Turner Angus - Shelby Montana

 

Welcome to Turner Angus


 

Videos of the 2022 Private Treaty Sale Bulls are Online!

Jump to the Sale Information Page to view.

 


 

From Paul, January 2021:

It has been a few years since I have updated my web page. With the low cost of cattle and grain, I have been keeping my head down and pushing forward. So what has happened over the last few years? The cow herd gets better every year. The new home raised herd bulls have really surprised me with the quality of their calves. I have had 2 new epiphanies. I have embraced the regenerative ag practices. And the big one!  I have purchased the land that I have leased for the last 27 years. 59 years old, going in debt up to my eyeballs. Someone should tattoo “STUPID” across my forehead. I don't care that much about the farming but I wasn't ready to be done with the cattle. They are my passion.

I am still continuing to linebreed my cattle. The results have been amazing. Why the entire industry hasn't embraced the practice is beyond me. The corn growers, poultry farmers and hog producers have had amazing results from inbreeding genetic lines and then crossbreeding them. In my own herd, I am to the point of no shades of grey. The cattle are “GOOD” or “BAD”. There is no in-between. It makes culling very easy. On a percentage basis, about 5% are way above average. (Yes I should cull these but I don't. They usually bite me in the backside.)  And there is about 10% that are really bad. The remaining 85% are packed in the middle.

Herd Sires

On the sire page I talk about how pleased I am with the Paturn 76 bull. He is the best bull I have raised to date. His first daughters will calve in April 2021 so by the fall I will have a better idea how good he will be. The surprise this year was the Paturn 810 bull. He is a JMac 5137 son out of an 05 daughter that is a maternal sister to Paturn 76. The Clova 422 cow. 810 is a deep body, heavy muscled meat wagon bull. I used him to add depth of body to a few pencil gutted cows and to add mass to a couple lighter built raw boned type cows. I also used him on some heifers and cows that I haven't bred a sire for yet. My thoughts on the bull were to use him to make adjustments to a few cows and then throw him away. By branding, I was so impressed with his calves that I completely rearranged my breeding plans for the year. I took all my best small framed cows (epiphany #2) and turned them out with him. I am hoping for a smaller framed son with better balance to take his place. The 810 bull is a little extreme. Extreme in anything is bad. It always costs money and creates problems.

In 2017 I had an epiphany, an awakening, a come to Jesus moment. I realized I had way too many good cows to be putting up with the garbage. So, as fast as I could financially, I started shipping out the drop and walks, the man eaters and calf killers. The screaming psycho bossies, freight trains and sky liners. I told myself that the cows calve unassisted on their own, or they calve someplace else. That first year calving was tough. I would see a wreck happening and I would grit my teeth, turn around and leave. When I came back, everything was fine. They did just fine without me stick'n my nose in their business make'n a mess of things. Yes I had a couple disasters, but I don't anymore. The cows and heifers calve together unassisted on range. I ended up culling entire sire groups and cow families. Once I got rid of the junk I now have a highly intelligent cow herd with a lot of common sense and a very strong herd instinct. The last 2 years 100% of the calves were born during daylight. The coyotes live with the cows year around, so I believe this is why they calve during the day. About 80% of the cows calve within a couple hundred yards of where I feed in the morning. This strong herd instinct makes them a lot easier to work with. The bad point is they do not like to be isolated. They get pretty upset.

My second epiphany happened this spring. I have close to a dozen smaller framed cows. They weigh in that 900 to 1100 pound range. They put 650 lb. plus bulls in the keeper pen and their heifer mates are at the front. They seem to carry better flesh and winter easier than the bigger cows. My cows aren't very big to begin with. Fat 2 year olds weigh 1000 lbs. and cull cows are in that 1100 to 1250 range. A few commercial producers thought my cows were a hair to big and now I agree. If these little cows can crank out the pounds, then the whole herd can be little high powered cows. By running smaller cows and more of them I am increasing pounds produced per acre at a lower cost per pound to produce, and I have more pounds to sell at a higher price per pound. Side note; The neighbor is culling all of his bigger ewes. They wean the same amount of weight in lambs as the small ewes, but they cost a lot more to run for the year.

Performance vs Pounds per acre vs Profit

Let's have some fun. Let's pick on Schaff Angus Valley. They are good people and they raise amazing cattle. Schaff's are known for their 1000 lb weaning weight bulls. So let's knock the nuts off one of those bulls. Now we have steer worth 1200 dollars. I can run 2 ½ to 3 heifers on the same amount of feed that that one SAV cow eats. My heifers wean 450 – 550 lb. steers. For comparison, let's say I have two 500 lb steers to sell. While SAV's 1000 lb steer is worth $1250.  My 1000 lbs. of steer are worth $1650. It seems to me that the biggest obstacle to commercial producer's profit is the Kool-Aid the seedstock industry sells. We have the tail wagging the dog, the cart in front of the horse. We have created cattle that work great for the feeder and packer, but they have bankrupted the commercial producer. Too much emphasis on performance instead of profit. I guess everyone has been trained to be happy working for the ”Company Store”.

Feet and Legs

In 1995 I bought a bull that developed bad feet. The Vet thought his feet had been frost bitten, so I used him for 2 years. Years later I kept an unrelated bull with excellent feet from a granddaughter of the bad foot bull. When I used the bull on any female tracing back to the bad foot bull I got bad feet. A bull with good feet bred to a cow with good feet equaled a bad foot. I then used a purchased bull with good feet on these cows. Again, bad feet. Then I used an unrelated home raised bull from a purchased cow with excellent feet. Once again, bad feet. Then I realized the few remaining cows were all from the same cow family, so down the road they go. It didn't matter that the cows and bulls had good feet. Somewhere in their ancestry there were bad feet. When I bred them together it exposed the problem. When you are at some Mega Millions seedstock producer's sale looking at bulls and they tell you they have good feet, ask yourself, how would they know! Just because it says so on a piece of paper? These are the people that created the problem and it runs generations deep. In my own breeding program, I am always breeding away from bad feet because I know exactly where it came from. Feet, udders, disposition, structure, hardiness, fertility, etc. Because I practice linebreeding and use my own bulls, I am always breeding away from an animal's faults while intensifying the good traits. Linebreeding and inbreeding are the quickest ways to clean up a mess.

The Hereford breed lost favor with the commercial cattleman because it didn't matter how hard they culled for bad eyes, bad udders and prolapse. Their seedstock producer didn't cull so the problems were constantly reoccurring. Sound familiar!

 


 

Fall 2019 - Sons of Herd Sire Paturn 57

Paturn 57 Sons

 

Paturn 57 Son

 


 

Paturn 05 daughter from an Indreland cow


 

Video of my Clova 27 cow and her outstanding 2017 calf, Paturn 76 of 321

Bull Calf: Paturn 76 of 321 27
AAA Reg #19039092

 


 

These bulls sold in the 2016 Sale

 

 


 

This cow has a full sister in the 2017 Golden Triangle Breeders Group Sale, Yearling Heifer Lot #73.

 

Paturn 66 of 321 818
You aught to see this "calf" now. He sells in the 2017 Golden Triangle Breeders Group Sale, Lot #60.

 

05 by Blackbird 818
This is a sister to Paturn 66, Lot #60 in the 2017 Golden Triangle Breeders Group Sale.

 

This heifer is a full sister to Paturn 57, a new herd sire. Visit the Herd Sire Page.


 

 

 

 


 

Rodent Control Specialist, Howly #1 on the job.