McNAMEE FOUNDATION BULLS

1116

1116 We usually lead off our herd sires with 7013, but as good as 7013 was, we have really bred his sire 1116, more through four different sons: 7013, 6936, 6141, and 6916. We have also kept and used numerous grandsons and great grandsons of his. To our way of thinking, 1116 will go down as the most influential bull we’ve used in our 30+ years breeding cattle. He was bred and raised by Dennis and Erica Voss of Horse Butte Ranch. In 1116, we have been able to find cattle that do so many thing013’s best preforming sons well for us. From the beautifully maternal females that last in our environment and under our management, to the functional, masculine males that get out and work to get cows bred, we have seen success on both ends. We will continue to fold 1116 into our breeding program. Thank you, Dennis and Erica Voss, for sharing the genetics of 1116 with us. He is your life time of work and experience, and we don’t take being able to benefit from the use of him lightly.

1116 We usually lead off our herd sires with 7013, but as good as 7013 was, we have really bred his sire 1116, more through four different sons: 7013, 6936, 6141, and 6916. We have also kept and used numerous grandsons and great grandsons of his. To our way of thinking, 1116 will go down as the most influential bull we’ve used in our 30+ years breeding cattle. He was bred and raised by Dennis and Erica Voss of Horse Butte Ranch. In 1116, we have been able to find cattle that do so many things well for us. From the beautifully maternal females that last in our environment and under our management, to the functional, masculine males that get out and work to get cows bred, we have seen success on both ends. We will continue to fold 1116 into our breeding program. Thank you, Dennis and Erica Voss, for sharing the genetics of 1116 with us. He is your life time of work and experience, and we don’t take being able to benefit from the use of him lightly.

1116

1116 We usually lead off our herd sires with 7013, but as good as 7013 was, we have really bred his sire 1116, more through four different sons: 7013, 6936, 6141, and 6916. We have also kept and used numerous grandsons and great grandsons of his. To our way of thinking, 1116 will go down as the most influential bull we’ve used in our 30+ years breeding cattle. He was bred and raised by Dennis and Erica Voss of Horse Butte Ranch. In 1116, we have been able to find cattle that do so many thing013’s best preforming sons well for us. From the beautifully maternal females that last in our environment and under our management, to the functional, masculine males that get out and work to get cows bred, we have seen success on both ends. We will continue to fold 1116 into our breeding program. Thank you, Dennis and Erica Voss, for sharing the genetics of 1116 with us. He is your life time of work and experience, and we don’t take being able to benefit from the use of him lightly.

EPD’s

Any yearling Angus animal’s EPD’s are interim since they obviously have no offspring yet. Those interim EPD’s are figured by the American Angus Association and are basically 50% the sires EPDs and 50% the dams with slight adjustments up or down for their actual birth and weaning weights. Our benevolent Angus Association has always given an interim EPD when we reported our calves for performance data. However, the board of directors decided that an interim EPD was a benefit of registration and unless you registered these calves, you would not get an EPD for them. The bottom line is too many people were not registering their AI calves because of the cost of the AI certificates. The breeders that sell the certificates were not getting any money when this happened. An AI certificate must accompany every calf that is the product of AI when they are registered. The Angus Association gets $10 for each AI certificate and the owner(s) of the bull usually gets anywhere from $10 to as much as $10,000 per certificate, I’ve heard. The cost is determined by the owner(s) of the bull.

This really hurts us as we can’t register our calves early because we don’t collect the DNA information until we wean, and the later you register, the more it costs to do so. If I register late, it will cost me either $14 or $27 per head depending on when I get the DNA information back. What these directors don’t understand though, is they sold me a computer program that figures all the performance data (ratios). Interim EPD’s are not that hard to figure, so, the EPD’s on all of these bulls are 50% the sire’s EPD’s and 50% the dam’s and are not figured by the American Angus Association.

All bulls except those marked as commercial are eligible for registration but will be sold without registration papers. If you have to have papers for programs like Angus Source, I will gladly register the bulls for you. If you are a registered breeder buying a bull to clean up on a bunch of AI’ed cows, and want to dabble in these genetics, I will NOT register those bulls. No offense to anyone, but I don’t like watching my good commercial buyers compete for bulls with that type of buyer. I’d much rather see the bulls go where they will do the most good. I also believe the value of these bulls should be set by what they will contribute genetically, and not based on the latest fad or the rarity of the genetics. We are raising bulls for the commercial industry, and have no desire to be part of the mainstream bull-of-the-month club, seedstock industry. We sell semen if you want to dabble.

Inbred Regression

Inbred regression in my opinion is about as misused a phrase as government intelligence. Inbreeding will expose problems in a particular animal, not create them. Inbreeding the right animal will likewise emphasize that animal’s good qualities. Too many times, problems exposed when inbreeding gets laid at the feet of inbreeding when the real problem was the animal that was inbred. You can’t make a thoroughbred out of horse shit. We’ve been inbreeding/line breeding 1116 for 12 years now and the cattle just continue to get better. By better we mean better as a group and not just better individuals. Better as in consistency of the type that suits our needs, both from a management and an environment stand point. All of this is not by chance either. 1116’s breeding was created by better breeders than us who believed in this very same philosophy, generations ago. You see it all the time in nature. Animals that come back from the brink of extinction. Think how inbred they must be. If inbred regression played as large of a role as some would like you to believe, Bald Eagles should be the size of pigeons and the wolves in Yellowstone Park would look like scrawny coyotes chasing bison around that were the size of sheep.

This is a bull that we bought from Paul Turner. Paul flushed what he considers to be his best cow to our 6936 bull. We really like our 6936 daughters so when Paul asked if wed had any interest in this bull we jumped at the opportunity. He is growing out with a phenotype consistant to the 6936 sons we’ve used in the past. We think you are going to apperciate what this bull brings to our herd.