D Commercial Limousin Producer Profile

The backbone of any breed of cattle is the commercial producers with their boots on the ground raising beef. Manitoba Limousin News & Views would like to highlight Three-Way Limousin of Lake Francis, MB.

Dianne Riding and Gary Wilkinson

I always say Limousin cattle are a girl’s best friend - better than diamonds. Yes I see the odd eye roll when I say this! I grew up on a dairy farm, here in Lake Francis, Manitoba. We own my parents farm plus two quarters of land that once belonged to my God Father’s family. Our land base is in a nice block. Here, we raise cattle, horses and goats. I was first introduced to the limousin breed back on my parents’ dairy farm. As a teenager my parents would AI some of the Holstein cows and heifers to beef bulls. Over the years there were Angus, Hereford, Shorthorn, Simmental, Charolais and Limousin used. By far the favorite cross was Limousin. A commercial herd of beef cows was started with heifers from these different breeds. These heifers where bred to easycalving Red Limousin bulls. Along the way cows and heifers were added from dispersal sales. After High School, I had off-farm employment for 17 years to support my livestock habit. Along the way Gary and I met, we both enjoyed horses, cattle and farming. Gary also worked off-farm as a welder until his retirement. Over the years we built a nice commercial herd of cows. When BSE hit we were calving 220 cows. We, like many others tightened our belts and the fact that Gary was still working off-farm, we were able to make it through BSE. Over the years we have used a lot of very good Limousin Red bulls we bought from past and present breeders in Manitoba. Over the years, we have made many very good friends. One of Gary’s downfalls is he dislikes goats and is a die-hard Charolais man! So in order to keep peace we sometimes run some White Charolais bulls. We found over the years, Charolais/Limo and Limo/Charolais crosses were a very good fit for our place. In 2011, we were affected by the Lake Manitoba flooding and downsized our herd to 150 cows. Most of our hayfields were completely under water. Over time, we went down to 125 cows which was still a good amount of work for the two of us. But throughout the years we always had 3 or 4 Red Limousin Bulls walking our pastures, the past three years we had six Red Bulls. We have always sold our calves in late September into October at either the Winnipeg Livestock Sales or Ashern Auction Mart where our Limousin-cross (cont’d on p. 7)