Ohlde Cattle Co | The American Rancher - March, 2019

coming up I consider him to be one of those applied to genetics geniuses when a lot of the industry went that way old II went that way now he's being recognized more than ever that he's on the right track replacement heifers is where the only program really shined here's a fascinating story of the most unique low input genetic program in the industry next on the American Rancher [Music] [Music] hello and welcome to the American Rancher I'm Pam Minich on today's show we're at oldy cattle company in Palmer Kansas longtime breeder Tim Aldi tells the fascinating story of how he developed what is known to be the lowest input beef cattle genetics in the industry oldie cattle thrive in harsh climates and on land with limited grazing capacity old the Angus cattle have the ability to fatten on grass which is attractive to many operations including all-natural nht sea and grass-fed programs oldie Angus cattle are in high demand by ranchers across the country but oldies success didn't come easy Tim's lifelong commitment to create low input cattle didn't always line up with the industry's expectations well I've always had a terrific passion for animals I decided to go to pre-vet at Kansas State and then about my into my sophomore year I was approached by a couple gentlemen to go into importing livestock from Europe and we want you to work for us they ended up making me a whole 1/3 partner and a wage that was way more than a veterinary was making at the time so it was hard to turn down you know I'm 20 years old and gonna get to go to Europe and you know something you dream about and so I went to Europe I went to Austria and Germany and Ireland and bought cattle and picked cattle different places and and in the 70s bigger was better they wanted him big and tall and I didn't like him I wanted him thinking deep and so when I got to Germany and not you know and the Germans and I'm German so I'm prejudiced they said no you want some guts you want some meat you Americans are breeding them narrow tall things they won't work on grass you know you're gonna have to give them grain and and I'm going man you're right I agree and so when I start seeing all the data you know actual economic data not bs data those cattle worked like the cows gave the milk they had to me you know and they had all them old flexp cattle had muscle and treat you know there incredible so I said it can work deflect fee that Tim discovered had the ability to develop only on graphs they also had other traits that he didn't expect he was surprised by how many traits some European breeders were tracking they had 40 traits analyzed 40 not growth weaning and yearling 40 you know front other attachment reroute attached teat length teak placement hoof length hoof with the you know shoulder width of hip I mean and and carcass ability on a grass regime forty traits well you know all you had is find them old big stud bulls that were 10 years old that had five six thousand daughters in this system they were foolproof they were foolproof Tim set out to import fluffy and other genetics to serve as the foundation of his herd each breed was selected for excellent nutters structure birth weight and of course their knack for performance on grass but it was complicated we couldn't bring him in directly but we figured out a way to import him to Ireland and then the next generation of calves born in Ireland could be tested and flown in and put into quarantine in American quarantine station for 60 days and then be brought in but we did it and through my travels when I was with beef genetics research we did a lot of progeny testing of our breeds and so I traveled through Montana and the Dakotas there in the 70s and there was some big angus testers for abs predominantly so there was some phenomenal herds of maybe six eight hundred a thousand Angus cows that were thick and deep and wide and they were a I into the old good bulls and I just my mouth just drooled Tim makes a deal to cross some of those cattle he imported from Europe the results are the original f1 females he needed to develop his low input herd I said you know I'm gonna make these these angers too if that's the last thing I do coming up I had what I wanted but I didn't know how to propagate it Tim oldies quest to develop high performance low input cattle hits a snag see what happens after the break you're watching the American rancher [Music] welcome back to the American Rancher Tim oldies development of low input cattle prompts him to import fluffy and other genetics from Europe in the 1970s these genetics have the key traits he needed for his vision to succeed Tim crosses these genetics with just the right Angus females to create the f1 female he's always had in mind now one final obstacle stands in his way we were struggling we bought those cows I had what I wanted but I didn't know how to propagate it I there was not an Angus bull out there that would duplicate him I tried some things and I'm going now then 86 6807 was born and a good friend he was actually her four breeder and he said ten them 6807 Jill hub they're thick they're stout they're pretty nice huh turn I said really yeah so I went out and looked at some and proceeded to buy a third interest in the bull my share the one third I took it and semen rather than money and we stock piled it and he didn't live along he had an abscessed foot that had got hurt in a pasture so but he was our foundation bull now he wasn't perfect I mean he had some issues as every bull does but he gave us the the good odors the thickness the low birth to growth rachels he actually duplicated those cows pretty well in fact probably made him a little better but we needed him better yet so we put him back like the 10:19 cow was one of the original and she lived to 22 years old and she was a the mother of Stachel on docker we had seven or eight sons out of her you know we ex T the Great Plains Vil that cow at 20 years old still had perfect feet I mean just like they were manicured perfect daughter when she dried up in the fall that other