The month of July and the first half of August have proven to be one of the hottest on record, but at least we have been getting some rain. We finally got a little break in the weather the weekend of August 14th, with temperatures around 88 – 92 degrees and scattered showers and thunderstorms. The bulls spent more time in the mornings and late afternoons scattered across the pastures grazing, so we took advantage of it and took some photos. All of the photos in this entry were taken the weekend of August 14th, so the bulls are 10 – 11 ½ months old. It is truly amazing the bulls have done so well in this heat and humidity. Craig Hays from Ultra Insights in Diagonal, Iowa will be coming in to ultrasound scan all the bulls and heifers on September 8th, 9th, and 10th. We will be taking yearling weights at the same time and that’s when we will find out how well the bulls have actually performed during this hot and stressful summer.

The Rookie, Power-Ade, Lucky Man, and Final Answer sons still appear to be the powerhouse performance groups. This is our first year with a large group of Black Ice sons and they are going to perform right with the powerhouse boys. Our true low birth weight and smaller frame sire groups will be the Dual Focus, Touchdown, and Stetson sire groups. For the all around, do it all type bulls, the ones with low birth, yet good performance, high carcass value, and excellent maternal, then look to the Sure Bet sons. Sure Bet’s EPD’s have continued to improve with each Genetic Evaluation and his first large group of daughters weaned calves that were reported in the Fall 2010 Genetic Evaluation, proving him as one of the all time great Purebred Simmental sires.

We have not talked much about the heifers for this year’s sale, so we tried to take a few pasture photos of the heifers, just to show how they are developing. Our heifers run on fescue and common Bermuda grass pastures just like our bulls, receiving a very limited, hand fed supplement consisting of soyhull pellets, cottonseed hulls, and dry distillers. It’s a proven fact that fat heifers have a shorter productive life, reduced fertility, and are less productive as a mama, so do not come to Gibbs Farms expecting to see fat yearling heifers in the sale. We develop our heifers in a manner to maximize their fertility and productive life, assuring you a replacement female that will go home and do her job.

A new addition to this year’s sale will be 25 heifers bred to start calving the first week in December. They were bred A.I. to Dual Focus and then turned with Pioneer for 45 days. These heifers have been running in large pastures all year, just sort of “roughing it”. We recently brought them in to the main farm and will very lightly supplement them, treating them exactly like we treat our own replacement heifers. They will be the proper condition for heifers ready to start calving, not over fed and fat. We feel confident you will be pleased with their condition and they have been able to achieve it in a “real world” environment.

Mid-July Bull Development Report . . .
As everyone knows, it’s been extremely hot this summer, but we have had rain, the grass has grown well, and the bulls are doing surprisingly well considering the long period of at or near 100 degree temperatures. The bulls have shed out slick and appear to be continuing with record performance. We had a record high average weaning weight on our bull calves this year and they sure don’t seem to have slowed down.

As usual, the ROOKIE sons appear to be the powerhouse sire group, but staying right with them are the POWER-ADE and LUCKY MAN sons. This is our first sire group by POWER-ADE and he is living up to his name and projected growth EPD’s. There will be a large group of his son’s in this year’s sale, both embryo and natural. They are going to add an exciting and powerful sire group to the sale.

The all around, sort of “do-it-all” sire group will once again easily be the SURE BET sons. They are born very light, performing very acceptable, and doing it in a very moderate frame size package. They will also most likely be some of our top ultrasound scanning bulls on carcass traits. We also have our first sons in the sale out of SURE BET daughters and those daughters are proving to work great as young mamas.

The DUAL FOCUS and TOUCHDOWN sons will be our lowest birth weight and smaller frame sire groups, but both groups are loaded with muscle and middle, they are just a little smaller framed and earlier maturing. Based on the ultrasound scans we saw this spring and the new ASA Carcass Merit Program data, it appears DUAL FOCUS will prove to be a huge added value carcass sire.
   
Our customers have been asking for more good Purebred Simmental bulls and we have responded to your request. The quality of our Purebred Simmental bulls will earn them a spot at the front of the sale order this year. They are sired by the curve-bending ABS sire, BLACK ICE and the new Select Sires calving ease prospect, STETSON.
   
We will be taking yearling weights and ultrasound scans on September 8th, 9th, & 10th. All of the processed data and new EPD’s should be available on our website by the end of September and sale catalogs should be mailed around the middle of October. Visitors are sure welcome to come for a visit and ride through the pastures to look at the bulls anytime. The pastures are fairly large, but generally we can ride into a pasture on the Polaris and the bulls will start gathering around, making it fairly easy to look them over. Below are some photos we took while riding through the bull development pastures late in the afternoon the middle of July. The bulls are averaging about 10 months old in these photos and are beginning to look a little more like bulls, rather than calves. By developing the bulls in large fescue and common bermuda grass pastures, it not only promotes the development of a sound and healthy individual, it also gives the bulls an opportunity to build individual tolerance to the endophyte in the fescue, something extremely important to our customers who depend on fescue in their operations. Another very important part of our bull development program is the fact the bulls are never fed high starch cereal grain products, NEVER! Our bull development ration consist of mainly soyhull pellets and cottonseed hulls, with the addition of a little distillers pellets to properly adjust the protein in the ration. No other grain product is ever used, so there is no rumen adjustment period from a starch base ration back to forage when you take a Gibbs Farms bull home. At Gibbs Farms, we pride ourselves and stake our reputation on developing bulls in a real world environment, so our customers can take their new purchase home and be assured it will perform for them in the real world.