Reflections from LL ©

"Over time, some day the two Jimmers might even get together and agree that breeding parent stock may be different than production stock Smile"

....a very, very cold day in hell

outsidethebox wrote:

"Over time, some day the two Jimmers might even get together and agree that breeding parent stock may be different than production stock Smile"

....a very, very cold day in hell

I`m with you on that one OTB... why, you would have to invest some time in creating parent stock...why bother, when the rewards of promotion of production stock as breeding stock can be immediate...

In my opinion as a commercial cowman true parent stock is all that purebred breeders should focus on. If they would do that we the commercial man could produce what ever the end user meat consumer might need. That sure would make us more sustainable than feeding us BS and expecting us to survive. From the middle of excintric thinking Bob H

Bob H wrote:

In my opinion as a commercial cowman true parent stock is all that purebred breeders should focus on. If they would do that we the commercial man could produce what ever the end user meat consumer might need. That sure would make us more sustainable than feeding us BS and expecting us to survive. From the middle of excintric thinking Bob H

We're getting the logistics worked out of how we are going to progress viewing cattle Friday...Bob, can you be a group leader if needed? In making this gathering different, I think we'll leave the owner/breeder at the house talking with whoever wants to stay there, while groups will go with group leaders walking through the cows....look for yourself, ask questions freely, figure things out for yourself instead of hearing a bunch of bs claims ...

yes sure can

I want to express my sincerest gratitude to all who attended the "Keeney 's Corner Gathering"
and thank you all for just being the special extra ordinary people who you all are. I must admit
that when Mike started talking about this event, I was, to say the least, quite apprehensive.
I must also admit after it was over, driving back to Cowley yesterday as we all returned to the
day by day routines of our lives, it became crystal clear that certainly this gathering was not the
ending of one of the greater highlights of my life, but the beginning.

It was recently implied on 5barx in a negative way that my close association with Dennis, Mike
and Brian will be my legacy......I do hope that prophesy is fulfilled......I wish everyone could know
what all Dennis, Mike and so many others have done along the way to help guide me down the
road less traveled, helping me build bridges over obstacles seeking a better pathway leading to this
new frontier.....dreaming what some might call an impossible dream, better known on these
web pages as "blue sky".

I was so proud of Ben, leaning forward sitting there on his horse talking with the crowd about the
ordinary things of ranch life with his extra-ordinary wonderful family in the the background......
I hope Hollywood doesn't steal him from us.

I've forewarned some of you what wonderful people Dennis and Erica are, now you all know.
I had to laugh at Dennis's post yesterday, that he denied my request to be more tolerant of some
people.....as the poem submitted on KC yesterday tells how most of us spend our lives chopping
away at the leaves of evil....... DV and MK go after the roots. Of course poems have also been
banned from 5barx, so welcome to KC Ralph......and I did find out Tom D also uses alias names when
posting, something about a "red headed stranger" : )

And then there is Bill Byars, who I've been acquainted with from the beginning, now physically
handicapped, who's son Chris brought him all the way out from Missouri. Sitting in the car while at
the Frostee Freeze in Big Timber, he told me now that he has an autographed copy of the surprise book
that Brian so generously put together and distributed during the gathering, that now he would have to
contact his home fire insurance agent to increase the valuation of the contents.

As usual with his creativity, nothing surprised Betty and I more than when MK had Kristina present Betty
with the "Cattle Breeder Wife of the Year" award. Betty has complained over the years that she is a non-person,
my maid .....now she is finally my maiden of honor after 55 years of marriage......and I couldn't have
picked a better mother. Speaking of mothers, August 5th was my mother's 95th birthday. She is now
in a nursing home and when I told her I couldn't be there for her 95th birthday, she said "Oh my gosh, am I really
going to be that old", so I just told her of all the mothers in the world, I was so lucky that I got the best one.
Not many of you know that Linda and Kristina are each others best friends, the only mistake besides me driving right
on past our destinations was when I had to correct Mike on Kristina's last name, it is not Keeney now, it is MRS. SAUER,
school teacher. I had a dinner date with Mrs. Sauer when Betty was still in Cowley, but it was a one night stand once
all the younger good looking men started arriving.

Folks, it isn't any wonder that I breed maternal, I am a victim of my environment. Maternal values are not only
the backbone of the cattle industry, they are the backbone of the world. And I cannot thank Dennis enough for
the most vivid demonstration that was left unsaid. And that is I didn't hear anyone talking about or critiquing the
quality of the 12 Longhorn bulls Dennis had with his yearling heifers, only the comments about the surprisingly
goodness and uniformity of the F1 yearling heifers...... I wondered if anyone realized those F1 females were all
out of first calf heifers while the black heifers were most likely out of cows, the backbones of the herd. Yet when
we got to the purebred Angus cows, we circled and circled for those who wanted to find and see a particular Angus
bull sired by a NZ Pinebank bull. Someone asked me if the Horse Butte bull Ben Dimond brought to display was
the type of bull that sired good females.......I would rather have seen his progeny since I never could see the "X"
chromosome in a bull, but knowing his ancestry, he certainly displayed their calm intelligent temperment, not too big,
not too little, not too fat or muscular, not too skinny or flat muscled, and most importantly, likely not a bull that
would cause more problems than benefits.

In my current emotional state of mind, at this time I just want to mention a couple of things. While we were all in
my garage when I asked Sam why he went back to using old bulls, if I remember right, he implied that he thought
the men of that era were better breeders. Not necessarily in agreement, this could have evolved into a
time wasted discussion..... we cannot change the past nor present......we can only change our futures from what
we have learned from any mistakes of the past. I don't know what is/was so good about "pure old line Scotch Angus"
since our present day cattle descend from them. And someone recently reminded us of the fallacy of doing the same
things over and over again expecting a different result. I have talked at length over the years about harnessing
hybrid power and it certainly won't happen if all we do is to continue going around ooohing and aaahhing looking for
those perfect bulls......or cows......in an imperfect yet perfect world. As Wright said a 100 years ago, the principles
are exceedingly simple, the difficulty is in the application.

That single "difficulty" seems to be our individual obsession with time. Someday we will quit mating 3's to 5's
to get a 4 by the numbers, someday we might mate 3's to 3's to get a 6 in value, so thanks Dennis and Bob H. for
demonstrating the beginnings of that direction as we improve the "purity" of the COMPLIMENTARITY of the parents.......
working together rather than in bitter competition with one another while Dennis and Mike continue chopping away at
the roots that forestall this progressive movement. : )
Thanks again for sharing your lives with me in one small spot in the world, for I consider this group to be among
the richest people on the face of this earth. LL

Sometimes poor quality camera phone photos can look like beautiful paintings.