just like she'd never had a calf she had teats that long little nibble and so she had that thing going and she actually had about a forty fifty year on EPD today that that a cow born in nineteen seventy one would have never most of them were zero now today on girls and she was so there was some punch in that cow and our cattle today we got some cows that what way sixteen seventeen hundred that are not very tall but they're heavy wide and deep so basically the German philosophy helped me feel safe in going this way so I found those Angus cows that had that body type 6807 had that body type and so I pretty well set the foundation for the Angus cattle then we used that and we had to have that to make our hybrids you know you to get good crossbreds you got to have good pure breads so I had to add then I know I have to feel I got the right Angus in addition to 6807 other bulls have stood the test of time such as occ anchor OCC and blaze on 8:54 II and OCC Paxton 7:30 P these Bulls continued to produce females that are functional low input with beautiful utters moderate size and outstanding performance on grass some of these females include 6:28 w8 27 a and 803 x to keep these powerhouse genetics in tact oldy turn to line breeding well line breeding as we all know the joke it when it works its line breeding and one and when it don't it's in breeding line breeding is extremely important for us I have a closed herd now we haven't added a female I don't think in 15 years or bull we raise all our all the Bulls are bred here all the females and I have no problem breeding full brothers and I have a full brothers two full sisters twice we've had a bull that had the mating 16 or seven ten nineteen eight times it's all the same and they were normal and the bull we called normalizer but so I'm not afraid of it we have bred them so tight and inbred them so much if there was any defects that would have been exposed to tests before DNA was here to test for defects you the way you had to do it was to breed a sire to his own daughters so if you brought a bull to thirty of his own daughters and you got thirty normal calves he had about a ninety-nine point eight percent chance of being clean of any genetic defect you know lying brainy only brings out what's in them it don't cause problems but it exposes problems my customers know that why'm breeding and closed breeding your genetically cleaned from defects that wasn't the real reason I did it I did it because I wanted to have a certain kind I had this 10:19 cow I thought she was about as close to perfect as I had ever seen and I said I want a thousand like her well at the time you couldn't clone him so the only way to get her was to take her to her brother's her sister you know what I mean like we have done put her in the pedigree eight or ten times and today those cattle look very similar to her because we've consolidated and what we did we had tried some other bulls and in 98 I had some terrible back issues and we just said we got to cut back and had a couple little kids and so we decided that kind of we call it our Angus cow dispersal and we just kept about I think 15 heifer calves yeah on about 15 bred heifers but we kept the ones that were all out of our basic we went back to those three good cows we just kind of sold the rest of them so today when you really study our pedigrees it it all goes back to about three or four sires and three or four castes up next we're probably we're honoring those cows for 200 bucks less just through the winter Tim oldy succeeds see the results of decades of passion and commitment in the development of his high performance low input cattle that's coming up on the American Rancher stay with us [Music] welcome back to the American Rancher Tim oldie and his family now enjoy the fruit of decades of hard work and dedication ol D Cattle Company now produces low input seed stock that is proven by generations of carefully selected genetic traits his customers confirm the performance of these cattle angus genetics are the focus of all d cattle their cattle are ranked within their exclusive basic black program which encompasses flexsim Angus Angus - and purebred Angus every basic black is a high performance low input success story pure breads are not they are known probably number one is for their flushing ability that those cattle will stay fat on grass and they've got good udders and they got low birth weight probably the three most things that we're known for people know if they breed are bulls are going to improve some letters and you know they're gonna have little birth and they're gonna be easy keeping one of the things that I think is kind of unique about Odie is he knows how to develop bulls a lot of bulls have a tendency to fall apart when you get them to the ranch and that's not a problem with an oldy bull no Jim for a long time probably over thirty five years and every time I come in contact with them whether it's in person or over the phone or human text messages I learned something and he's taught us a lot I I consider him to be one of those applied to genetics geniuses probably the number one person that I that I know of in the world and how each breeds cattle and how he looks at cattle and how he can identify cattle at work primarily they work because of the the fleshing ability of these cattle have but he also concentrates on some of the other traits like uh dirty quality and conformation and feet and legs and and all those translate for us into cattle that are going to be around for some time we produce our holy cattle by by an oldy bulls and we've bought whole D Bulls for years and we're cap people and take a lot of pride and put a lot of effort into making heifers that we like we we retain all of our females and we make all of our own cows and so they're advertised to be maternal cattle and that is exactly what they are they're our modern frame they're easy fleshing they're structurally correct problem-free cattle these are spring born replacement heifers need to be about ten months old I guess now these would be kind of march-april heifers born