Fescue Fungus Resistant Angus Cattle

11/03/2026

“They do not want straight sided sheep…” Lynn Fahrmeier

They do care; they do not want to buy crap lambs, like some people think…” David Fisher

(David Fisher) “…didn’t want to just be a “price taker”

Source: 2026 ALB convention panel discussion

These are sheep producers and sheep industry leaders. It is hard to avoid what they are saying. They are sheep businessmen and businesswomen. They are interested in the reputation of the sheep products produced in the USA. They discussed imports, various markets, sales strategies, sheep improvement, competition from imported lamb…

St. Croix sheep breeders: It is hard to avoid what they are saying. Let’s flesh this out a bit for our breed.
• Are your sheep something that you are proud to sell as associated with your name?
• Do you just have sheep to eat lamb or want to raise a few? Do you get adequate meat from each of your lambs to make it worth the effort and the cost?
• Do you just dump sheep on the market and hope that they sell OK?
• Do you sell as many registered sheep as possible, regardless of quality, to try to break even or just try to not lose too much money?
• Do you have happy repeat customers, especially the commercial customers?
• Are your sheep valuable because of you own them, because of the famous pedigrees or are they really good functioning sheep that yield acceptable carcasses?

The St. Croix Breed started in the 20th century and efforts were made to preserve the new breed by getting as many new flocks established as possible. Folks were concerned to cull too many because the numbers were few. I understand that mindset. There was the constantly repeated quote showing the good trait of the breed ; “parasite resistance”. I call this type of startup a group or a breed of unimproved sheep. I tend to think that is the correct thing to say.

We are now in the 21st century. What progress has the St. Croix breed made beyond the early years?

#1 -Are we still able to truthfully say “parasite resistant”? Where is the proof? In the 80’s and 90’s during the time of breed expansion, it was often said that lambs required deworming one time. It was accepted. It created some St. Croix sheep that were not really resistant. If you test your sheep you will find out that the allowances in the past made the breed a bit weaker overall. Again, the phrase “unimproved breed”.

#2 – Do you have a clue as to the average carcass yield of your lambs? The average lamb in the USA is assumed to produce 50% of the live weight in the carcass. Debone that carcass and the amount of lamb meat is less. Do you palpate the loins and thighs of your lambs to have any idea of muscle thickness? Do you use scales to check periodic gains in total weight?

That 2nd quote at the start was speaking of ethnic buyers. They have bought and slaughtered sheep before. They are not stupid. They can tell more about your lambs than you can if you have not made any efforts to improve your sheep.

#3 – Price differential: March 4, 2026 Mt. Hope Auction, Mt. Hope, OH – The report was on Facebook today.

Lambs:
Prime 40-59 pounds $4.80 -5.27 (per pound)
Choice 40-59 pounds $4.40 – 4.77
_____* 40-59 pounds $3.90 – 4.37
*non-descript because they were not so good. These were “price take sheep”.
Reference from above: (David Fisher) “…didn’t want to just be a “price taker”

$0.90/pound difference from bottom to top. That is a difference of $36 to $53.10 per lamb. If you have twins from a ewe, that is a difference of $72 to over $106 per ewe. That is not chicken feed.

The St. Croix breed needs to modernize into an improved breed, a breed of predictable sheep and a meat sheep breed that actually produces meat and not just in a small % of the flocks in the USA. Without improvement, breed wide, you are merely a price taker: “They do not want straight sided sheep…” Lynn Fahrmeier

If you are doing nothing to improve your flock, you are not fooling buyers and consumers. You are fooling yourself.

07/03/2026

If you are looking in multiple sale catalogs to find the one outstanding animal,

If you are looking at a calf crop to find the one suitable bull or heifer,

If you think that one day a closed herd will produce one great animal to restore the reputation of the herd,
or
If you seek out the goodie of a herd by finding one bull or cow with all EPDs that will knock your socks off,

You are wasting your time chasing outliers that will always either breed freaks of their genetic base or will breed back to the center of the herds EPDs to be a lackluster trial.

