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A BRIEF OUTLINE OF OUR BREEDING PHILOSPHY ENCOMPASSING THE SIX ECONOMIC ESSENTIALS

We have been raising and in herd totally performance testing our cattle for twenty-six years. We cull intensively to promote the six economic essentials of fertility, disposition, hardiness, weight gain, optimum milk production and carcass conformation on the rail. We strive for a balanced animal. Additionally, we cull to promote good feet and udders. To elaborate:

Fertility: By utilizing a maximum of two successive A.I. services per female without synchronization or a clean-up bull during the breeding seasons has enabled us to build an extremely fertile cow herd. We used A.I. exclusively for the first fifteen years of our Highland program and as needed currently. By not synchronizing a cow, we are not masking the true fertility of the female. Using natural service with an approximately forty-five day breeding period, females are identified that cannot calve and breed back on a regular basis. Basically, every female must wean a quality calf every twelve months to remain in the breeding herd.

Disposition: Our cattle must be easy to work and load...quiet and docile. A hyper cow, besides having a negative influence on her progeny and the rest of the herd is also a late breeder.

Hardiness: This essential covers many areas such as being predator proof in our environment A cow must protect her calf from our significant coyote population and also from the true wolves in this area. Also she must stand her ground against the plentiful numbers of black bears that frequent our pastures. Although I do not consider black bears predators, they will test a cow and try to spook her. Any cow that cannot stand this predation pressure or loses her calf to a predator is culled. Under the category of hardiness I place calving ease.. Every female calves on mountain pasture completely unassisted. Any female needing the slightest assist is culled. Our cattle are outside year 'round utilizing wooded areas for shelter or shade as required. Our pastures are subject to frequent high winds with a temperature range of ninety degrees some summers to minus fifty degrees during occasional winters. Our cattle, in this environment rarely have a health problem. We have never had a case of hoof rot or pink eye.

Weight gain: All our cattle are weighed in the spring after calving and again after returning from summer pastures in late October. Our summer pastures are composed of native grasses and browse occurring in grown up farmland or areas that have been clear cut of timber. Their nutritional quality is relatively low. By monitoring weight gain on this type of pasture, we can identify the easy keepers with their more functional genetics and cull the "poor doers". Experience has shown that cattle that do well on our pastures do very well in other areas of similar rainfall.

Optimum milk production: Having summer pastures of lower nutritional quality dictates that our females must have the genetics to utilize this poor pasture to its maximum potential. This means providing enough milk to raise a quality calf, yet not to produce so much milk that she is unable to maintain an adequate energy level to breed back in our forty-five day breeding season. This genetic trait is particularly critical until the female is mature, therefore requiring less energy.

Carcass conformation: We follow our carcasses through the slaughterhouse to identify the best dam-sire combination regarding not only weight gain, but yield and quality. In addition, with our beef sales we receive continuous feedback from our individual and restaurant customers as to the acceptance of our grass finished beef. To date, this has been excellent. When we discover a particular line or combination that we feel is not up to our standards for eating quality, we discontinue that particular breeding combination. This brief overview of our genetics and management indicates why we believe our line of Highlanders is the best choice for a person wishing to raise functional beef cattle.

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