OXFORD, Ohio — The Breeders Top Ten Bull sale will be this Saturday at the Double S Simmental Sale Facility in Fountain Run, Ky. Marc Tincher and Danielle Mann of Indian Creek Simmentals are part of the group that puts on that sale.<br>
Each year, the five breeders join together to offer the top 10 percent of their calf crop at a series of sales. On the block in March will be 48 Simmental and Sim-Angus bulls, plus 25 Simmental influence commercial pairs and bred females.<br>
Besides Indian Creek Simmentals in Oxford, other breeders are Double S Simmentals and Hill Country Cattle, both in Fountain Run, Lazy H Farm in Fleming, Ohio, and Circle T Simmentals of Beechgrove, Tenn.<br>
“We do three sales a year,” Tincher said. “Our first sale is our bull sale in March. Our female sale is in April, and that is what we’ve committed to with the Breeder’s Top Ten. We put the top 10 percent of our calf crop of that year in the sales.”<br>
In the fall, the group holds a sale that is commercially oriented, offering cow/calf pairs and a few bulls. That sale is geared to the commercial producer who raises calves that go to market.
“The input cost is not so much for that commercial buyer, to where they might only be spending $1,500 to $2,000 for a cow/calf pair,” Tincher said.<br>
Through the group, Tincher and Mann have sold calves all over the nation. Last year their calves went to Utah, Texas and Louisiana. A heifer and a cow went to David Rockefeller’s Hudson Pines Farm in New York.<br>
“We’ve created a niche,” Tincher said. “I think in farming today you have to get specialized in something. With the purebred beef cattle market, we sell show cattle and we sell some freezer beef. You have to sell something that somebody wants. As the seller of the product, you’re not at the mercy of the market.<br>
“We get, at times, upwards of 10 times what the meat market value might be for an individual animal,” he said. “Primarily we sell seed stock. People will buy our females, one, to go in the show ring, and then secondly, after that they will be mothers in these people’s herds ... whether that be a commercial herd or another purebred breeder.”<br>
Tincher and Mann specialize in females but their bulls have also done well. The cattle are Simmentals and Sim Angus, a Simmental/Angus cross which is now a purebred breed organized by the Simmental Assoc. Tincher and Mann like the vigor and growth of the 50/50 crossbreds.<br>
“You get the maternal characteristics of the Simmental and you get the tenderness and the cutability and the carcass characteristics of the Angus,” Tincher said. “You get the best of both breeds, and that has really been an exciting part of our beef business, is going into the development of this new breed.”<br>
Getting involved in the Kentucky sales was good for their beef business. Tincher and Mann were invited to participate when another breeder dropped out at a time during which they needed to expand their market and genetics.<br>
“I love the area of south-central Kentucky that this sale is in,” Tincher said. “It’s near Glasgow, Kentucky; it’s beautiful. The county that we sell in has the largest number of cattle in one county east of the Mississippi in the whole United States.”<br>
Tincher likes how cattle farming is done in the area and modeled his operation after it in terms of pasturing cattle, with intensive grazing. “It’s been profitable for us,” he said.<br>
For information on the Breeders Top Ten sale, visit www.ebersale.com and click on “upcoming sales.” Visit Indian Creek Simmentals at www.indiancreek simmental.com