“Last year we AI’d every cow on the place in 10 days. We try and sync up the heifers with a 30-day CIDR protocol, and we do a seven and seven protocol on the cows and recip cows. We seem to have the best results that way.” Blankely has 20-40 embryo transfer calves born each spring, “We try to put them in fresh,” he said. “If the recip cows cycle correctly, we get around 65 percent conception rate on fresh eggs, and around 50 percent conception rate with IVF.” Embryo transfer dams are all older cows that have spent a productive lifetime raising calves in Wyoming. “We like to keep things to the old time, proven stuff,” he said. “We bred a 2005 cow this morning and we’re going Producing cattle with good udders, good feet and strong carcass traits never goes out of style, no matter what might be popular at the moment. The best of the bull calves born in Pennsylvania are shipped to Manhattan, Montana to be developed along with the Wyoming born bull calves. “Anything I cut gets put right in the feedlot here,” Blankely said. They’re getting the data back on these steers and he said results are “phenomenal.” “We’re keeping up with the industry in marbling. Ribeye measurements are a tick small but we’re getting better to try and flush embryos out of her again.” The oldest cow Blankely flushed was 22. “She still raised a calf at that point,” he said. Fred Saunders has plenty of experience with the genetics behind Sinclair Cattle Company’s cow herd. He grew up on a commercial outfit near Bondurant, Wyoming. After a rough winter, the cows were sold and his family ran yearlings. “I grew up in country where you learned to utilize grass,” he said. “If you can keep the ‘green monster’ [tractor] turned off in the fall you can keep money in your pocket.” Saunders brought his grass management knowledge to the N Bar, where he worked as Tom Elliot’s cow foreman for 11 years. N Bar Emulation EXT was born in 1986, and Saunders went to work for the N Bar in 1987. “EXT was a yearling bull when we went there,” he said. “I absolutely loved my job when I was at the N Bar. We came from Hardin, off the ‘seeded strip.’ My wife and I thought we’d drove into heaven when we went over and interviewed at the N bar. When we drove on the place we fell in love with the place. I was very blessed and lucky to work with a man like Tom Elliot. He was an extremely every year,” he said. FRED SAUNDERS
smart man. After being around his dad I could see where Tom got it.” Saunders learned about genetics and breeding cattle from Tom and Frank Elliot. “I owe a lot to Tom Elliot,” Saunders said. “Tom introduced me to the purebred side of it. I really got into the genetics; genetics really intrigued me, it really tricked my trigger. Tom was a great mentor and a very good cow man. He knew what a good cow was supposed to look like, and his dad was just as good if not better.” During Saunders time on the N Bar, they ran their own bull test, tracking average daily gains and performance. They AI’d everything on the ranch, and Saunders might breed three or four times per day to catch cows at the best timing for conception. “We pretty much built it up from within,” Saunders said. “When I went to work there, they had about 260 registered cows and 400 commercial cows. When I left, there were a little over 1000 registered cows plus about 200 commercial cows.” The N Bar cows were extremely good mothers. “The cows calved out on the prairie, in the snowbanks, or in the willows. That set of cows could go anywhere in the world and work. I was pretty blessed by the mothering ability in that cow herd. I had never before seen anything like it. That Emulation line always knew exactly where their calf was. I had worked on some big ranches all my life and been around cows that didn’t know where their calf was. You get spoiled around a set of cows like that.” At the N Bar, Saunders measured hip height of cows and bulls and pelvic measured and reproductive scored the heifers. “When I would arm those heifers and score their reproductive tracts, it was consistent that the EXT daughters came to the top. Where I really noticed EXT’s ability was those heifers or cows could raise 60-70 percent of their body weight in a calf, and two weeks after the calf was weaned you wouldn’t know it was the same cow. Turn them out on grass and they were fat. EXT’s daughters were pretty much phenomenal cows. Sometimes they had a little attitude to them, but shoot, when you calve outside you need them to have a little attitude.” While Saunders worked at the N Bar, they did cull on disposition, and over the years “the attitude part got better.” Frank Elliott, Tom’s father, told Saunders: “The more you stack Emulation 31 the better he gets.” “He was right,” Saunders said. “That was the unique thing about the N Bar cow herd; when you linebreed, and then you take a bull that has a pretty tight gene pool and throw that bull on the commercial man’s cowherd where the gene pool is huge, it’s almost like crossbreeding. EXT
3.28.26 annual production sale
34
Made with FlippingBook - Share PDF online