Dual selection: data, eye appeal shape Alberta herd Sometimes there’s no better way to learn than to just jump right in. That’s how it was for Angus producer Jon Scott when he first studied artificial insemination (AI) in cattle. Fresh out of high school, the Crossfield, Alberta, native boarded a plane for Australia where the first item on the agenda was taking an AI course. The next? Breeding 800 heifers—with the help of just three others—that very first weekend. “It was quite a good learning experience,” Scott says. The job came after an inquiry with the Australian Angus Association. They put Scott in touch with Lawson Page 10
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Angus Ranch, in Yea, Victoria, which ran 1,600 registered cows at the time, and did a lot of embryo transfer and AI work. “They taught me to cull hard, and you’re better to have a good select group of bulls than to just keep a bunch of bulls around to sell in your sale,” Scott says. “They’re strict cullers on cows. Two cycles and if they weren’t bred they were gone.” He got to know the family, the herd and their customers. The Australian program is influenced by Gardiner Angus Ranch, at Ashland, Kansas, in the United States.
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“They were huge on carcass,” he says. After two different stints with the ranch Down Under, it was time to make a decision: come home to Canada or sign on in a bigger capacity. “They offered me a full-time position managing another ranch they’d just bought,” Scott says, while noting another opportunity beckoned in North America. “My dad was looking at feeding Holsteins on a longer-term commitment. It was a way to build up my Angus herd at the same time.” The call of home won, and the rancher returned home a few years ago. Since then, Scott and his wife Camille have gradually taken over Scott Stock Farms from Jon’s parents Earl and Debra Scott. When Camille moved to the ranch, she brought experience from growing up in the cattle business in Saskatchewan, as well as working in a beef plant and for the Canadian Angus Association. “We work on everything together, because I know the day-to-day but she knows the programs,” Scott says of her expertise in registrations and other paperwork. Busy with their own children, Shelby and Beau, and running an insurance agency, too, the couple no longer have time for custom feeding, but they were eager to take the baton with the cow-calf herd. They’ve built on what Scott’s parents started. “We’re a performance orientated herd,” says the elder cattleman. “They’ve got to have the numbers. We’re fussy. They’ve got to have eye appeal, too.”