19/02/2026

It Isn't Enough to Care and to Try

One of the most profound statements I have read in a long time. We have a lot of folks who think that running the first lap of a 4 lap race is enough. That includes thinking about the race, getting the right equipment and clothing, showing up, warming up and starting the race. Then they just fall out to never finish. Where did they go wrong? They cared, they tried and yet they didn’t do all that was necessary to finish or succeed.

Most registered Angus herds, it has been said, last 7 years. They make a lap or maybe two and fall out. The base problem: the cattle fall out.

There are distractions – a lot of them. Take fads for example. Beef cattle went from belt buckle type to monsters of the frame race, to moderated type via corrector bulls, to high marbling, to high milk and now we have the breeders of freaks today racing to make the carcasses larger and larger by using the bulls of extreme MW (mature weight) and MH (mature height). I perused several sale catalogs of well-known Angus herds in recent weeks. The chase is on to talk all of the right stuff (great birthweights, great cows, great hooves and structure, great hair, great carcass, great ___ (whatever they have a word to use) but the numbers don’t tell all of that in the EPDs and the whole deal is that the magnificent herd sires, owned or used by AI, are the high growth type into maturity.

We went through another fad one time with curvebenders. I think this latest effort probably includes the resurrection of curvebenders but is mainly focused on the high late growth type outliers of any sort.

There have been thousands of words used and hundreds of articles written about maternal herds and what they are. Another pile of articles have been written about what is the right thing for cow calf producers. Add in some biases towards small framed cattle, some influence from packers for “bigger is better” and everybody in-between will espouse what is the best for a cow herd, commercial producers and the base individuals in the industry who make it happen: produce calves. The winner EVERY time: the environment. Never forget that the environment dictates the type of cow that will succeed.

Let’s be very clear: maternal cows are not just the cows that are thinner muscled, are smaller, do not produce terminal type bulls and don’t fit the thinking that a top cow looks like a steer or a bull. True maternal cows are a God-send and will make life easier and better. They are NOT the culls from a terminal type herd, they are the selections from a thinking type producer who wants to make his life and his herd better. You either understand this or you are brainwashed. You have to select for and breed them. They are the backbone of the industry.

I have come to my own conclusion. A focus only on the next year’s crop of calves blinds the producers. They will use the wrong bulls, fall prey to great expectations from new and better (fad) bulls and then regret the choices after a generation or two in the cow herd. If we want to know what to do to support our herds in the long haul view, we have to focus on the generations of cattle to come beyond the next generation. We have to know and appreciate the cows behind the bulls that we use. We have to know and appreciate the bulls behind the cows that are our top cut. I’m talking multigenerational cows and the associated bulls. The bulls used today might not be the ones that most would use but they can be the building blocks to improve, stabilize and create generations on down the line that will support the efforts and inputs by producing the easiest keeping cows possible in a given environment.

The huge carcass chase will catch up with the industry – specifically the remaining cow/calf producers. Maybe it already has. We have lost a large part of the US herd and more meat is needed to be imported. Once all of the high growth cows are in place and the herds look like a group of blimps needing feed bunks instead of grazing it will then be the time that the majority realize that the fad was a bad choice. Until then, I’m in the middle of the road and holding on to maternal traits. Let’s see what happens when the fat lady sings.

02/02/2026

A helpful tip

OK guys, you know what’s coming up on the 14th. Get you act together and plan a couple’s night out of the house. Do something that she has been wanting to do. Get out the extension ladder, tell her that you will hold it for her and get out there and get those Christmas decorations off of the house and stuff the inflatables in trash bags to be stored. The biggie – get those icicle lights off of the dripline of the house even if you think that they add something to the sunsets in July. What’s marriage and romance without a little planning and elbow grease?

