Caldwell Cowherd

Our cowherd currently consists of approximately 25 cows, and we think it is pretty special. We know of no other herd that has been culled as ruthlessly over the past 30 years as this one. EPDs play a prominent role in our selection process and it shows. We also have strict standards when it comes to calving ease, disposition, and structural soundness. Not every cow in the herd is the universal cow, but they all have a role to play or they wouldn't be here.

We have lived through our share of calving problems, particularly one disastrous year back in the 80s. Rather than attempt to mitigate it through sire selection, we made it a cow problem. Other than abmormal presentation we have a zero tolerance for calving difficulty. If we pull a calf both mama and baby are out of here, period. You can guess the result after 20 years, even though we don't always use low birth weight bulls. We still attack birth weight. We have to because commercial bull buyers have to address calving ease from the bull's side. But if you are developing a cowherd, calving ease is a cow thing, not a bull thing.

Everything these cows do is done on grass. We work really hard at our forage program and we think we get a little better at it every year, but barring a natural disaster grass and grass hay are all there is. We offer them free choice minerals year round and a thorough herd health program. Calves are introduced to feed through creep feeding a few weeks before weaning, just to get the hang of it.

Only two cows in this herd were bred elsewhere, and both of those came from Witherspoons' which is very close kin. If you follow the maternal lines of all our cows you will find that over half of them trace back to only two cows, D Queen Ten 195 and CHR Ygerna 123. This occured without any embryo transfer. It was the result of these cows consistently producing top calves and producing until they were 15 and 16 years old, respectively. D Queen Ten 195 was purchased in 1995. CHR Ygerna 123 goes back to FL Wetmore Lass 626, purchased from Healy Brothers in 1980. In fact, two of our original seven cows purchased in 1974 can still be found in the pedigrees of our cowherd. One of those, KR Lady Onward 58, also produced until she was 15 years old and had an average weaning weight ratio of 120.