CASTOR, Alta. – During 66 years of raising registered Herefords, Walter and Allan Blume withstood cattle cycles, hard winters, droughts, grasshoppers and BSE.
But they could not fight time.
With the children gone and no one interested in taking over the ranch, they decided to disperse their herd, offering more than 200 females carrying the Blumes’ Wabash pedigree name.
“It is a sad time when you sell your cows,” Walter told a full house gathered to see the internationally known cow herd sell.
“Raising these Hereford cattle has made my work worthwhile.”
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The Blumes will hold their 48th bull sale in February and sell whatever is left in the fall.
Bred cows and heifers are a tough sell this year. The Blume cows come from proven bloodlines and were the mothers of herd sires, but when fed steers are selling for 75 cents a pound and steers at less than 80 cents, expanding herds is not high on many producers’ priority lists.
Many cows sold for $1,100 to $1,300, and heifers weren’t sold if they didn’t achieve a floor price of $1,100.
“Everybody thought they would sell for more but they went to the highest bidder,” Walter said after the sale.
The bred heifers will stay on the ranch and will be calved out. About 250 head remain to be sold, including 2007 calves and yearling bulls.
“By next fall we will have closed everything out and maybe it will be better next year,” he said.
The farm is a diversified operation with Allan managing the cropland and Walter overseeing the cattle breeding.
Walter was seven years old when his father John Blume unloaded three Hereford heifers at the ranch in 1941. The present day cow herd descended from this group.
The first production sale at the ranch was held in 1961. That year a Blume bred bull was the first of many champions at the Calgary Bull Sale. Except for one year, the Blume name appeared at Calgary continuously from 1944 to 2003.
The only year they stayed away was 1951 after a disappointing run when their bulls sold for $500 to $600. John felt the price was inadequate and declared the family would be better off raising commercial cattle.
Walter convinced him not to castrate all the bull calves and instead they went to other sales where the bulls captured three times that amount.
They decided to try their luck in Calgary again, and the decision worked because their highest priced bull sold for $132,500 in 1980.
