EDMONTON – A Quebec cattle breeder’s love affair with Farmfair has paid off.
Tammi McGee came west with a bull calf last year and won reserve champion. This year, the same bull won grand champion at the breed’s national show and was high seller at the Salers’ Cream of the Crop show.
“I came last year and fell in love with the show. I knew this was the 35th anniversary and wanted to come back with a bull and a couple others,” said McGee, who returned this year with her parents, Gerald and Mona, and the Salers animals.
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“We’re really pleased,” said Gerald McGee of Windbec Salers in Richmond, Que.
“He made the big time.”
The two-year-old bull sold for $4,300, the bred heifer for $3,000 and $2,500 for the heifer calf.
Tammi McGee said the trip west has been a way to show off their cattle in Western Canada and will boost the breed in Quebec. A commercial cattle producer bought the bull with plans to use it on his herd.
“We were extremely happy to see it go to a commercial breeder,” said McGee, who plans to use the sale as a promotional tool in Quebec.
“When we go back to Quebec, we’ll say, ‘out West, commercial breeders use Salers,’ ” she said.
While Salers have been in Canada since 1973, they’ve only recently started to take off as cattle producers recognize their good carcass quality, mothering instincts and ease of calving.
“We’ve had a lot of people coming by for our card and to look at pictures of the sons and daughters of the bull,” she said.
Many of the farm’s animals came from Decade, one of the most popular Salers bulls in Canada. The grand champion bull was raised from the McGee herd sire and one of their own cows.
“We like to have a really strong gene line,” she said.