I am going to take a stab at some of these questions from our own personal experience. When we met Larry 14 years ago I thought that MARC research center was the future and had tried to breed cattle with their thoughts in my head and failed miserably. We were replacing 25% of our cowherd a year. Being a very determined person it took about 5 years for it to sink in that breeding cattle was not a trick it is due diligence. When we stopped crossing with other breeds and only used Shoshone trueline bulls for the maternal line did we start to make advances in our breeding program. We never stray from Shoshone yellow maternal line and find that it alleviates allot of problems. You can use these cows to get any end product that you wish to make.

It was interesting when I asked Larry how much Inbred regression he sees when he uses multiple sires and his answer was that it has flat lined for now. That is exactly what we have noticed.
To summarize my thought is start with good solid predictable gene pool that is maternal and start the journey forward. You be pleasantly surprised in the future just remember that these are lifetime decisions and it is going to take time and the more you jump around the longer it will take.

Another observation that I made at Red Lodge was that all of you folks from the Southeast had problems with heat on your cattle. My thought is that I would not fight a black hide; I would find and make a maternal line of white hided cattle. From the land of many fires Bob H

Tom D wrote:

Sometimes poor quality camera phone photos can look like beautiful paintings.
And Tom, after talking with you until the wee hours of the morning, I'm guessing that your point was that sometimes poor quality animals can produce animals that look like beautiful specimans. My recent reflections have been particularly focused on the topic of "closebred nubbins", and I laughed when Keystone described this industry as one of "bobble heads" Kent finished his post with:

".......I have now reached the point that I am almost out of stupid answers. How about some stupid questions, just for the effect of repitition and to perhaps reinvigorate this discussion?

1. How do you produce maternal cattle with from cows that produce the poorest performing calf when they get around to breeding?
1A. How do you produce maternal cattle from cows that produce the highest performing calf when they get around to RE-breeding ?

2. How can a shaggy brown cow produce early shedding, slick haired, fescue adapted cattle?
2A. How can early shedding, slick haired, fescue adapted cattle produce a shaggy brown cow?

3 . What will be the fertility effect in Nubbin`s daughters? ......."
3A. What will be the fertility effect on the Biggest bull's daughters?

MK answered:
Kent, the reason Nubbin`s mom is still here is NOT because I think she offers significant contribution to the gene pool...but to see if I could arrive at some sort of answers for myself to the very questions you ask above, to complicate things a bit more; the two year old pictured above is Shoshone, not outcrossed..
Nor necessarily highly INBRED.

RobertMac asked:

You going to breed Nubbin back to his mom?

Bob Howard took a stab at some answers .... saying in part:

I thought that MARC research center was the future and had tried to breed cattle with their thoughts in my head and failed miserably. We were replacing 25% of our cowherd a year. ....that breeding cattle was not a trick, it is due diligence.....and find that it alleviates allot of problems. You can use these cows to get any end product that you wish to make........these are lifetime decisions and it is going to take time and the more you jump around, the longer it will take.

Another observation that I made at Red Lodge was that all of you folks from the Southeast had problems with heat on your cattle. My thought is that I would not fight a black hide; I would find and make a maternal line of white hided cattle.....

From black to white we tend to go with no "in between". While color may help, I think we all know that the functional type is much more important. Bob H also said "when I asked Larry how much Inbred regression he sees when he uses multiple sires and his answer was that it has flat lined for now."......which is due to my selection criterion in order to sustain current acceptance (marketability). We all use multiple sires but not necessarily in the same pasture at the same time. Firstly, I want to reiterate that phenotypic performance selection seems to self govern the degree of inbreeding regression.....And secondly, until evaluation, I don't know if the shaggy brown cow is shaggy because of natural epistatic conditions (gene shutdowns) within the genome, or a matching of "detrimental holes in the two sheets of paper", or both.

So Kent, in regard to your questions based solely on the picture of her two year old daughter and the fact that her daughter settled on first service AI, it suggests to me that it is the former rather than the latter.....one of nature's automatic population control mechanisms. I don't know how that works, so, Mike would certainly be fishing for a phenotypic miracle if he could successfully mate Nubbin back to his mom before he is thoroughly evaluated either over a specific or a randomized populaton......little doubt the offspring of that mating would be more prepotent, but prepotent for what? But, most of us like to fish hoping to catch that big one : )

I like Bob Howards words, "IT IS DUE DILIGENCE". It would be interesting to see the results of mating the "inbred nubbins" of MS mated to the "inbred nubbins" of Outside the Box for complementarity.....surely they were initially inbred because of the visual qualities expressed by some of their ancestry, so I would not necessarily be surprised at the results of the "restoration process". It seems the only way to measure any positive progress made by inbreeding is to measure the "restoration" along with any non-additive illusionary benefits of heterosis.....but, then the next question is always now what do we do with "it"? Inbreeding is just a tool to reduce the variables of selection quicker.

So, along this line of thought relative to linebreeding/inbreeding the very "best" and getting the very "worst", during our discussions at the RL gathering, someone asked if I would use the bull "Clark of Wye" after Eddie Draper told everyone Clark always fell over backwards from mounting while being collected...... they have semen in storage on him but Eddie says the UMF herd has never used any. Lest we can only breed AI like the large breasted turkey breeders do, most commercial beef cow herds need to be functionally reproductive under natural conditions, whatever that means. I would like to offer just as an example from a 70 year old herd with factual public history learning from our selection directions using Clark's pedigree taken from the "business breed's records"...... and tell the story behind him: Since old men can't do much anymore, our favorite pastime is to tell stories, so perhaps this example will also help Morgan Hartman better understand why I formed the opinion that we need both reproduction (maternal) and production (paternal) types of seedstock to improve beef production, period.