25/01/2026

For all of the joy riders out on the icy roads - if you start to slide off, please slide to the south side of the highway. I just finished putting up 800' of new fence. Thanks.

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01/01/2026

New Year’s Resolutions

First we need a definition:
New Year’s resolution: (noun)
a. The first official lie of 2026

Why do folks always have to go big on these things and then never get ‘er done? Why can’t reasonable expectations be involved and plans be practical? It puzzles me. I try to be simple so I don’t have very many resolutions but here they are:

1. Exercise a few weeks to participate in the 2026 Winter Olympics.
2. Get a face to face interview with Bigfoot.
3. Ride a go-cart down Mt. Everest.
4. Hike to Hawaii.
5. Exterminate spam.
6. Move some tools around once a week to appear to be working.

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24/12/2025

Uncomfortable

Ever get that feeling? All of us do. What is the cure? Different folks have their ways. But what are the most uncomfortable places for us and what do we do about them? Let’s take a look at ourselves and be honest.

The two most uncomfortable things are silence and simplicity. We pay a lot for noise to void silence. Radios and TVs might not have what you want but you play them anyway just waiting for “your song” or the funny parts of a show. Maybe you need to talk to alleviate your silence. Folks like to get out in the woods to enjoy nature, get away from the rat race and hear the minimal sounds of the woods. But likely 99% of RVs have TV antennas and radios. You can be gone but not gone (from the sound) anywhere you go.

The sounds that amaze me the most are the small cars and pickup trucks rigged up to sound like spaceships hurdling down the road. Such roar and to-do and then a little sedan or a pimped truck rolls by. Or the “thumpers” that you can hear from a mile away with the woofers banging out the base beat. How do all of the screws and bolts stay in place with the vibrations? How do they keep their hearing aids from shaking off of their ears? But you can be assured that there is no Silent Night.

Simplicity is just a buzz word. This season we talk of joys and wish for the ol’ timey Christmas, Thanksgiving of long ago when Ma cooked the possum for the meal or the lean years when gifts were scarce but memories were the best. I remember the year that there were raisins in our stockings and the oddity was that they were still on the stem. Then the eating revealed that they were also SEEDED grapes. Now we know 60 years later that grape seed extract has health benefits! We were ahead of our time crunching on them!

But give us a chance and the annual production of the season has to be bigger and better than ever and you MUST out do last year. Maybe add a few more hundred lights, find more clothes that look like you should be in a comical play or musical and forget the main thing even more than you have in the past. Just what are you celebrating?

You don’t have to be Christian or religious to read on but the thought will go that way. We over produce Christmas and nothing basic is enough. I think you call that either a work’s religion or even a distraction. Just a little more is better. One of the greatest insights I have been given this season is that for every nativity scene, there should be the shadow of the cross going over every one of them. The true celebration of Christmas is being amazed at the timing, the events, the miracles and the blessings that God became God man in the most amazing of ways. As a farmer with sheep, I marvel that the shepherds in their working clothes and odors got the first call and the front seats. The oddity of the magi being distant folks who knew what the local folks missed is not to be missed. And my favorites are Simeon and Anna as two insignificant people to folks around them but honored by God to answer their individual prayers.

As much as we know the awe of Christmas, it is not the end point. It is a point in the road of history. It is not the pinnacle of humankind. The death and resurrection of the Savior is the point. He came to die. He was born to die. But why let that get in the way of overdoing a seasonal celebration?

Simplicity in worship was defined by Christ and is not well accepted and never has been. His definition was to “worship in spirit and truth”. That is bare bones without significance to a location, no value to a red and green sweater, no self-promotion or some great performance of song and action for the entertainment of self or others. That simple definition of true worship is uncomfortable because of both the silence and simplicity. But it puts us right there close to God without works, self-importance, buffers or entertainment to dull the awareness.

Celebrate the real Christmas.

