Obviously since I started working (which includes lots of time in front of a computer screen) I’m treating the blog more as an orphan. So you’ll get an overview of 2015 and some details about 2016.
We didn’t participate in any shows in 2015. The regional young beef cattle show was cancelled because of some IBR-cases in Austria (Austria has been free for a long time and quickly got this status back). The market for mating bulls isn’s the best. So most of the males calves are castrated. Over all we were pretty satisfied with the 2015 offsprings (by Atlas, Kilbride Farm Newry, Steinadler, Bayer, Charles and our own bred bull Isaak- sired by Dirnanean Apostle).
In 2012 we used horned AI bulls from the UK (Kilbride Farm Newry and Banwy T-Rex). A T-Rex son was sold to Croatia as a breeding bull, the Newry-sons were castrated (not because of the lack of quality, but as menntioned above because of the difficult selling conditions). Two Newry-daughters were sold last year to a Charolais breeder who is also starting a Simmental herd. They are both doing well and it seems the combination between dual purpose Simmental and the good muscled UK or Irish Simmental is a good one.
Currently the price for organic milk is pretty good (currently we get paid more than 0,5 € per liter), so the plan is to increase the dairy herd a littlle bit. So we will sale Beef Simmental females in 2016 again.
2016 most of the calves will be sired by Steinadler PP. For the upcoming AIs we will use the Austrian bred Rekord Pp (Referent x Heraldik), Charles PP (Campari x Palma), Grinaltas Excel Pp and Popes Barclay pp.
In April we will participate in the National Beef Cattle show in Maishofen (Salzburg). We will show Augenweide Pp (sired by Poldau) with her female calf Kleopatra Pp (sired by Isaak PP*).
I hope I get to update more often this year.