Clark of Wye Umf 6116Reg: AAA 10916527
Bull
Birth Date: 02/18/1987 Tattoo: 6116

Parentage: SNP
Genomic: IG384

Breeder: 371945 - Univ of Maryland Fdn Inc, Queenstown MD

Owner(s): 371945 - Univ of Maryland Fdn Inc, Queenstown MD




............................. Lundell of Wye AAA #9635771
............. Landrover of Wye Umf 5234 AAA 10319331
............................ Lavonne of Wye AAA #6754980
Landark of Wye Umf 5766 AAA 10635360
............................ Pastor of Wye AAA 6418155
............ Loanda of Wye (Lundell's dam) AAA 7226501
........................... Loania of Wye AAA 6418011

........................... Lundell of Wye AAA #9635771
........... Landrover of Wye Umf 5234 AAA 10319331
.......................... Lavonne of Wye AAA #6754980
Clova of Wye Umf 5638 AAA 10635257
......................... Lundell of Wye AAA #9635771
...........Clova of Wye Umf 5275 AAA #10319328
......................... Candida of Wye AAA 6026206



Lundell was born in 1980 during the beginning of my transition years and I was one of eight others with whom Dick Beck established a purchase value at $250,000.00, my share of 1/8 of 1/2 of the bull cost me $9,375.00....surely a bull that couldn't miss the target, the best of the best. Clark was born 6 years later, one of Dwight's sincere efforts to restore the maternal values which had been declining in the Wye herd, by concentrating the PRODUCTION and overall goodness of Lundell's dam and ancestry, so named out of his admiration and respect of Mr. K. A. Clark......J.B. Lingle's cohort during the importation of those pure Scottish Angus bulls. While hindsight can be 20/20, Clark was created by projected pedigree merit. Six years was hardly long enough to actually evaluate Lundell's maternal attributes, note that this common ancestor was already back in the third generation. This was one of the lessons I learned that so often haste makes waste.

However, there was also a special bull calf born in 1979, so appropriately named Legacy of Wye, who was sired by Lucan of Wye, another top performer also produced by Lundell's dam. I think Eddie could reaffirm that Legacy never left any worthwhile remants in the Wye herd. And today I don't have any remnants of Lundell or Lucan left in the herd, even after naming one of the "best" sons a derivative of my own name....."Shoshone Laurent" who was out of my high producing Lass cows.....and after the failure of "Shoshone Laredo", a Midland tested high performance bull leased to ABS, I later became skeptical about naming bulls after myself for fear of it predicting their suredom of maternal failure. I've observed that most of the "top" performing bulls tend to come from good, smaller productive cows.

I doubt anyone has made more selection errors than I have, suffering from all my high expectations, which is so common among registered breeders. Yet we persist, so when LARkota (not an alias for me & Brian) posted that Mr. Jim Wilson told him that "all them semen pushers should be jailed for what they have done to the American cow herd.", rather than try to "straighten out" Jim L, I would rather think that "they" have just been fullfilling a demand for those of us who have an ID ten T-post problem......our time would be better spent in rehabilitating those of us who just can't seem to get over this common problem......free help is available at Jack's clinic near Miles City ......only those younger than 50 qualify for entrance, which is better explained by a blue sky email I received the other day:

As we "Silver Surfers" (older folks on the Internet) know, sometimes we have trouble with our computers handicapped by our inability to teach an old dog new tricks.

I had a problem yesterday, so I called Eric , the eleven year old next door, whose bedroom looks like Mission Control and asked him to come over .

Eric clicked a couple of buttons and solved the proble m .

As he was walking away, I called after him, 'So, what was wr on g?

He replied, 'It was an “ID ten T err o r”.

I didn't want to appear stupid, but nonetheless inqu i red,

'An, ID ten T error? What's that? In case I need to fix it a g ain.'

Eric grinned.... 'Haven't you ever heard of an ID ten T error b efore?

'No,' I r eplied.

'Write it down,' he said, 'and I think you'll figure it out.'


So I w rot e it dow n.

ID10T


I used to like Eric , that little shit.

I wouldn't mind if he's a little shit, I'd love to have him live in my house!

What's in a name.....well, I once had a bull named Shoshone Eric, a littler sh*t born in 1983 who clicked a couple more buttons in my brain to help me solve my own ID ten T- post problems......and Dennis just happens to have a wife named Erica who also knows how to click the right buttons..... so I had to laugh when Dennis recently wrote Mike and said, "......Thanks for posting a wonderful picture of Erica. This ranch should actually be called the Spirit of Erica ranch. I'm just her Japanese geneticist/hired man.." Mr. Falloon's geneticist is Chinese with deep black eyes who could see the light, but not what type it would be at the end of the curving tunnel : ).

So here we are Kent trying to find answers to how ugly can produce pretty and I end up describing how pretty can produce ugly. We don't need to know precisely how it works, we only need to know the cause and effect. Please know that Mike was pleasantly surprised when that littler "Eric" bull sired "Felix" born 10 years later in 1993 - out of Encore's dam from natural service and most of you here know the rest of Mike's story. So, in this land of bobble heads using the extremes of both ends of the distributions, where close bred nubbins tend to breed up from what they are, and beautiful individuals tend to breed down from what they are, is it any wonder that my herd is "flat lined" for now by using multiple sire pastures.....the only difference is just that the herd has smaller zigs and zags than it had before.

Dennis has noticed that the individuals in the Horse Butte antelope herd don't keep getting larger or smaller but stay in TUNE with their environment........I sometimes call that "stablization", if what you see is what you get. In the bobble head business we measure differences, not sameness; we measure output, not input; we measure ratios and half our herd is always below average, there don't seem to be many average cattle and so it goes with human comparisons..

So, I kinda like the nickname of MS's "Longhorn type" Charolais white cow "Toony" and especially the unique and likeable look on her face in the picture ......there you go for you southeast guys concerned about heat.....I'd bet she doesn't have the heat and coming in heat problems of the fattest ones.....so Kent, I hope these things I've mentioned give us enough to reinvigorate the discussion, and where will that leave us while looking for answers in all the right places ?

LL in the vicinity of being back in the Cowley saddle again watching my skinny oversexed young bulls ride each other, stuck in between a R & HP still trying to click on the right buttons so people like Bob H can use these bulls to produce contented functional cows who can produce any kind of product they want from them......so much easier...... as he's said before, it's not rocket science, just simply "mate the boys to the girls to get little ones", no tricks or fanfare, just due diligence.

Larry Leonhardt wrote:

Tom D wrote:

Sometimes poor quality camera phone photos can look like beautiful paintings.
And Tom, after talking with you until the wee hours of the morning, I'm guessing that your point was that sometimes poor quality animals can produce animals that look like beautiful specimans. My recent reflections have been particularly focused on the topic of "closebred nubbins", and I laughed when Keystone described this industry as one of "bobble heads" Kent finished his post with:

".......I have now reached the point that I am almost out of stupid answers. How about some stupid questions, just for the effect of repitition and to perhaps reinvigorate this discussion?