03/12/2025

It’s that time of year…

…to say something seasonal. Being from the south, it is hard to get into the snow songs. We would be more truthful to sing “let it rain, let it rain, let it rain”. The old “over the river and through the woods” is not so timely anymore as they build bridges so that you really can’t see the river very well when you cross over and a lot of the timber has been logged out. Maybe, with our modern road system, we could sing “over the potholes and around another blasted traffic circle” and be most honest. But it is the memories that are the key to many. I do like looking at the rivers and streams and enjoy a beautiful stand of timber, too. Memories are enjoyable, too.

One of the funniest seasonal memories for me was from several years before covid. It was a cold Sunday evening, I got in from the farm after feeding animals and such to suddenly need to go to the local chain pharmacy to get something for Pam. Seems that it was a sinus OTC med or something. In case you do not know me, I am the working farm fashion model for Goodwill and other places that sell used clothing. The cows and sheep don’t care if I am color coordinated or fashionable. So I can have on a blue shirt, a black vest, a red coat, tan pants, an orange stocking cap and any or all can show wear and tear or “cow stains”. It is not a uniform as I am just staying warm.

So I head to town in the dark with my “farm wear” and not the “don we now our gay apparel”. In the last step before I left the house I saw it and grabbed a wad of change just to get rid of it. I get to the store, find the right OTC product and stand in line to pay. A nice looking, well dressed lady was ahead of me. She looked back and I was getting my dollars in four quarters stacked up, ten dimes… When I went to pay, the cashier told me that I owed nothing. The lady ahead of me had paid my bill! She was paying it forward of a guy whom she likely thought was homeless. Now that speaks volumes for my efforts at “dress for success”. But it spoke more of her heart.

She was gone before I could get my change back in my pocket and get in the parking lot. I would have gladly thanked her, repaid her or told her a few cow stories. But it was not meant to be. She had the spirit of Christmas and I just had the look of a one of the despised classes of Jesus’s day – the shepherds.

I have no white snow to show but I can show you a white sheep. Good ol’ R50. I just took this picture today. He represents 20 to 25 years of selection and home breeding. He suits me fine. That’s one of the joys of farming – enjoying what you do and knowing that we are blessed to be able to be a part of it.

Merry Christmas

19/11/2025

The Golden Calf
Most know about the story. The Israelites walked out of Egypt without firing an arrow. They left 100s of years of discrimination, slavery, killing of their male children, harsh conditions and forced labor. They walked out with gifts of gold from the Egyptians who were glad to get them gone because of the actions of God against them from recent plagues.

Finally, freedom for the Israelites, a hope of the promise land and the chance to start again the dreams of the forefathers. Fast forward: Moses on the mountain guarded at the base to keep man and beast away, a terrible cloud, smoke and thunder on top of the mountain so what do the grateful folks do? They revert back to the ways of the Egyptians who had been so cruel to them and made a golden calf to worship. Like a friend used to say, “They were eat up with the dumbs”.

What’s the golden calf today? A high weight black steer. You can call it Angus or act like it is Angus to let it qualify for CAB. Mostly black is OK if it still fits CAB but the goal is bigger and bigger kill weights. Why? #1, it benefits the packers with more pounds processed per hour. #2, feeders make more taking the animals to heavier weights. There is no #3 for cow/calf producers. Focus on heavier calves are going to do reverse economics for them. To get the big calves you go from the historic “Angus, the Maternal Breed” to “Angus, the Terminal Breed”. The cows retained get bigger, eat more and likely breed back less to have shorter productive lives. Sort of a delayed mimicking of the dairy industry with high production and short production lives. Why didn’t that ever cross anyone’s mind?

The goal of CAB was started to sell more Angus bulls to use on other breeds of cows. Now the other breeds have become “Angus” or “CAB” (black hides) whichever you want to call the mainstream goal. Heterosis takes a hit and that was the free lunch for the cow/calf producer. Now we see a multitude of crossbred bull “breeds” selling that have already used up part of the hererosis that was most beneficial to the cow/calf producer with either the bull and cows being different breeds or the crossbred cows being bred to a pure bull of another breed.

