Sun, 14 Nov 2004

What a Show!

Well, I'm awake, I've had three cups of coffee, and I'm typing reasonably well. Yesterday's trip kinda took it out of me: the show was simply enormous, covering nearly all of the Kentucky Fair & Exposition Center in Louisville, Kentucky. I gave a presentation on database management for the American Red Poll Association, which (hopefully) might result in some work for them down the line, but basically we spent the entire day looking at cattle and sheep. And learning alot about the "industry".

Most of our stuff here at Hammerstead has been geared to direct to consumer marketing: we don't breed cattle (or sheep) specifically for sale at auction, nor have we concentrated on selling breeding stock. And this show was pretty much all about those endevors, especially the latter.

For example, did you know you can genetically select cattle for 'tenderness'? Even marbling can allegedly be predicted by genetics...

I'm still not entirely convinced on all of this: management, handling and feed certainly have an impact cattle. And I seem to hear echos of the old "nature vs. nurture" debate here. But still, a lot of the statistical evidence is pretty stout.

We looked at a lot of Red Poll cattle, of course. I still like the horned breeds myself: cattle should have horns - it just seems "right". But maybe that's because I've never really been around polled breeds. The Red Polls are very docile, even the bulls, and without the horns they're not nearly as dangerous for the inexperienced to try and handle. And they do have some significant advantages over our current breed, especially in the area of faster growth and time to market. And the coloring is pretty striking. We'll see...

We also looked at Horned Dorset sheep as a potential cross for our Blackies. Again, superior size and time to market would be factors - although we're thinking about crossing them rather than simply going to purebreds in an attempt to get some unique fleece characteristcs that might make our woll more attractive to handspinners. As with the cattle, we'll see ...

So that was yesterday: Kris is still sleeping, and Hel, I'm not sure I feel like doing anything else the rest of the day, either. It's been a trying week.

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