Oh The Irony

For the last several months, I have been trying very desperatly to get semen on Semex proven stud Silky Cousteau. I wanted five units and my parents decided after I had ordered that they would also like five. See this bull kind of makes udders that are just that, SILKY, they tuck right up under the cow, so I want to use him on Mandy.

I then proceeded to attempt to contact the company. I sent multiple emails, all in an attempt to get the semen delivered to our farm. Some cows I wanted to use it on have already been serviced and are hopefully carrying calves, but to other bulls. My first email went out on April the 26th. I got a reply May 21st. Not a very good turn around time. I heard from our so called 'representative' the 22nd, and despite replying with all the information, to this day I have not heard back from him. I was to say the least getting very frustrated. One of the main cows I want to use this bull on is rapidly reaching the end of her voluntary waiting period.

So, as with me with frustration comes desperation, I was considering canceling the order altogether (I am not patient when it comes to handing my hard earned money to other people, they want it they better earn it!) and ordering it from a guy down in Pennsylvania who is like a semen broker and pulls in semen from all over the world to sell at below company prices very often.

Then, our feed rep brought a new man to the feed company through. He (the new fellow) told me an old family friend of ours, who quit over at the college as a result of certain individuals in the dairy barn, names to not be mentioned, was a new Semex guy, and could probably be made our rep if we wanted. Well HECK YES!! He will at least get us the semen. So on the 17th I sent them another email requesting that they put him on as our representative, cause dang it I want that semen. This very afternoon he pulled in to our driveway to check and make sure he was putting the order together right, drop me off some new stud books, and just check in and see how everything was going.

But here is the part with the irony. No it isn't that it only took three months just to get ten blasted units of semen. It is that in April when I originally ordered it, a single unit was $20.00. Not bad compared to the Blitz I have been using, he is valued around $30.00 or so the last time I looked. The irony is they never billed me because they never shipped it out.

WELL... Cousteau is now only $14.00, so we ended up saving, oh, say, $60.00 on a bull we were gonna buy no matter what. And though I kind of hate to say it, Semex is notorious for this. Wonder how much in sales they have lost over the years as a result...bet it is a pretty nice chunk of change. At least I should have my semen the first week of August. Whoo Hoo! Now I am excited. Ahh the possibilities.

WOW! WHAT ARE THE ODDS!!

How often do you see this happen? Every year I pick two or three young sires off of Select Sire Power's Super Sampler lists to use on the majority of my cows. You never know, you might get lucky. And over the last few years I have. Ocean-View Zenith graduated into AI stud. Canyon-Breeze Storm Atom graduated. And there have been a few others that I didn't get heifers out of, but that made it into stud. Select samples hundreds of Holstein bulls. And less than 10% graduate every year. Just to have two bulls that you used and got daughters off of make it into stud is amazing. I figured all my luck had probably been used up completely. I mean, I use so many young sires that I probably shouldn't be able to pick any that will not only make nice daughters, but will graduate into the 'Proven' group.

But I just checked out the new sire summaries for May. They come out every three months, February, May, August, and November. They are one of the few things I really look forward to. I have been watching for Ocean-View Derry Zander to have a proof. I'd been keeping an eye on his prelims and he was shaping up pretty decent. Not too stellar in the milk department, but with a whole pile of type points, and a pretty decent TPI. I did a post on him a while back, but darned if I can find it (AH HAH. Found it, here it is). Another bull I've been waiting to see if anything was going to happen with him is Vital-I Durham Lewis. Mom and I both loved this bull as a young sire. Me in particular. Another Regancrest Elton Durham son, he is out of a 96 point Hanoverhill Lincoln daughter. and though I was either very young or not born yet when Lincoln would have been a 'big name' bull, I really love his daughters. They are big, long, dairy, and in this case inky black. I have two Lewis daughters, one, Sedona, is currently milking.

Guess what.

Both bulls graduated. And I mostly like the looks of their proofs. Surprisingly Lewis has the better milk proof , but both bulls are very close on type.

I'll write more later. But I have to go rescue poor Hooter, my very very pregnant Jersey from the rest of the cows. Who are for some reason trying to beat her to death. Gotta love cows!

Bulls For the Next Generation

I have started picking the bulls that I am going to be using for my next generation of cows. Most are not new or young animals. To start off with, I have decided to try and get 5 straws of the Canadian bred and Semex controlled bull Silky Cousteau. Cousteau is a Juniper Rotate Jed son, out of a very good 87 point Cletius followed by a EX-90 point Valiant, and another 87 point scored Elevation. If all goes as I hope, I want to use him on Mandy after she calves in June, Becky's two year old Extra Special daughter Lemonade, my 5 year old Cal-Clark Board Chairman daughter, and hopefuly Junie after she calves in September. Then I should hopefully have one unit left to use on some other cow. This should also spread the calves out so that should I get enough heifers, I could in a year or two have a junior or senior get of sire. Which I have been lacking the last few years.

The next bull I am looking at is a Select Sire Power animal named Creek BWMARSHALL Dakota, a BW Marshall out of a Rudolph. He's been gender selected, and I think I might try using him on Mandy's Blitz daughter from last year, Dixie's Andre granddaughter Dixon, and my Kenyon yearling Medina. Hopefully I can get just three or four units, as I don't have a use for more.

After that I intend to work on using up the rest of the semen I have sitting in the tank. I've got semen on bulls like Zenith, Zander, Kenyon, Rain, Kingdom, and so many more, including some of those bulls breeders like to call the "Golden Oldies'. If anybody has some more suggestions on bulls they think I should look at, please feel free to let me know. I am always open to suggestions, though I admit I don't always pay a lot of attention.

I Think I Might Like This ONE!

Now this is what I would call a 'milky' bull. This new bull from Select Sires is called Blitz Jintx. Not exactly sure how you would pronounce that Jintx part, but he only has a couple of things I'm not liken. One of which is a fairly big hole, being that his daughters are showing a pretty bad rump angle, high pins and such, and he is throwing them with very little width between the pin bones. Aside from that I like him pretty well. Even like his pedigree. He's a Blitz (Emory x Tesk with a classification of 94 points) son out of a Winchester daughter, next dam back is an Elton, followed by Enhancer, Valiant, and Elevation daughters. With the exception of Elton (he's a Calin-M Ivanhoe Bell son), I basically have a certain fondness for every one of those bulls. Oh well, that high pins is a big not gonna use him in our herd. Just wish I could though. 2610 for milk. That is a really nice number.