What do the “Golden Calf era” Angus look like these days? Big, or as Foghorn Leghorn would say, “Now boy, I said boy, I said BIG” with the blind chase for production EPDs and indices compounding a problem in functions: hooves, legs, fertility, teats, udders and mature weight and height. Many sale catalogs mouth the words “fescue type hair coats” while the HS EPDs can be very high on the same animals. Whatever. The new EPDs will cure all ills, no doubt, or will they? How long will it take and how big will the average Angus cow be when the EPD gurus and mainstream breeders realize that their Golden Calf, the high weight black hided steer, is a manmade and inert idol with no redeeming qualities? Or do they really care about the cow/calf sector? You don’t have to have an answer to know that one.

Idols can be a real problem.

22/10/2025

Successful Farming had an article on global issues. Some highlights:
Beef in 2024 – more was imported than exported
Top importers of US beef in 2024:

S. Korea 21.54%
Japan 18%
China 15.11%
Mexico 12.01%
Canada 8.73%

Other sources say that beef imports surged in 2024 while exports experienced a slight decrease.

From other sources: lamb imported in 2024 was 364.8 million pounds. That makes up 73% of the lamb consumed in the US. That has had a negative impact on domestic values.

And I am supposed to now pitch a fit that another country might import beef to the USA while the national beef groups (and lamb leadership, too) have sat around and not done anything in the past to change things or to try to even the playing field? What if the 5 countries listed decided to stop importing US beef due to protectionism? That would sink the ship. Get real. You are protesting against a person and not against a trade issue.

Put on your big boy pants. The problem is the controlling groups who are supposed to be speaking for beef, lamb… They are just getting paid to be important and to fill a seat.

01/10/2025

“Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.”
― Francis Chan

I think about this pretty often. Like when I read some articles on sheep or cattle, business, sports, social events and such… you know – life! So much that is emphasized or supposedly set in stone is nothing but a passing fancy.

I made the comment a few years ago that teaching kids to raise livestock while being schooled on the economics of farming would be so much better than getting them to merely show animals. That brought on some tart remarks as I expected. We just can’t see the better when we’re used to the common.

In studying some Angus pedigrees recently I was amazed at some select bulls and their great EPDs. Things to start looking about for a practical type breeder include hoof info (angle and claw), hair score and functional traits for cows and heifers. You can skip the cow and heifer part if you are willing to sell all of the calf crop as feedlot animals. But some of the highest priced semen, the most promoted bulls, the most elegant of writing and the most air brushed of photos in sales literature are about a son of both a bull with some bad EPDs and a cow with some bad EPDs but the genomic enhanced EPDs of the promoted son are wonderful.

Now I might have been born at night but it wasn’t last night. This one great son is one of many sons (and daughters) and the others are not great because they inherited and exhibit some various mixing of genes. But if “Wonder Bull Son” is one of 10’s, 100’s or 1000’s of sons that has good EPD numbers he is an outlier and not the average. Guess where his calves will drift to? Back towards the grandparents and their issues. So is real cattle breeding and improvement what matters or is promotion and EPD enhancement the pinnacle of success? Which one matters?

What’s wrong with raising cattle, sheep, chicken or whatever by having a solid herd or flock that you breed generation by generation from two solid parents in each mating? The answer: there is nothing wrong with it but it does not allow the constant use of other folk’s cattle and the non-stabilizing use of outcrosses in each and every generation. The pedigrees of today’s “great” Angus read like a who’s who of politically links and fashionably promoted farms and individuals. The EPDs are what they are and if you look closely, especially at the results in offspring in sale catalogs (phenotypically and EPDs), there is not the expressions of uniformity across the entire offering. The grandparent’s poor EPDs return. But just wait until next year! Yea, that matters!