a year ago and they're all three there's some Angus Angus twos and some flex M Angus they're about in the body condition we like we try to have these about 750 when we breed them I don't really want them bigger than that we used to have them a little heavier but we'd rather just breed them a little lighter and then let them go to grass and gain the weight back on grass and they usually weigh around a thousand pounds when they calves maybe 952 a thousand fifty we did start feeding them here two weeks ago when this snow got pretty bad in there I think we fed them four times now in two weeks so they get about no I get half bale probably about 600 pounds so they're getting about 10 or 12 pounds alfalfa hay twice a week replacement heifers is where the oldie program really shines we think it is just there are we could do a lot of things if we use terminal size or if we did cross breeding we recognize the hybrid vigor and all that those are all positive things but it is really difficult to get the kind of female you want to make a cow out of in this industry today and that's why we like the oldie program so much because we like the daughters to moderate framed easy flesh and problem-free heifers that we can get out of an older bull so these would be all registered Angus cows four and five-year-olds predominately of their aides these cows that probably maybe lost 3040 pounds since January when it got cold but they still are they'll start calving here in about two weeks three weeks and then the green grass will start about the end of March 1st April so they'll flush right up on the green grass as their calving so we really don't want a mini fleshy earnest right now just the body condition works at and they'll start calving and Malcolm and then they rotate into that green grass when them calves like in April that way in May and if they breed up real well so we're probably running those cows for 200 bucks less just through the winter because no labor no feet they got running water but our cattle because we've lined bred at 10:19 cow would stay fat or nothing these are all be two-year-old Bulls and they'll be in the say almost all of them and we got to finish semen checking them and everything but majority of these are Angus bulls the pink tags are Angus we a I have part of our cows and quite a few of this pander to be some AI sired there's Paxton's and blaze owns a little kind of everything you know when it's cold they'll eat ten to twenty percent more a day I mean it just got to you to stay warm and the second it warms up to thirty five forty degrees they'll back right back off the ration we always try to keep the best seventy eighty bulls for the sale and then we sell the rest private treaty and so this it's going to be real you they got the really good mothers you talk the line bread thing there's some well like that bull there they'll be having ten nineteen cow in their pedigree three four or five times you know a couple three times 6807 probably a couple three times the xt6 54x so they all they all have the same kind of pedigree it's just switched around a little bit they're good really good set of bulls our caliber really thrive in low input in other words we've sent Bulls it to Matador ranch in South Texas West Texas and in New Mexico we've got cattle running the Sierra Mountains in California Nevada and you all over and I'm not saying that's all the worst but our cattle with droughts and it particularly right now the calls I get it says Tim I can tell every one of my cattle that's your genetics through this cold weather because they still got some fat on her back our cattle won't add growth I mean we ain't gonna have the hundred twenty thirty year Lenny Pete we're not going to add more size and growth but we're gonna put as many pounds on those calves with the least input as any cattle out there and that will be proven well we've just comes through some really tough weather and it's kind of a testimony to all these genetics that these cows are able to survive some pretty tough conditions they're tough range cattle and yet they're quiet and pretty docile although Tim's knowledge and experience are the foundation of the company oldy cattle is a family operation his wife Trudy and son Jake are just as dedicated as Tim in getting the right genetics matched up with their customers we continually have new customers I visit a lot with with a lot of customers on the phone daily trying to get them acquainted with our operation and in what might help them in the genetic area customers that are looking for bang on their bug they want the quality of something's probably worth probably ten thousand dollars and want to pay you know three or 3,500 for it so that's kind of the yeah market we aim for the best compliment I get at our bull cos people said Tim I can't pick out the best one and soon you'll have the opportunity to bid on old e genetics at the annual old e production sale on April 15th you know we got the same thing you know it ain't uniquely different basically the same size as we've had I just think we each year they're a little more uniform than they've ever been I mean I want people to not have to fight for those two or three best ones in other words they'll say I don't have to get on that one I think there's a bull fella second from the end of the sale it's just as good join Tim Trudy and Jake at the livestock Commission company in Marysville Kansas on April 15th for the 29th annual basic black bull and female sale click old e cattle comm for a sale catalog or log on to superior live.com for more information the sale will also be live on superior click to bid that's all the time we have today to find out more about us visit the American rancher calm or connect with us on Facebook I'm Pam Minich for the entire American Rancher team thanks for joining us we'll see you next time [Music] [Applause] [Music] that was superior

Channel: Superior Productions

Views: 29,763

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: 3B2_CW6i-y8

Length: 22min 29sec (1349 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 03 2019