1. How do you produce maternal cattle with from cows that produce the poorest performing calf when they get around to breeding?
1A. How do you produce maternal cattle from cows that produce the highest performing calf when they get around to RE-breeding ?

2. How can a shaggy brown cow produce early shedding, slick haired, fescue adapted cattle?
2A. How can early shedding, slick haired, fescue adapted cattle produce a shaggy brown cow?

3 . What will be the fertility effect in Nubbin`s daughters? ......."
3A. What will be the fertility effect on the Biggest bull's daughters?

MK answered:
Kent, the reason Nubbin`s mom is still here is NOT because I think she offers significant contribution to the gene pool...but to see if I could arrive at some sort of answers for myself to the very questions you ask above, to complicate things a bit more; the two year old pictured above is Shoshone, not outcrossed..
Nor necessarily highly INBRED.

RobertMac asked:

You going to breed Nubbin back to his mom?

Bob Howard took a stab at some answers .... saying in part:

I thought that MARC research center was the future and had tried to breed cattle with their thoughts in my head and failed miserably. We were replacing 25% of our cowherd a year. ....that breeding cattle was not a trick, it is due diligence.....and find that it alleviates allot of problems. You can use these cows to get any end product that you wish to make........these are lifetime decisions and it is going to take time and the more you jump around, the longer it will take.

Another observation that I made at Red Lodge was that all of you folks from the Southeast had problems with heat on your cattle. My thought is that I would not fight a black hide; I would find and make a maternal line of white hided cattle.....

From black to white we tend to go with no "in between". While color may help, I think we all know that the functional type is much more important. Bob H also said "when I asked Larry how much Inbred regression he sees when he uses multiple sires and his answer was that it has flat lined for now."......which is due to my selection criterion in order to sustain current acceptance (marketability). We all use multiple sires but not necessarily in the same pasture at the same time. Firstly, I want to reiterate that phenotypic performance selection seems to self govern the degree of inbreeding regression.....And secondly, until evaluation, I don't know if the shaggy brown cow is shaggy because of natural epistatic conditions (gene shutdowns) within the genome, or a matching of "detrimental holes in the two sheets of paper", or both.

So Kent, in regard to your questions based solely on the picture of her two year old daughter and the fact that her daughter settled on first service AI, it suggests to me that it is the former rather than the latter.....one of nature's automatic population control mechanisms. I don't know how that works, so, Mike would certainly be fishing for a phenotypic miracle if he could successfully mate Nubbin back to his mom before he is thoroughly evaluated either over a specific or a randomized populaton......little doubt the offspring of that mating would be more prepotent, but prepotent for what? But, most of us like to fish hoping to catch that big one : )

I like Bob Howards words, "IT IS DUE DILIGENCE". It would be interesting to see the results of mating the "inbred nubbins" of MS mated to the "inbred nubbins" of Outside the Box for complementarity.....surely they were initially inbred because of the visual qualities expressed by some of their ancestry, so I would not necessarily be surprised at the results of the "restoration process". It seems the only way to measure any positive progress made by inbreeding is to measure the "restoration" along with any non-additive illusionary benefits of heterosis.....but, then the next question is always now what do we do with "it"? Inbreeding is just a tool to reduce the variables of selection quicker.

So, along this line of thought relative to linebreeding/inbreeding the very "best" and getting the very "worst", during our discussions at the RL gathering, someone asked if I would use the bull "Clark of Wye" after Eddie Draper told everyone Clark always fell over backwards from mounting while being collected...... they have semen in storage on him but Eddie says the UMF herd has never used any. Lest we can only breed AI like the large breasted turkey breeders do, most commercial beef cow herds need to be functionally reproductive under natural conditions, whatever that means. I would like to offer just as an example from a 70 year old herd with factual public history learning from our selection directions using Clark's pedigree taken from the "business breed's records"...... and tell the story behind him: Since old men can't do much anymore, our favorite pastime is to tell stories, so perhaps this example will also help Morgan Hartman better understand why I formed the opinion that we need both reproduction (maternal) and production (paternal) types of seedstock to improve beef production, period.



Clark of Wye Umf 6116Reg: AAA 10916527
Bull
Birth Date: 02/18/1987 Tattoo: 6116

Parentage: SNP
Genomic: IG384

Breeder: 371945 - Univ of Maryland Fdn Inc, Queenstown MD

Owner(s): 371945 - Univ of Maryland Fdn Inc, Queenstown MD




............................. Lundell of Wye AAA #9635771
............. Landrover of Wye Umf 5234 AAA 10319331
............................ Lavonne of Wye AAA #6754980
Landark of Wye Umf 5766 AAA 10635360
............................ Pastor of Wye AAA 6418155
............ Loanda of Wye (Lundell's dam) AAA 7226501
........................... Loania of Wye AAA 6418011

........................... Lundell of Wye AAA #9635771
........... Landrover of Wye Umf 5234 AAA 10319331
.......................... Lavonne of Wye AAA #6754980
Clova of Wye Umf 5638 AAA 10635257
......................... Lundell of Wye AAA #9635771
...........Clova of Wye Umf 5275 AAA #10319328
......................... Candida of Wye AAA 6026206



Lundell was born in 1980 during the beginning of my transition years and I was one of eight others with whom Dick Beck established a purchase value at $250,000.00, my share of 1/8 of 1/2 of the bull cost me $9,375.00....surely a bull that couldn't miss the target, the best of the best. Clark was born 6 years later, one of Dwight's sincere efforts to restore the maternal values which had been declining in the Wye herd, by concentrating the PRODUCTION and overall goodness of Lundell's dam and ancestry, so named out of his admiration and respect of Mr. K. A. Clark......J.B. Lingle's cohort during the importation of those pure Scottish Angus bulls. While hindsight can be 20/20, Clark was created by projected pedigree merit. Six years was hardly long enough to actually evaluate Lundell's maternal attributes, note that this common ancestor was already back in the third generation. This was one of the lessons I learned that so often haste makes waste.

