EDMONTON – Rod Hannah tried several breeds of cattle, but after he discovered Salers in 1975, he stayed with them.
“They’re the best,” said Hannah at the Salers national show at Farmfair International.
“They’re good mothers, they cross really well and they want to calve. My cows calve on their own,” said Hannah of Didsbury, Alta.
He and other Salers producers from across Canada gathered at Farmfair Oct. 31 to Nov. 8 to celebrate the breed’s 35 anniversary in Canada.
It’s only recently Salers have caught the attention of commercial cattle breeders as a good cross. Like other exotic breeds imported from Europe in the mid-1970s, Salers earned the reputation as being fence jumpers.
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That reputation followed the dark red animals into the auction market where they were routinely discounted.
While the wild animals have long since been bred out, it has still taken a while for the breed to catch on, said Miller McCoy of Didsbury, who was also at the show with a string of cattle.
“If you’re going to improve the breed, you dump them. Now we can honestly say the breed is more popular now,” said McCoy, who sold his farm a week earlier and is retiring.
“This is the end for me. I still like to come back and be with the boys in the Salers barn,” said McCoy, who started with two head and at one point had as many as 140 papered Salers cattle. “They treated me very well.”
Travis Depalme of Red Deer said he grew up with Salers and has continued the tradition started by his father.
“They’re excellent cattle. They’re easy caving and have good maternal traits,” said Depalme.
Hannah said one of the biggest problems with Salers was a massive sale of good Canadian cattle to American buyers in the mid-1980s.
“They pretty well cleared this country out of good Salers cattle. We had to start rebuilding our numbers,” said Hannah.
More than 50 cattle were entered in the Salers national show at Farmfair and 20 sold during the Cream of the Crop Salers’ sale.
The sale averaged just under $2,600 with the top bull selling for $4,300 to a commercial breeder.
Depalme said commercial breeders are now using Salers in their cross breeding programs to ensure good calving weights and good carcass characteristics.
McCoy said the majority of his cattle are sold to commercial breeders looking for cows that produce smaller calves.
“They’ve being crossed with everything,” he said.
“I sold 15 to 20 head a year and the commercial end is my biggest customer. The commercial guys are the ones who really support us.”