We can apply the initial referenced quote to all of life and religion. The famous “He who dies with the most toys wins” quote is a parallel. Is “stuff” really a sign of success? Is “winning” the end all? Are better EPDs without proven results the goal? What matters?

Why are so many so blind to knowing what matters and how to get there?

They don’t understand science, for one thing. Start with a study of entropy. That is real science stuff. Things move from a state of higher order to a state of lower order. Period! Even in each and every conception, the law is there and we all know about the problems if the wrong genes mix, a flaw happens, there is a genetic deficit in the fertilized egg… entropy.

What really happens when we select by any means: phenotype, genotype, flip a coin, read the writings in a sale catalog, trust a breeder, want to be known as a buyer of great animals…? Entropy is waiting for us. We never create new genetic materials but we just think that we are sorting genetic materials. With constant influx of different genetics, we are mixing and not sorting. Only through linebreeding, as hated as it is in the modern minds, can we begin to see some real development of soundness and type via selection and culling.

I will leave with a real life example. A friend is a plant breeder. He harvested a select population of seeds in the spring and it totaled 23,000 seeds. All seeds were planted, there was a culling process and they transplanted about half of the seeds for a field trial. By a week ago they tested 834 fruit from 834 plants that were still carrying the phenotypic desired traits. Genetic testing told the final story: one plant had produced the fruit that was targeted. That is selection. It is not creation. Animal breeding is no different.

Outcrossing or building a herd or flock from lines? Which one really matters?

04/09/2025

Ignorance is arrogant. Arrogance is ignorant.

Just read a book by an author on a subject that has nothing to do with livestock. It was both a historical following of a segment of the USA’s history of apples. The author did their homework on the subject at hand but was obnoxiously set to prove and overemphasize the things in history that she personally wanted to hammer. The repeated comments were well worn or totally worn out by the end of the book. Any chance to put in her two cents on cultures of the past were overdone. This is what you call politicizing a subject. It is a practice that is used much too common.

One repeated theme was racism or oppression as in indentured servants. And a repeated example was the terms used to refer to older folks in the south. She implied that the terms “aunt” and uncle” were blatantly racist. Apparently she did not grow up in the culture that she blindly criticized and stereotyped. If you want to know what a term means instead of expressing an opinion – do your homework! Liberal viewpoints do NOT make you a mind reader.

Here is the “lived it” truth. In the south, I had Aunts and Uncles who were absolutely no kin to me. I also was taught to refer to other older folks with manners to call them “Miss Mabel”, for example, or “Mr. Willie. There was never a separation of race to use such endearing terms. I still miss those folks: Uncle Grady, Aunt Vonnie Lee, Miss Edith and a slew of childhood friends who just happened to be older than me. Not just black. Not just white. People, friends, community as it was. Perfect? No. Respectful? Yes.

I see the same thing in livestock and today’s farming. Folks wear out their opinions to try to sell me something, prove that I am in need of education or have to buy their products or livestock to be correct, merely according to their opinions. We raise two types of livestock: St. Croix hair sheep and Angus cattle. Yes, they are black Angus and white sheep. No bias! But I live the farm, manage the farm, work the farm and I just do not see advantages to do what someone in New Zealand, South Africa, west Texas, in an office building or whatever extreme they live in to constantly correct me about what works here. First, find out what works. Then develop your opinion.

It’s a lot like folk art paintings. They are interesting, they give you a feel of good and ol’ timey but there are some things that are always missing. No fire ants, no mosquitoes and horn flies, no coyotes, no trespassers or wild hogs, no human pain and not a lot of application value. Just a warm feeling. Do I wish that sin did not taint all of the world and everybody was honest, helping and happy to live in a folk art world? You bet.

The old saying “Don’t believe but about half that you read” needs an update. The assumption that nearly half is correct is a huge overestimation.

Let’s all be honest.