However, there was also a special bull calf born in 1979, so appropriately named Legacy of Wye, who was sired by Lucan of Wye, another top performer also produced by Lundell's dam. I think Eddie could reaffirm that Legacy never left any worthwhile remants in the Wye herd. And today I don't have any remnants of Lundell or Lucan left in the herd, even after naming one of the "best" sons a derivative of my own name....."Shoshone Laurent" who was out of my high producing Lass cows.....and after the failure of "Shoshone Laredo", a Midland tested high performance bull leased to ABS, I later became skeptical about naming bulls after myself for fear of it predicting their suredom of maternal failure. I've observed that most of the "top" performing bulls tend to come from good, smaller productive cows.

I doubt anyone has made more selection errors than I have, suffering from all my high expectations, which is so common among registered breeders. Yet we persist, so when LARkota (not an alias for me & Brian) posted that Mr. Jim Wilson told him that "all them semen pushers should be jailed for what they have done to the American cow herd.", rather than try to "straighten out" Jim L, I would rather think that "they" have just been fullfilling a demand for those of us who have an ID ten T-post problem......our time would be better spent in rehabilitating those of us who just can't seem to get over this common problem......free help is available at Jack's clinic near Miles City ......only those younger than 50 qualify for entrance, which is better explained by a blue sky email I received the other day:

As we "Silver Surfers" (older folks on the Internet) know, sometimes we have trouble with our computers handicapped by our inability to teach an old dog new tricks.

I had a problem yesterday, so I called Eric , the eleven year old next door, whose bedroom looks like Mission Control and asked him to come over .

Eric clicked a couple of buttons and solved the proble m .

As he was walking away, I called after him, 'So, what was wr on g?

He replied, 'It was an “ID ten T err o r”.

I didn't want to appear stupid, but nonetheless inqu i red,

'An, ID ten T error? What's that? In case I need to fix it a g ain.'

Eric grinned.... 'Haven't you ever heard of an ID ten T error b efore?

'No,' I r eplied.

'Write it down,' he said, 'and I think you'll figure it out.'


So I w rot e it dow n.

ID10T


I used to like Eric , that little shit.

I wouldn't mind if he's a little shit, I'd love to have him live in my house!

What's in a name.....well, I once had a bull named Shoshone Eric, a littler sh*t born in 1983 who clicked a couple more buttons in my brain to help me solve my own ID ten T- post problems......and Dennis just happens to have a wife named Erica who also knows how to click the right buttons..... so I had to laugh when Dennis recently wrote Mike and said, "......Thanks for posting a wonderful picture of Erica. This ranch should actually be called the Spirit of Erica ranch. I'm just her Japanese geneticist/hired man.." Mr. Falloon's geneticist is Chinese with deep black eyes who could see the light, but not what type it would be at the end of the curving tunnel : ).

So here we are Kent trying to find answers to how ugly can produce pretty and I end up describing how pretty can produce ugly. We don't need to know precisely how it works, we only need to know the cause and effect. Please know that Mike was pleasantly surprised when that littler "Eric" bull sired "Felix" born 10 years later in 1993 - out of Encore's dam from natural service and most of you here know the rest of Mike's story. So, in this land of bobble heads using the extremes of both ends of the distributions, where close bred nubbins tend to breed up from what they are, and beautiful individuals tend to breed down from what they are, is it any wonder that my herd is "flat lined" for now by using multiple sire pastures.....the only difference is just that the herd has smaller zigs and zags than it had before.

Dennis has noticed that the individuals in the Horse Butte antelope herd don't keep getting larger or smaller but stay in TUNE with their environment........I sometimes call that "stablization", if what you see is what you get. In the bobble head business we measure differences, not sameness; we measure output, not input; we measure ratios and half our herd is always below average, there don't seem to be many average cattle and so it goes with human comparisons..

So, I kinda like the nickname of MS's "Longhorn type" Charolais white cow "Toony" and especially the unique and likeable look on her face in the picture ......there you go for you southeast guys concerned about heat.....I'd bet she doesn't have the heat and coming in heat problems of the fattest ones.....so Kent, I hope these things I've mentioned give us enough to reinvigorate the discussion, and where will that leave us while looking for answers in all the right places ?

LL in the vicinity of being back in the Cowley saddle again watching my skinny oversexed young bulls ride each other, stuck in between a R & HP still trying to click on the right buttons so people like Bob H can use these bulls to produce contented functional cows who can produce any kind of product they want from them......so much easier...... as he's said before, it's not rocket science, just simply "mate the boys to the girls to get little ones", no tricks or fanfare, just due diligence.

That was some wonderful thought's, I enjoyed every word. Just one request can I rent the little shit I need some help on this computer bad.

LL Quote "I've observed that most of the "top" performing bulls tend to come from good, smaller productive cows."

Just to clarify in this context you are talking bulls that had good personal performance but subsequently dissapointed with their progeny? If I understood that right why do you suppose that would be? If a cow is physically small when you know her genetics (those of her ancestors) indicate a larger animal maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that her calves wean large. But why would that negatively affect the maternal performance of her offspring? There often seems an attraction by the breeder to a small cow that produces well - but are we deluding ourselves that we are getting "more from less" by this means? Is this category of cow more suited to a "production" role than a "parent stock" role? If so why?

Grassfarmer, In the vicinity of too tired to think straight.

What if the smaller cow produces average, uniform and useful bulls? Is this just a shift back to average?

Grassfarmer wrote:

LL Quote "I've observed that most of the "top" performing bulls tend to come from good, smaller productive cows."

Just to clarify in this context you are talking bulls that had good personal performance but subsequently dissapointed with their progeny? If I understood that right why do you suppose that would be? If a cow is physically small when you know her genetics (those of her ancestors) indicate a larger animal maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that her calves wean large. But why would that negatively affect the maternal performance of her offspring? There often seems an attraction by the breeder to a small cow that produces well - but are we deluding ourselves that we are getting "more from less" by this means? Is this category of cow more suited to a "production" role than a "parent stock" role? If so why?

Grassfarmer, In the vicinity of too tired to think straight.
Eddie M wrote:

What if the smaller cow produces average, uniform and useful bulls? Is this just a shift back to average?

