Volume 13 Issue 2 September 2014 What’s Inside Paul Kempter — Simmentals well suited to a variety of grazing conditions
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From the Gate Post The Canadian Simmental Conference – A great success!
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Simmental Innovations What’s In It For Me?
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Ranching Industry Helps Keep STARS Flying
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Focus On Genomic Technologies
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What’s Happening
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Publication Mail Agreement # 40012794
Paul Kempter Simmentals well suited to variety of grazing conditions
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rowing up with Simmental-cross cattle on the family cow-calf operation in central B.C., it just made sense for Paul Kempter to stick with the high performing genetics as he developed his own ranching operation. Kempter, along with his wife Irene and family, have a farm at Barriere, B.C., just North of Kamloops. He says the Simmentalcross are an excellent fit for his ranch, whether cattle are grazing native range, dryland pasture or irrigated hayland. “Over the years we have looked at other breeds, and my dad did some experimenting years back, but Simmental cattle always seemed to work well for our operation,” The Simmental/Angus cross calves do well on Crown range says Kempter. “We also like being able to pasture, with steer calves last year averaging 720 lbs at buy local bulls that are raised under the weaning. Photos by Paul Kempter. same conditions we are ranching in. That is important. We could bring bulls in from the prairies, but they aren’t conditioned to the pasture and range environment we have here in the North Thompson region.” While Kempter grew up in the mid-70s on the family cow-calf operation in the Pemberton Valley, his parents Tom and Verena Kempter relocated their farming operation to Barriere about 60 kilometres North of Kamloops in the early 1990s. Tom Kempter was one of the Canadian pioneers of using AI with Simmental genetics in his cow-calf herd in the mid-70s.
DIVERSIFIED GRAZING
Today, Paul and Irene have developed a diversified grazing operation that relies on the performance of Simmental genetics under a variety of pasture conditions. Their ranch is based around a 200 head commercial cow-calf herd, with Simmental/Angus cross females, bred to either red or black Simmental bulls. They have been sourcing their bulls from Ian and Anja Mitchell of nearby Mitchell Cattle Co. for many years. Along with the cow-calf herd, Kempter also takes on about 80 to 90 other cow-calf pairs for custom grazing, and runs about 70 head of heifers some of which will be replacement heifers in his own herd, while others will be sold as bred heifers to other area producers. The ranch land base includes about 700 acres of deeded land, and of that about 200 acres are irrigated hay and pasture land with about 500 acres of dryland pasture. Kempter also rents another 1,800 acres of dryland pasture and he holds a lease on nearby Crown grazing land that can accommodate 300 cow-calf pairs over a mid-May to mid-October grazing season. “The basic split is that we run our own cow-calf herd on the Crown grazing land, and then use our own pasture and rented land for the custom grazing cattle and replacement heifers,” says Kempter. “There is some cross-over at certain times of the year, but basically the Crown range pastur e conditions can var y from lower elevation groups run separately.” grasses,
NEED FOR CHANGE
Kempter began implementing change and developing the current grazing system after the BSE
Commercial Country
to logged over cutblocks, to old burn are on the site can be a com as, and depending bination of native an domestic grasses. d
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