease bull too.  The good thing is I’m working with a renewable strain.  It is NOT dependent on any one outstanding individual.   The strain is predicated on reliable continuity.   I didn’t cause it to be this way.  The work was largely done by those who came before me.  They used close breeding and selection to fix the characteristics to the point that, Iwill be able to use another young bull in the strain and expect with a high degree of confidence that he will transmit very similarly to the injured bull.  6114 was never collected, I didn’t have insurance on him and yet discovering his injury today was no big deal.  Replacing him will be neither expensive nor difficult as the entire herd is being used to replicate the same pattern over and over again.

Logan
LOGAN

An Average Angus Steer

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For the longest time, I did not know or believe that “composition has the greatest impact on functional reproductivity”.  Now that I have met Leonhardt and studied Bonsma, I understand that the most valuable thing I can do as a breeder is to select and stabilize a good maternal type.  Realizing that “production values are self-governed by the environment”, I have stopped selecting for more growth and instead I let those values fall where they may.  Our EPD’s are stabilizing somewhat below breed average and I worry at times that my customers will lose too much performance.  People often ask me, “If you calved in March, what would your weaning weights be?” and the truth is I don’t know.  So I have watched the steer pictured above with interest.  He was born March 13, 2008 with an 84 pound birth weight.  His EPD’s are +2.1 birth, +20 weaning, +34 yearling, and +16 milk.  His $#EN is +20.94 and $WN is+19.59.  He is slightly inbred with a coefficient of 8.66%.  His ancestry is full of fertile, feminine cows that lasted and worked.  He was wintered through some bitter cold and nasty spring blizzards with nothing but winter range and a protein tub.  With all this in mind, I was pleased when we weighed him off grass, on August 5, 2009, and he weighed 946#.  What’s more, I think he can go on to the feedlot and continue to gain and carry enough weight to be profitable for the next guy.  I expect he will grid quite well because this kind usually does.  All this to say that if you want a low-cost, straight-bred system, my experience is that performance will be adequate and certainly the inputs will be lower with this type.  Maternal values can also be consistently excellent if selection is for proper conformation and production values are in line with the environment.

From a terminal perspective he’s easy to criticize.  We could want him to be more muscular, or higher marbling,  more volume/appetite, or larger framed. Perhaps we might like him to be smaller framed and earlier maturing if we wanted to grass finish him.  Clearly there are any number of genetic changes we could make to have the resulting steer top whatever terminal market we are aiming for.  However any one of these changes would likely have disastrous effects on the maternal conformation represented by the dams in his pedigree.

The only way I know to have “more” of whatever terminal characteristics are desired is to break the genetics up into maternal and terminal parts.

Therefore, there are two excellent genetic systems available, both of which are being completley ignored by the entire industry.

The first is a straight-bred maternal system.  Very profitable because it is simple, low-input, consistent, and produces average steers and excess high quality breeding females.

The second would utilize just enough maternal bulls to provide replacement heifers.  With proper maternal selection replacement females rates can be very low.  The rest of the cow herd can then be mated to produce for whatever market is desired.   This is the only way I know that you can have your cake and eat it too.

M C C LOGAN

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I promised to post a picture of M C C LOGAN and here it is.  I’m not satisifed with the quality of these shots and I hope to get a better one in the next few weeks.  Where have you heard that before? I like this bull.  He is going to be used to breed our heifers.  Time will tell.  Gregg Matney ran a complete Igenity profile on the bull and he scored really well across the board.

JAD LAD S6306

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JAD LAD S6306 is the combination of two of our very best cows.  His paternal granddam is Shoshone Prudence 6157 and his Dam is Shoshone Frances 6306.  The two middle pictures were taken late in the Fall of 2008 and the first and last pictures were taken in late July of 2009.  He is siring a lot of performance.  His sons will be some of the best growth bulls offered in our fall sale.   We are keeping one of his first sons, to use as a herd bull.  His name is JAD FX-UR38.  Notice that 6306 is the granddam on the top and bottom.  You can look at her picture and pedigree on our “COWS” page.  I have limited first hand experience with the cows in the pedigree beyond 6157 and 6306 but as near as I can tell both bulls have nothing but outstandingly good females behind them.  I think it’s interesting that neither one of these bulls offered much individuality as young bulls.  My selection of them was based entirely on the strength of the cows behind them.   We have a full brother to Lad S6306 that we call JAD FX T6306.  The two brothers will work side by side to breed our cow herd and increase the influence of Shoshone Frances 6306.  She also produced a bull by JAD JUANADA RUT RM84 that will be for sale this fall and she has a bull calf on her now whose parentage DNA results should be back any day.  Now if she would just produce a few more daughters.

The Embyos are Coming! The Embryos are Coming!

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6157

So far we have had 2 heifers and a bull by Horse Butte 1126 of 3128 X Shoshone Prudence 6157.  That gives us a grand total of 6 females and a bull by this mating.  We also have a heifer by Friars of Wye X 6157.  She is a full sister to our M C C LOGAN bull.  Finally we have had an outstanding bull by Shoshone Felix 6310 J O D.

There are a few more recip cows springing up so hopefully we’ll get a few more calves out of this wonderful 18 year old cow.

Ode to Extra

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N Bar Extra B310 A144

N Bar Extra B310 A144 was the first herd bull I ever bought.  On November 28, 1995, my Dad and I drove to Grass Range, Montana for the 48th Annual Fall Production Sale at N Bar Ranch.  He was Lot #2 and even though I had crossed him out in my catalog, when I got there and sorted through the bulls he became my first choice.  He is pretty tightly bred, by an EXT son crossed on an EXT daughter.  His maternal great- grandmother is N Bar Primrose 9962 and she is also EXT’s maternal grandmother.  His mother and grandmother are both pathfinders and his mother has served as a featured donor for Sinclair Cattle Company.

I could not have asked for a better  foundation bull than Extra.  He excelled at calving ease, disposition, and productive daughters.  His steers fed and finished well and I know he was a sire of marbling from the little bit of work that we have done in that area.

Jeff Ward at Sinclair Cattle Company has purchased our remaining inventory of semen so Extra will end up his career as an A.I. sire working on the same “N Bar Legacy” cows that he originated from.  We have a nice group of bull calves out of Extra that will be available for sale in the Fall of 2009.

SALE DAY

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We had an excellent sale.  We sold 23 bulls from South Dakota to Kansas for an average price of $2675.  The weather was excellent and everything went smoothly.

Bulls penned for viewing
Bulls penned for viewing
Pregame Preparation
Pregame Preparation
Birds of a Feather
Birds of a Feather
Julie and Grandma Vicki Serving Lunch
Julie and Grandma Vicki Serving Lunch
We are deeply grateful to our friends, family, and customers for your support.