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comes in slower, so obviously change will come at a slower pace as well. Now the Big Challenge!! Finding the right animals to move the breed forward, and to accentuate all the positive’s while eliminating the negatives! That’s what makes breeding cattle so fun for us.
What has surprised you the most about the breed? What has surprised me the most is how fast the cattle are getting better, in just the 8 years we have been breeding cattle they have gotten so much better. That’s due to the great breeders in this breed! Both long time breeders and the large amounts of new breeders getting in are doing a great job of breeding cattle that are more functional and acceptable to cattleman around the country.
Do you breed Polled or Horned Mini Herefords? At KLD we breed for the best animal we can make, Horned, Polled, Blue or Green we don’t care! Quality is the first thing we select for, sometimes that’s in a Horned animal and sometimes it’s a Polled one. When it comes to marketing semen we always try to have both Horned and Polled Bulls in our lineup, just because we don’t single trait select in our program we are very aware that others do, and when they call looking for a bull that has to be Polled or has to be Horned we want to be able to fill their needs.
How important is the youth program to this breed? The youth program is the backbone to every breed! To the Mini Hereford breed I would say it’s the backbone, the heart and the soul! Its why we are raising this smaller sized breed! It’s all for the kids that want to start before the age of 9, kids that start showing Minis at 3-7 years of age have a huge advantage and head start on kids that don’t start showing until 9 years of age or older.
The small unintimidating size and docility are what attract kids and their parents to our youth programs. The great thing I see is that a large number of kids that started out showing Mini’s have continued to show even after they are eligible to show larger breeds, even into their college years!
How do you market your calves? We market them several different ways depending on time of the year and number we have available. We like to market them through online sales on Breeders World, this offers a fair and equal chance for all our customers to choose and buy the animal they want. Private Treaty sales are always welcome and a great way to generate income without spending the extra time and money to video and properly present the cattle. The only draw-back to private treaty sales is that fairness to customers, most people want to see all you have, not just what you have left! Facebook™ advertising has been huge for us to get our name out, show potential customers what we have and what we are about. Its free so like our Facebook™ page!
What has been the biggest key to the success of KLD? That’s easy, you have to start with our cows! The quality of the cows are so important, any can buy semen on the top bulls in the country, but it’s the cows you are breeding to them to is what sets you apart from the rest and at KLD we feel very fortunate to have collected what we believe are a superior set of cows. With that goes hand in hand is our extensive ET program, with the help of Trans Ova we can take these superior genetics and multiple them quickly and efficiently. In 2019 we made 160 heifer calf embryos, we sold 60, we put 80 in recipient cows and kept 20 froze in the tank.
What would you say to someone thinking about raising Mini Herefords? I would tell them it’s a very rewarding venture! The cattle are good, the people are great, and the timing is perfect! This breed has exploded since we started 8 years ago and don’t see any signs of it slowing down anytime this decade! The demand is HIGH ,and the supply is LOW! The hardest part of starting a herd is finding the good quality bred cows to get started! Most breeds have multiple sales every weekend all over the country where you can buy quality bred females, not in this breed! You must look hard for people wanting to sell QUALITY bred females! That’s why at KLD we try every other year to have a bred female sale because there is just not a lot of breeders that have the numbers to sustain having production sales.