Loder Cattle Company Maine-Anjou sired calves out of British cross cows. big win,” Loder says. Folkerts shares his experience buying cattle from Loder Cattle Company. “When working with Gene, he will treat you with honesty and respect. Plus, he will listen to the customer to see how he can help them in any situation. When working with him, there is no gray area, all the information will be at the customer’s hands -- pedigrees, EPDs, data, weights. Gene will give you the whole picture,” says Folkerts.
Proving Maine-Anjou Genetics Work
When selecting cattle, Loder uses all available tools including actual weights, phenotype and genotype. Specifically, Loder studies the Weaning Weight and Yearling Weight EPDs with accuracies, and the Milk EPD. He watches the Birth Weight EPD, but uses a visual survey to look for the right kind of shoulder, head and neck along with meat-animal shape before using a bull for AI or natural service within his herd. “My grandpa always used to say that there’s people who have cattle and raise cattle and then there’s cattlemen. You have to have ‘the eye,’ which to me is sometimes a lost art. A true cattleman can tell you if
he’s going to be calving ease or if he’s going to be a good performance bull in terms of the right foot and the right kind of structure and soundness,” Loder says. “That’s always stuck with me over the years, differentiating between what ‘the eye’ says and what good cattle look like and yet still take into the account science and technology to somehow combine the two.” Eventually, Loder would like to expand Loder Cattle Company and offer 50-75 bulls per year. He would like to sell those bulls for a reasonable price, $3,500 - $4,000 each as opposed to one $50,000 bull. “If I’m selling 50-75 bulls/year, we have that much more Maine-Anjou influence entering the mainstream market and the commercial gene pool, instead of one bull that brings good money. The clientele where bulls like that are used, as opposed to the commercial breeder’s bulls, is a night and day difference,” Loder says. Most of Loder’s customers do not follow what happens in the showring. Who wins Denver or Louisville or Kansas City isn’t a concern of theirs, Loder says. They want to know their calves will be six-weights in October, they want them to be healthy and have a lot of growth and vigor. The practicality of the Maine-Anjou sired calf is
the most important thing to them. MaineAnjou cattle are a great asset for all sectors of the beef industry -- cow-calf producers, feeders, packers and the consumers. “That is probably the biggest connection that needs to be made from my standpoint in the Maine breed. The correlation between identifying Maine-influenced genetics and recognition on the rail. That’s the biggest connection and a business relationship between the gentlemen supplying the bulls, the person buying the calves and the commercial cattlemen to where everybody can be on the same page for profit,” Loder says. “To me, that’s got to happen in order to grow in the Maine-breed. Once we identify those calves that do well, we can begin to replicate those genetics.” More information can be found about Loder Cattle Company at the website – https://lodercattlecompany.com
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