"....to tired to think straight".....I've heard that the brain uses ten times the energy thinking than doing so I wish I could answer these questions in a simple and concise manner.......but I can't

When I said I've observed that M O S T of the "top" performing bulls T E N D to come from good, smaller productive cows, perhaps I should have added "rather than the bigger ones". This is what I so often observed which likely resulted from the distributions during our ever changing selection directions, certainly there are exceptions to this tendency. Bonsma's extensive observations also cautioned us about the use of the highest "performers" of both sexes, particularly about the negative effect of obesity on reproduction. History is full of examples, I have previously portrayed a few of them from my herd, Wye and Pinebank, I could present many more. I have my own unsubstantiated theories why these "imbalances" happen, but it was the compilation of all my observations within or out of my herd that stimulated my evolvement towards the TruLine concept.

If you or others have not experienced the unintended consequences of selection (trait relationships and genetic trade-offs as form follows functional selection), these are subtle reactions not immediately recognized due to natural distributions.......so I can understand why some of my comments might seem perplexing. Believe it or not, the core of the continuous cycles of change in the beef industry is the excessiveness of the mainstream registered business.....and those same ambitions have led to the formation of composites......a short time for unsustainable elation and a long time of disappointing delusions. It's said that the universe is continually expanding and so are the different types of cattle.....we see how some things become extinct as new things are born.

When you mentioned delusions......delusions of grandeur is getting "more from less" but it involves a battery of positive and negatives, much more than just a small cow that produces big calves. In a population, the cow is not only "production" and "parent" stock, she is metaphorically a "voltage regulator" One of the more difficult things for me to decide was how much current or cow do I want and of course that hinges on how much energy we are willing to put into her. When we are a seedstock supplier, that difficulty is compounded by not knowing how much a user is willing to put into them. While AAA has tried to identify and label them accordingly based on some broad average of comparisons, plus or minus, these labels are largely ignored as we search trying to get something for nothing..

Getting something for nothing is always when the BS hits the fan again. I've done many numerical exercises on groups of similar cattle supplemented by the vast amount of available research data. I finally concluded that size and production levels have little economic impact, that it is more of a matter of personal preference.....it is how we utilize these differences that is of economic importantance.....thusly producing "seedless fruit" before we lose what we gained. To get "more from less", it actually is just another trade off, the commercial producers get more and the registered people get less than they do now

So Grassfarmer, all these things keep our head spinning until we get so tired, we just go off and do our own thing......how important are cows in the grand schemes of life anyway So glad to have met you during the KC Gathering, "Mr. Grassfarmer" , I wish you the best in your endeavors.

LL in the vicinity of just trying to enjoy life accepting what is ..... is, and whatever can be.....will be, whether I'm here to help.....or not.

Thank you Larry, I'm still digesting your reply being the slow thinker I am. It was a real pleasure to meet you too and I really appreciate you taking the time to share your knowledge and experiences both in person and on KC.
Iain

It looks like my stab at it worked thank you again. Bob H

Quote :

Six years was hardly long enough to actually evaluate Lundell's maternal attributes, note that this common ancestor was already back in the third generation. This was one of the lessons I learned that so often haste makes waste.

how much forethought went into making Balboa? years, or spontaneous..in between? what did you not like about Laurent daughters...I thought they were sure ok here...

ok, so it seems know that you can`t inbreed Father/Lundell etc and get acceptable phenotype in the offspring...but don`t you think, that Wye, as a research institution would do us all a benefit if they used a few straws of Clark semen...just to see...isn`t that what we often do at our own expense?
just because the inbred offspring are poor phenotypically, does that mean they will not outcross ok?

part of my reference is below...Unwanted`s dam seems prepotent for the type I want...
two year old springing ddaughter

three year old with calf


BUTTTTTTT, bred back to herself, as close as I can get anyways, things might go to heck in a hurry...because of gene alignment not being complimentary? just stabbing in the dark...you can stab back...

If a bull gets the majority of his x chromozones from his dam would you have a higher chance of replicating the dam if you bred son back to mother?

I think all of a bull's x chromosomes come from the dam. And no matter the inbreeding, I'm pretty sure a bull will have only one x chromosome per cell, always from his mom.

I think.

Mike asked:

how much forethought went into making Balboa? years, or spontaneous..in between? what did you not like about Laurent daughters.....I thought they were sure ok here...

"How much" ......MANY YEARS, watching many bulls and cows come and go making their splashes each creating their own waves in circular directions that soon disappear in the imaginary sea of tranquility. "Forethought into making Balboa"......how do we cause that random half of the genotype to be more consistent to give us the preferred type more often; what useful type is economically sustainable...nearly any type is sustainable at a price; and finally from generation to generation, most important is how do we transfer that type intact to the commercial beef producer? Whew, this takes alot of deep thinking over the years to simplify the complex questions.

Obviously, like most Balboa was an experimental bull, who was my first step going down this road filled with obstacles, some foreseen, most not yet known. It was not a matter of which comes first, the chicken or the egg nor which is more important, the male or the female....... one cannot exist without the other. So when talking about the importance of a bull, I had to laugh when Gavin jokingly said a cow is nothing more than an incubator......but don't tell that to your mother, wife or daughter. We often talk about how we must work with Mother Nature, providing parental stock without reference to sex......in the female gender, maternal motherhood is more about Mother Nurture .

In my previous posts I've used individual animals as examples of my zigs and zags trying to establish a useful maternal type......while populations consist of individuals, I am more interested in the population as a whole, and that is why I became so interested in Gavin Falloon's similar approach....when 41/97 died, he stated the bull was just another individual who helped move the population towards his objective. So when you asked about an individual, what I "did not like about Laurent daughters..I thought they were sure ok here...", without going into specific details, most importantly was the fact that they deviated somewhat from my primary long term objective. It is kind of like the topic "Feet by Dennis Voss" where it is an attempt to establish a type of preferred foot structure without disrupting too much else, admittedly a time consuming yet admirable process. I suppose that is what most of us all try to do, but few are successful without disrupting "something else", fixing one thing while bringing in two more things to fix later on.

After all is said and done, we are in the "beef" business, and I had to make the choice of whether I wanted a functional maternal type who's one half of her genetic contribution to the production of "beef" enhanced either quality.... or quantity enmasse.....or some compromise in between........ involving many compatible traits while still learning to avoid many disruptive ones.....and in the meantime I got my turn to be the old man who got a little wiser too late.

