Jim hits the bottle

It is better for us to think you're drunk than to know you're stupid


On the Charolais , we have only one cow left and she is bred angus this year. There is good in the breed but they have a lot more problems than the angus do . ie big birth wts, harder calving, less vigor at birth in cold weather . They are also harder to sell in our program bringing on average about 1000 per head less at our sale. We dont push for maximum gains in our bull test and thus the charolais bulls are routinely beaten for gain by our top angus calves. For those reasons and more we are probably going to be out of the charolais cattle in total in a year or two.

This comes at a time when I was just thinking seriously about the "white breed" Mean Spirit, Please help me. DV, teetering

Dr. Voss, I'm shocked to imagine that you'd go wobbly on the advice of a fence post wielding Iowegian. Shocked.

Your Charolais adventure should be ok. Rooster has become a little irritating lately, being a teenager and all, and being pulled out of the spring calvers for a couple months, and still several weeks away from joining up with the fall calvers for a while, and hanging out with two spring weaned bulls and a yearling steer simply does not suit him. But I am confidant that this too shall pass.

Part of his rambunctiousness is no doubt due to his excitement about Montana. Always asking lots of questions-- how big is the sky there? Is it horse butte or is it saddle butte? Does TomD really live under the bridge, and if so, is it scary when he jumps out? Where the he'll do the pumpkins come from? Crazy stuff like that. Kids.

Rooster will be fine. I wont say trouble-free. I won't say it, but you know what I mean. No big dumb calves from his daddy, momma a good old girl. And you'll get plenty of performance, sez the Charolais association. Or as they told me in haiku form, a newly adopted form of communication for the association:

Rooster will be fine
Top five percent weaning weight
But easy calving.

MS, patiently reassuring.

MS,
As always very reassuring. Going from black to white is a very big shock for a former bigshot Angus breeder turned peon commercial guy who took his ball and went home, burned all of his papers, didn't even have a dispersion, didn't share with the baby Shoshonis...just took his ball and went home. Oh my God, what's it going to be like when Rooster breeds pure Shoshone cows that used to have papers? 50% of the rarity out the freaking window.

DV in the vicinity of being a phoney badass

Actually Dr. Voss: as a percentage of the total cattle industry, those grey calves will be very rare, half Shoshone; Half Spirit, I think you would be the only source for that combo.