REGINA – The Robb brothers have had a good fall with high prices and praise when they enter the show ring, but on the farm at Maidstone, Sask., they get back to the business of providing good bulls to commercial beef producers.
The family has been in the Simmental business since the 1970s when Gary Robb imported bulls. These days his sons Jay, 28, and Trevor, 26, are taking over the grain and cattle operation.
They maintain a herd that includes red and black bulls as well as the traditional white-faced fullblood Simmental from Europe.
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At their sale last year, demand for the traditional style often outpaced the newer trend of red and black factor Simmental.
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“Fullbloods are still strong, especially last spring. The fullblood bull market was exceptional,” said Jay.
Buyers also tend to prefer red bulls so the Robbs build their bull battery on what the customers want.
The operation uses a lot of American sires so ranchers are interested in seeing the Canadian results.
The interest has been so attentive, Robb Simmentals has been able to top the purebred sales at Northlands Farmfair in Edmonton and Canadian Western Agribition in Regina where the family had a bull calf champion and a reserve. At Farmfair their livestock won the Farmfair Simmental double crown, people’s choice heifer and bull as well as the pick-a-bull contest.
The Robb animals led off the Agribition Simmental sale offering a full interest in a 2007 heifer by a new bull called Ankonian Red Caesar. The red, polled heifer is among the bull’s first calves and it sold for $15,500 to Rob and Denise Young, of High Country Cattle Services in Breton, Alta.
“This was a draw because everyone wanted to see what these calves are like,” said Jay Robb.
They also sold a bred heifer for $4,500 to Lake Bottom and Shologan Stock Farm of Rochester, Alta. A 2007 heifer went for $2,400 to Blaine Simmentals.
New Trend Cattle Co. of Strathmore, Alta., sold a bull calf for $10,100 to Ken Lewis of Spruce Grove, Alta.
