Third day of World Congress brings the rain

Today our first stop was to Atlasta Angus from Brian and Judy Sutter. Brian is a famous ice hockey player having played in the NHL and for Canada. His Atlasta herd is 31 years old and consists of 250 cows which can all be traced back to just four cows.

We were all impressed with his knowledge of the Angus breed, he has concentrated not on the show ring but on top performance cattle especially from America using bulls that are in the top 5% for carcass traits.

In the cow herd we saw many good cows with plenty of size, particularly from some of the older sires used like GT Max, Pinedrive and Dateline. Running with the cows was a bull Justamere Cash who was twice bull champion at Agribition.

We then saw an impressive field of two year old heifers with calves. They were in nice working condition raising and making a good job of their calves. After having another great BBQ lunch we then had a slide show from Fred Taylor from the Canadian Beef Grading Agency. Fred is the head meat grader in Canada and gave us a good insight how carcases are graded in Canada through there CAB scheme.
Our next visit was to the 110 cow herd of Riverbend from Bud, Barb and John McBride. This herd has breeding cattle for 72 years with cattle from the herd having been exported to the UK in the past. There senior stock bull Riverbend Kruggerrand, a son of Krugerrand 410H, looked impressive and seemed to be doing a good job for them. 

Riverbend Krugerrand 1004

Their cows were of moderate frame with good fleshing ability due to drought conditions half their cows were about 70 miles away on another pasture. We have been lucky the last two day as the rain came as we were leaving the last place which is pleasing our hosts as they are in need of rain. However, today it came as we were going to our last herd and it didn’t want to stop raining today, so the typical British summer is now following us over here.

Our last stop of the day was to Lone Star Angus from Deone and Val Townsend who have a 200 cow herd and also breed miniature donkeys and Alpacas. They have put together a nice set of cows though the weather set in and it was hard to see them huddled up in the corners of the field.

Lone star cows

All our hosts have really gone out of the way to show us their herds and entertain us and we all thanks them for their hospitality. Tomorrow we travel south to near Calgary to see Hamiltons, Breamar, Coldstream and John Elliot’s Donor cows.