I would like everyone to consider the time frame in 1984 when Laurent was born and the movement of the industry at that time towards leaner, faster growing, bigger beef animals. That was back before the advent of CAB and carcass EPD's. For those who prefer data, subjective or not, you can look up the downward generational trend of carcass quality on Laurent's AAA pedigree values (#10564700). As of now, compared to his maternal grandmother, his $G dropped from 16.77 to 5.95 and his $QG droppped from 15.47 to 1.66.......compared to Balboa's $G of 29.08 and $QG of 21.69. I don't know how significant these numbers are to any of you, but they do indicate a subtle trend and this was one of my major reasons for evaluating carcass merits along with other differences in the smaller, medium and larger framed individual bulls of similar ancestry from the distributions during the 80's.......which incidently coincided with the general trends of the breed during that era.

And of course, too much emphasis on carcass values will disrupt other essential values I am often amused that we want cattle that are rough and tuff survivors in any environment and yet we want them to eat "tender and tasty". So Mike, I hope this provides you with some partial answers to your questions.....I'm glad the Laurent daughters were "OK" for you, I just didn't want to compound my zigs or zags in the distributions since I've been told a straight line is the shortest distance between two points....... which reminded me of Tom B's remarks sometime back last fall about the breeds many "crossroads", or my putting the Aberdeen back into Angus when I'm still trying to figure out what year it was that we lost "Aberdeen".

I do prefer driving down a straight flat road where I can see for miles ahead in the daylight rather than the twisting and winding up and down hilly road that Tom D. drove for me from Fishtail back to Red Lodge, in the dark never knowing what lurked ahead. I want to thank Tom and Rod, both very careful drivers and I also want to thank you Mike for all you do and especially how you posted Kendra's pictures and comments under the topic of "Ben's place, human perspectives"..... being teachers these two "K"s, Kendra and Kristina (Mrs. Sauer), have one of the most responsible occupations in the world and to brighten our days, their smiles are priceless assets.....just what Mr. Sauer needed.....and I did find out Mean Spirit isn't mean at all.......tis a mystery how in the world all these nice bright people appeared out of the dark side of Keeneys Corner.....kinda like poor animals producing good ones, just Nature preserving a balance, I guess

LL in the vicinity of KC or KK turning frowning attitudes into smiles ..... my wish that everyone leave the KC Gathering happy and content in their own circumstances was granted ...... overwhelmingly!

On this very day in 1999 a skinny ignorant young man took his first tiny steps into the cattle business. In this short amount of time I watched my herd grow faster then I ever dreamed only to watch it fall to nothing in the blink of an eye. This web site has opened my mind in the little time I have been here more then I thought possible. I have this same feeling everytime I lay down at night. Inspired is the best way to describe it. Recently Double B brought some of his cows and one of Mikes bulls here. The calves out of the bull are right up my alley and I now see, even if its just a glimpse, of what your trying to do. I guess my light bulb has really came on. I just wanted to say thanks for lighting a fire under my butt once again. It gets old feeling sorry for yourself. I wish I could teach you all golf like you share your thoughts here. Tom D was one of the first folks I ever spoke to on here. He sent my mind a spinning on that phone call and I guess its never quit. Just sped up. I hope to one day talk with all of you and pick your brains.

All the neighbors are gossiping and I wont give them a straight answer yet. They want to know what those black cattle are that showed up at my place. And boy those calves sure are nice. Everytime they ask I just think about a little quote from a movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQKKj_qeOBQ&feature=related

trevorgreycattleco wrote:

On this very day in 1999 a skinny ignorant young man took his first tiny steps into the cattle business. In this short amount of time I watched my herd grow faster then I ever dreamed only to watch it fall to nothing in the blink of an eye. This web site has opened my mind in the little time I have been here more then I thought possible. I have this same feeling everytime I lay down at night. Inspired is the best way to describe it. Recently Double B brought some of his cows and one of Mikes bulls here. The calves out of the bull are right up my alley and I now see, even if its just a glimpse, of what your trying to do. I guess my light bulb has really came on. I just wanted to say thanks for lighting a fire under my butt once again. It gets old feeling sorry for yourself. I wish I could teach you all golf like you share your thoughts here. Tom D was one of the first folks I ever spoke to on here. He sent my mind a spinning on that phone call and I guess its never quit. Just sped up. I hope to one day talk with all of you and pick your brains.

All the neighbors are gossiping and I wont give them a straight answer yet. They want to know what those black cattle are that showed up at my place. And boy those calves sure are nice. Everytime they ask I just think about a little quote from a movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQKKj_qeOBQ&feature=related

Welcome back Brock

today Oct 7, just so happens to be the one year anniversary of this topic...21,664 views, or about 60 per day...

Stay hungry Larry...and stay foolish

MK previously wrote:

twas thinking the other day, what and how a cattleman breeds is his private business, but when he sells it publicly, it becomes everyone`s business -

"..........I'm searching though I don't succeed
breed stability, there's a growing need
If all is looks, there's no place for beginning
All that's left is an unhappy ending........."
MK later wrote:

today Oct 7, just so happens to be the one year anniversary of this topic...21,664 views, or about 60 per day...
Stay hungry Larry...and stay foolish

When you tell me to "stay foolish", I hope you are referring to its synonym of "simple" rather than its more common usage of being stupid or ridiculous. As I've learned from the fooleries on KC for a year now, I want to thank you Mike for inspiring the topics expounding on the foolishness in this business. My foolhardy nature is a search to succeed with a foolproof plan, so here is my anniversary post for those who thrive on fool's gold who choose to live in a fool's paradise

First in regards to the KC topic "Larry's writings", the other day by way of mail from Brian, I received a few copies of the "book" you two renegades put together; and now that they've been sold publicly, I would like everyone to know the "shoshone collection" is nothing more than a partial chronicle of my trials and tribulations while "searching though I don't succeed".......perhaps it might have been more appropriately entitled "What Not to Do"........Incidently, there was no invoice or note in the box, so I wondered if they were my share of the royalties . And in regards to that part of your depressing poem, "all that's left is an unhappy ending", I would rather think that "there are no endings, only new beginnings" during the ordinary events in each of our own personal lives.

Ordinary events and uninteresting trivia....our silage chopping happily "ended" the last day of Sept (our winter grass for the cattle) and it was one of the warmer and most pleasant Septembers I can recall. The "beginning" of a new beet harvest has been delayed because of the above normal temperatures, the beets won't store in large piles until their root temperatures are below 55 degrees.....but the weather has changed dramatically. To help OT keep us current on local conditions, last Thursday it rained alot all night and continued thru the next day..... the surrounding mountains including Ben's Pryor's are white with new snow. This will cause another delay and a much more difficult muddy struggle to get the sugarbeets harvested in this sticky, heavy clay soil before ole man winter sets in. So during this interim peiod, last Sunday afternoon Betty and I went to Red Lodge to check on the cattle, I haven't been up to check on them for over a month, which is about normal ......and the good news is that I haven't heard any complaints from the neighbors up there yet that my cattle were out on the road or somewhere where they shouldn't be, which is a pleasant deviation from the normal.

