SLS 11-12-21 Section II
11/9/21
4:19 PM
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SOUTHERN LIVESTOCK STANDARD
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2021
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Brought to you by American Simbrah Breeders
Practicality is the rule at 7P Ranch For just shy of 50 years, Joe Prud’homme has been raising purebred cattle to satisfy his customers’ demands for practical commercial cattle. Simbrah females are the most recent – and popular – addition to the range of genetics offered by 7P Ranch. By Sharla Ishmael One of the nicest fellas you’ll ever visit with is Joe Prud’homme, but there’s more than meets the eye with this humble gentleman. Some know him as an East Texas seedstock breeder, others as a surgeon, and if you go back in
his past, Prud’homme has been a calf roper, junior college basketball player, served in the Vietnam War and at a federal penitentiary in the public health service for a few years. But he always comes back to the cattle business.
7P offers Simbrah heifers as primarily breds and pairs.
“It’s the only thing I know anything about,” he says. Prud’homme bought his first set of cows at the tender age of 15. He bought 13 purebred Brahman heifers from a neighbor for $65 a piece. He halter-broke the set and held on to them until medical school forced his hand to sell them. Once his surgical practice was established, he and wife Mary bought a place near Tyler to restart his cattle business, however this time he bought a herd of Simmental cattle. It was in the early ’70s,
Joe Prud’homme (left), owner of 7P Ranch and manager, Tom Barker. when the Continental breeds were really hot, and the Simmental cattle of the day were really big, red and horned. As Prud’homme built his herd, commercial producers were wanting more moderate animals to work in their own environments, so he used AI and embryo transfer to breed his cows to moderate Fleckvieh bulls to meet buyers’ needs. “I was Fleckvieh before
Full Fleckvieh was cool,” Fleckvieh bulls with a he says with a laugh. “For frame score 5 to 5.5. They the last 20-plus years, we’ve work beautifully in my continued to use a lot of (Continued on page 4)
A typical 7P bred halfblood Simbrah female.
Simbrah heifers like these are bred and raised at 7P and marketed in their sales. The 7P Simbrahs are half Simmental and half Brahman.