Sidey Angus - October 2000 diary

October 2nd- NAILE entries, Maxine

I got confirmation back on my entries to the North American International Livestock Exposition in today's mail. I entered our January 2000 SVF GDAR 216 LTD heifer calf, PSA Queenmar Rachel 394 and our newest addition to the herd in Circle A Maxine 9450.

Maxine is a Fall 1999 daughter of Circle A 2000 Plus from the prolific Circle A donor, Circle A Maxine 5057. Her maternal granddam is the famous Miss Wix 918 of McCumber who has produced over $275,000 in direct progeny for Shady Brook Angus in Tennessee. Maxine was my first choice pick from the Ranch production sale and will be a very important part of our direction. We will be flushing her to B/R New Design 036 and breeding to Rocking D Ambush 1531 to take advantage of her tremendous growth and carcass potentials.

October 18 - Tremendous results

Very pleasant day but foggy It was 52º F ( 11º C) this morning as we headed to Moulton Embryos for the flush of our VDAR New Trend 315 donor cow, PSA Queenmar 279D. Queenmar has been the pride of the herd for many years producing five fantastic daughters in a row, as well as being named a class winner at an Ohio Angus Preview show and champion cow at a past West Ohio Regional Angus Show.

We had four recipients along with us and had been optimistically hoping for the best in the mating of Queenmar with the new Circle A Ranch carcass sire, Circle A 2000 Plus. Apparently the combination of fertility from 279 and 2000+ were a tremendous match as 38 embryos were recovered during the flush Only two embryos unfertilized, 8 embryos rated as #2 quality and the remaining 28 rated #1 grade. Needless to say, we are extremely pleased with the opportunity to add several daughters from this mating into the herd as well as offer some of the embryos to our customers. take a look at the new donor page for information.

October 21 - Ear Corn

We finished filling the wooden corn cribs at the home farm earlier this week and were able to spend a day finishing half the crib at our Zerkel farm cribs. Ear corn is

definitely not a fast way to harvest and keeping 30 year old equipment and technology running under the pressure is an exciting prospect at best. The main reason we still do it is that it is fantastic cattle feed to be able to grind the whole cob into the feed ration and there is no drying charges to pay when we let mother nature air cure the corn down to the perfect moisture content. Typically we will put in about 9-11,000 bushel ( 1,283- 1569 hectoliter per hectare) of ear corn then fire up the Combine to shell the bulk of our corn crop. With the current high prices on propane for drying, we are very happy to see the moisture content down to below 17% right out of the field this year and some really great yeilds on our Pioneer varieties.

October 25 - Fog and more Fog, MVAA

Very, very foggy day today. It is 57º F ( 13.8º C) at Noon and you can barely see 1/8 mile( 1/4 km) yet. Many local schools cancelled the entire day after already having had fog delays yesterday morning as well.

I had a call from Dan Brosey, the President of the Miami Miami Valley Angus Assn. Valley Angus Association to let me know that the catalog for this years Fall Show and sale was at press and would be mailed in the upcoming week just prior to the NAILE. This years sale is again the first Saturday after Thanksgiving at the Preble County Fairgrounds which is 22 miles West of Dayton in Eaton Ohio

We consigned two very attractive bred cow lots to this years sale. PSA Blackcap EST 342F, a November 1st, 1996 N Bar Emulation EXT daughter safe in calf to VDAR Rito 510J due March 29, 2001 and another EXT daughter in PSA Ruth 347G, a January 18, 1997 granddaughter of the famous Canadian donor in Prospect Ruth 70M. 347G sells safe in calf to GAR Sleep Easy 1009 and due on January 18, 2001.

Sidey Angus Farm Diary - October 2000