I'm glad Bootheel has now decided he prefers to describe things as "medium" rather than "average", which is about as obscure as "normal". Last Sunday was not one of my more busier normal days, rather it was more like a normal day for MK . We all have our good and not so good days and while driving thru the cows on my Gator putting out some salt blocks, I began thinking about the content of some of the more recent comments on KC and a few private emails from people involved with a few of the cattle who just happened by circumstances to be born here, thus carrying the "shoshone" prefix. If selling them publicly becomes everyone's business in the traditional mainstream of things, then what and how I breed these cattle is no longer my private business. I also thought about what Keeney Angus, Horse Butte and others have done with some of these so called "shoshone cattle", some of them seemed good at the time and some turned out not to be so good......which seems "normal'. Culling the bad and ugly..... I thought about how lucky I have been that there are a few other people like Dennis and Mike who have actually paid me with real money to help do my evaluation work for me.

Some people are like that...... I vividly recalled a visit from John Dockweiler back in the forepart of a different September in 2003. I had met John at Red Lodge, he had been walking thru the cattle prior to my arrival, it was snowing and his papers with ear tag numbers were getting wet. That was another decisive "new beginning" for JAD Angus when John purchased a group of "shoshone cows".that he had selected. While our seasonal weather patterns may differ year by year, I thought about how my cattle remain about the same as when John was here, the newer generations are simply a continuum of the old.....no "measureable progress" at all.... some would call this stagnation since I'm foolishly not trying to make the good ones better, but merely trying to make the not so good ones be more like the good ones......and that too is a universal struggle which some might call sustainability.

Now eight years later, when I reviewed John's JAD Angus public web page this Sunday morning, my mind became fixated on John's blog message with new descriptions about his experiences with those "shoshone cattle", wherein he wrote: ..... "There is a softness throughout in these cows. In their eyes, in their hair coats, in their skeletal design; they are soft like a white tail doe.......She is soft in her demeanor also, kind, gentle, nurturing. She is the essence of maternal. Does it matter? Does it contribute to ranch profitability? Is it highly heritable? I guess everyone has to answer these questions for themselves. I will tell you that I like it and I like range calving cows with these characteristics.....".

Now we all know that not everyone likes "soft cattle" or their skeletal design or type.....and John has told me a few things about his struggles with the what's and how's of his breeding directions during the renewal processes.....John holds onto the strong belief in maintaining public registration papers rather than private, I suppose in order to provide some sort of legitimacy to his breeding directions, which are of course then subjected to open public scrutiny. When John guesses that everyone has to answer these questions for themselves, ultimately the public determines their comparative monetary value.

This year I am 77 and I got tired. I got tired of trying to breed cattle that please everyone for every reason. I got tired of all the increasing demand for more and more trait by trait individual measures . I got tired of all the other literally useless rules and regulations. I got tired of the ever changing correctional selection directions. I got tired of all the improbable high expectations seeking non-renewable perfection. And boy oh boy, did I ever get tired of people measuring "success" by some monetary value.....and I got tired of lots of other things too numerous to mention .

Now as a tired old man, it took a lifetime to learn that the more important things in life are priceless. Separating the wheat from the trash, if there's a growing need for stability , I get immeasureable satisfaction from greater understanding in order to simplify the complexity of genetics. For example, on John's web page when I looked at the cow pictured below taken July 4, 2011, I immediately recognized my preferred characteristics she displayed from the ancestry including the trivial "soft brownish" tone between the calf's rear legs rather than being as "jet black as a crow".......and I can become very excited watching how the simple transfer of genes from generation to generation are repeated when selection fixes certain positive traits at an increased rate or frequency.



For me, this picture is a priceless event when I look at the phenotypic replication of the "softness" of John's cow's as she displays her sire's dam and other closely related relatives who just happened to graze in my pastures. And when I saw the picture John posted of the cow shown below that he recently purchased from Gary Funk, who for 30 years has been a user of some of the cattle under my custody, I got another of my priceless rewards.....especially since while at Red Lodge last Sunday, I just happened to bump into cow #6113, the dam of the sire of John's new cow who is a phenotypic "clone" of the 6113 cow.....and if I had Mike's camera, I could've posted it here as proof for DF . So thank you John for giving me a coupla more priceless gifts raised in different environments.



And from Mike's handy camera, last week he sent me the pictures shown below of the #2966 cow born in 2000 and purchased from me last winter, her recent calf and one of her sons that he purchased at a very nominal price a few years ago.....another example where he pays me to do my evaluation work for me.......I kinda like these arrangements .



2966



the orginal 2966x6343 Frank son



her calf..maybe by Porter


The 2966 cow just happens to be a "phenotypic clone" of her two maternal greatgrandams, 6345 and 2944 (typical paternal half sisters) and at first glance, I thought the picture Mike took of her calf born this year in KY was a reversed photo of the calf from John's Shoshone Prudence 6157 that I took born back in 2001 (shown below). We all know I don't create these cattle, all I merely do is select and concentrate my preferred genetic arrangements and it simply increases the heritability of the gene frequencies for their specific characteristics without all the other things we're supposed to do. I cannot measure how much these kind of cattle can contribute to any ranch profitability but I doubt they will be the cause of any ranch going broke.



So, the primary purpose of this anniversary post is just to provide a little more fodder for contemplation while waiting for the beet fields to dry out.

LL in the vicinity of staying foolish......now mentally tired and going to bed to dream about some more of my ongoing priceless projects......

Larry Leonhardt wrote:

We all know I don't create these cattle, all I merely do is select and concentrate my preferred genetic arrangements and it simply increases the heritability of the gene frequencies for their specific characteristics without all the other things we're supposed to do. I cannot measure how much these kind of cattle can contribute to any ranch profitability but I doubt they will be the cause of any ranch going broke.

Priceless. Absolutley priceless. Quotes like this keep me going. It really is a simple thing and at the end of the day this is all I wish to be. It truly is enough for me. Thanks Larry

Jack in the vicinity of contentment.