AI breedings in our cattle

Its always fun to switch it up a bit. I know some of you like to hear about my pigeons and cattle from time to time, as this IS a farm blog, not just a sheep blog :)

My dad and I did some interesting things with the cattle this year. First of all we sold quite a few cows as bred cows this past winter/early spring and then sold some this fall as bred cows. We had to lease a Red Angus bull this year, for commercial calves next year for dad's black cows and my solid red cows. The Simmental x Angus and Simmental x Red Angus seem to be the most sought after commercial crosses right now, so I thought I might as well get a premium for my commercial calves right?

I also imported two bulls from the UK to use. This year we are using Corskie Radium, shown below. This guy has been bred to 8 cows, with hopes of adding length, bone, capacity and milkieness to my tradtionally marked girls.
The bull below is a bull from the late 80's, early 90's called SSR Polled Ringeye. I was able to purchase a few remaining straws of him and the final two were used this year. Both cows are confirmed bred to him, so I'm excited to see what I will get out of him as well.
Another bull from the same time frame and Ringeye is DS Polltime. He's a yellow baldy that I purchased 30 straws of. I'm really excited to see what the two girls I bred to him this year will produce. I have only one yellow cow left and she is crazy wild, but I have retained her as she is my ONLY yellow cow. Many of my red cows carry yellow but haven't thrown it yet, so I'm hoping to get a few more yellow calves next year by using this bull.

We in the past ran three herds of Simmental here during breeding time (May-September) and had them in different pastures. My dad's black cows went to a black bull for commerical calves, and my solid red or baldy red cows went to either a red bull or a black bull for registered red/blacks for myself, or for commerical purposes, and finally I had a herd of traditionally marked red and yellow spotted cows with a bull at home. I am going to continue to AI my spotties to either older collected bulls or imported UK bulls as I feel those are depicting what the Simmental is really all about, but will still maintain a commerical based purebred cow herd to feed the needs of that market as well.

A great place to visit if you are into the fullblood Simmental (traditionally marked) is the British Simmental Cattle Society. Loads of good information, photos and links