If you have ever heard of Certified Angus Beef then you already know a little about Summitcrest Farms. The founder of this farm also was co founder of the Certified Angus Beef program. They developed and bred the large majority of the best Angus beef known in the world today. A little while back the owner passed away and his children have decided to go their own directions and in the process decided to disperse the majority of the assets of the farming corporation. This included most all of the cattle and the bulls!
You can learn more about it at www.summitcrest.com! The farm is about ten minutes from ours and I knew of them but never really knew much till I went with dad to the auction.
I went to the auction to look at equipment with my dad to help him set some prices for bidding on a couple of items. Everything went really high so once the equipment sold we headed across the farm to look at the cattle they were going to sell on Saturday (yesterday).
I originally wasn't looking for cattle. My dad and brother were. However, as I am walking through the pens and looking at the almost 400 head of cattle to be sold and talking to my dad and brother about the cows one caught my eye!
In the one pen of 5 year old bred cattle there was one standing slightly away from the others and looking at me. So I got in the pen and walked up to her and she wasn't spooked and just casually walked away. I looked her up in the sale book and watched her for a while and realized she was one of the best looking cows in the herd. So I went home and talked to my wife. After some convincing, which was easy due to the fact she really likes Angus cattle, we decided to see if we could get her at the auction yesterday.
So we went to the auction early and checked out the cows and the bulls. One was extremely huge! He was approximately 3000+ lbs. and was as tall as I am.
After looking at the animals we headed upstairs of the main barn and the American Angus Association had a complete breakfast waiting for everyone. The barn was amazing inside. Downstairs were pens for the bulls but upstairs was completed into a convention/meeting hall and was beautiful!
After a quick snack we headed over to the sale ring to watch the show and wait for my cow to come into the ring. It was a long sale that lasted almost five hours.
You can see my wife beside me in the right of the photo. My brother is next to her in the red shirt and my dad is in the blue at the end of the same row.The cow I was waiting on was number 181. She was about 2/3 of the way into the sale list so it was almost 1pm before they got to her pen. Bidding was quick but in the end I got her!!!!! Her name is Summitcrest Erica and her tattoo number is S196. She will be six years old this February when she has her calf. She is from the very good "Erica" bloodline and is an awesome looking cow.
At this point I wanted to by another one but money wouldn't allow it right now so the wife and kids and I headed out. My dad and brother stayed for the rest of the sale. My brother purchased a cow, a bred heifer, and a yearling heifer. My dad bought a yearling heifer. Due to the large number of cattle sold they were not able to load everyone out yesterday so I went this morning and picked up my girl and my dad and brothers cattle.
I was so excited to get her home to add her to the herd. As soon as we got her home we let her out. She was immediately greeted by one of the feeder pigs at the corner of the barn. After a couple of moments of nose to nose staring she decided she would figure out what the white things were later and took off out into the pasture.
Everyone wanted to see who the new girl was and followed her around.
After making a few quick loops to see where the fence limits were she came back up to sample the food buffet.
She sampled the local foods and quickly headed around the barn to further investigate the little "white things"!
Here she is standing just outside the pig shed looking in at them to see what they are and what they are doing there!She has already blended right in with the herd and was packing down some good eats when I closed up the barn for the night. She will make a great addition to the herd and the family and I am very pleased and happy to have her here.
A little update outside of this. We were able to sell a couple of the little steers that I got from dad and we sold Crazy B., her little girl, and thing 1 and thing 2 to a young starting up farmer down in Sugarcreek last weekend. I know what it was like to be starting from scratch and I know they will do him good. Plus, it made room for a new addition to the herd that will be much better for our program down the road!!
Goodnight all!!
Kenny
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