M
y first contact with Gelbvieh was when I saw Ted & Enid Jansen’s sign, Pair-A-Dice Farms, and was curious about a breed I didn’t know. I was so impressed by how docile they were as well as their conformation that I resolved to sometime have some Gelbvieh cattle. As a result of that visit, I bred some of my commercial cows AI to some Gelbvieh bulls and sent their bull calves to a bull test station to see how they performed compared to the other breeds. The results indicated that they could compare favorably with other beef breeds. Also at that time I purchased some Gelbvieh heifers from Gelbvieh breeders in Manitoba and felt I had achieved my goal. We used AI with some of the old imported bulls like Flag, Luke, Hercules and Kaiser. Later we AI’d to Polled Summit. We also tried some ET at this time with limited results. Following the ET experience, we purchased some heifers in Iowa from Raymond Marcus, who was the first owner of Polled Summit. We also bought a Polled Summit son to use as our herd sire. As Gelbvieh started to expand and there got to be more Gelbvieh breeders around, we along with some other Gelbvieh enthusiasts, formed the Eastern Canadian Gelbvieh Association. In 1997 we purchased Sir Arnold at Ed Kalianoff ‘s sale in South Dakota. He proved to be an excellent choice. There aren’t many bulls in the Gelbvieh breed even today with as balanced EPDs as he had. Most of our cow herd today has some Sir Arnold in their background. We purchased a son of EGL Pabst at the Douma/Savage dis-
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persal sale and he has been a great herd sire too. Our herd got up to a 75 head of cows, but we have since gone back to 50 to 55 purebred cows and 10 purebred heifers. 25 of those cows are bred to Red Angus to produce F1 bred heifers. If we were younger we would increase this section of our enterprise as there is a real demand for those Gelbvieh cross females. We synchronize our purebred heifers as well as a few of our best cows and breed them AI with very good results. We also test our bulls at a BIO supervised bull test station. This gives us an indication of how our breeding program is working compared to other breed’s bulls. In the 2011-12 bull test, one of our bulls was at the top of the pen of 32 similar age bulls, a testament to our commitment and continued dedication to raise the best Gelbvieh we can in a similar manner and conditions as a commercial breeder would. A few years ago we decided not to continue raising hogs and sold one of our farms to our son. Pat and I wanted to take life a bit easier. At present we grow hay, some soybeans or wheat, as well as barley for straw and feed. We feel the Gelbvieh breed has many attributes that are needed in the beef industry today and Gelbvieh will always be our breed of choice.