Lonny and his sister Susan (Iowa Shorthorn Lassie Queen), hosting the Iowa Sh. Assoc. picnic & field day

The early 80s were certainly good to us as far as the Shorthorn herd was going. During a 5 year stretch, we had a champion and/or top-selling female at the Iowa Beef Expo each year. As usual, there was a constant search for that next great herd bull. It seemed as though the industry as a whole was determined to breed larger and larger cattle. The Continental breeds certainly played a major role in this movement and the long-established British breeds went along for the ride. At times it seemed as though cattle shows were simply placed from biggest to smallest. Since part of our cattle enterprise was showing cattle, we had to follow suit. In addition to 50-60 purebred Shorthorn cows on the farm, Dad started to use Simmental bulls on another 30 or so cows. We fed out the calves that were not kept or sold for breeding purposes, so this seemed to be logical at the time.

At the intersection of Hubbell and University in Des Moines is the AE dairy. At the edge of their property is a Guernsey-appearing cow/calf pair. The cow must be 15 feet tall and the calf is maybe 6 feet. I remember driving past the building once with Dale Studer and he remarked his goal was to someday produce a cow that big. I'm quite sure he was kidding, but in reality there was a headlong rush for extreme frame size. Our cattle were reasonably competitive in the Shorthorn shows, but when we got up against interbreed competition in the supreme championship drive, we, along with the other British breed champions, were dwarfed by the Continentals. The Simmentals were absolutely huge. They would be at least 2 frame scores larger.

Then there were the Chianinas. They were in a league of their own. It was not uncommon to see frame-score 10 cattle in some of the shows of that era. Breeders quite often cited hip heights and cannon bone measurements at birth in their ads emphasizing the increased frame size in their herd. A certain bull might be advertised as being 60 inches tall, the next one at 62, then one at 65, and maybe another up to six feet tall at the shoulder. It was very similar to the fisherman's story.

I certainly enjoyed touring the bull display aisles on my trips to Denver. The National Western always seemed to be the coming out party for the next generation of hot genetics. On one of my trips, Graham Land and Livestock of Minnesota brought out a bull named Ayatollah. He was a registered Milking Shorthorn but had some Australian genetics in his background and could not come into the ASA herdbook as a purebred and was labeled an Appendix Shorthorn. I remember leaning on the gate surrounding his display pen and absolutely having no idea what to think. He was big. Really big. But in my opinion, that's where it stopped. He didn't have much else that I liked. KaDel Urice, long-time Shorthorn breeder from Vinton, Iowa, stood next to me and we just stared and shook our heads. Speechless. Later on, we discussed what we saw and we were definitely on the same page. Ayatollah did work for many breeders, though, and sired numerous show winners. He was just not my cup of tea.

Rich and Dale Studer and I have been friends for many years. We talked for hours it seemed on the phone. This was long before cell phones and I know we ran up a huge phone bill every month. During one of my conversations with Rich, he mentioned that he had found a new bull I might be interested in. Bar-D Belle's Winner. Rich said he was one of the biggest Shorthorn bulls he had ever seen. Naturally, I had to take a quick trip to Wesley to see him. We worked out a deal and I purchased 1/2 interest. I took the trailer up in a week or so and brought him home. As we were loading, Mike Studer shook his head, looked at us, and said, "All you guys think about is size." Someone had done a poor job of dehorning the bull and he had small misshaped horn stubs on each side of his head. Neighbor Dan Sowers had ridden with me to pick him up and the first thing Winner did when we got home and turned him into the pasture was dig up an old tree stump. That should have been my first indication that he could not be trusted around humans. In fact, Winner was a walking safety hazard. You could not chase him. If you moved the cows, you chased the cows and Winner followed you. You didn't go out to the pasture without a big stick and you kept your eye on him all the time. Lloyd Jungman of Hawkeye Breeders did on-farm collections back then and I set a date for Lloyd to collect Winner later that fall. He was in a pen north of the barn and when Lloyd got there, I went out to move the bull into the barn. He didn't want to cooperate, so I tapped him on the rump with a stick. Fortunately, I was still thin and agile from all the basketball I played so I was able to put my hand on the top bar of the gate that was thankfully nearby and jumped as I felt his head grazing my heel. I looked around after clearing the gate to see Lloyd standing in the doorway of the barn and he said, "I think we'll wait for a better day to do this." I called Rich and told him that Winner was no longer to be at our place. We worked it out so Rich gave me 1/2 of his estimated market value and called it good. Rich later sold the bull to Carvin Guy, Hilltop Ranch, in South Dakota. Carvin introduced the bull to his cattle dogs and later said he had no problems.

Winner never really clicked with my cows. However, we did have a pretty good summer heifer calf out of a straight beef-bred cow that I took to the Polled Congress in Omaha the next spring. The heifer was maybe 8 or 9 months old and Dad decided there was no need for me to take the pickup and trailer. He had a topper for the pickup, not a stock rack, a camper-type topper, and said I should just use it. As you can imagine, I wasn't too excited about that idea. Everyone else was going to arrive in their new pickup and fancy trailer and I was supposed to show up to this national level show with my calf in a pickup topper. I guess it was fortunate I had a basketball league game that night so I didn't get to Omaha until maybe 2 a.m. when no one was there to see me. The heifer won her class in the show and sold to Popes in Illinois and later won her class at the Illinois State Fair. Despite the embarrassment of the topper, it had been a reasonably successful trip, and it was time to head home. My wife, Kathie, had gone with me to the event and Dale Studer was going to ride home with us, so we hopped in the half-ton Dodge 2-wheel drive pickup, with the topper, and took off on I-80. However, sometime during the sale, it had started to snow. This was one of those late March, early April Midwest snowstorms that soon turned into a full-blown blizzard. The flakes were the size of small snowballs and had to weigh a pound each. We made it to Des Moines, turned north on I-35, and headed to Ames. It had to be some kind of a miracle that we made it to Ames. We pulled into town and stopped at a Perkins. I called every motel in town, but they were all full. I finally remembered a small, somewhat run-down motel just across the street from the Perkins and behind a Holiday Inn. It was about 10:30 p.m. when I called, the manager said he did not have rooms at the time, but would after midnight. Somewhat bewildered, I relayed his message to Kathie and Dale. About halfway through it hit me. I hung up the phone. We were about 25 miles from home and decided we would try to make it. We took off on old highway 30. We had to dodge about 20 stranded vehicles but made it to Nevada. I still don't know how. I had called home earlier and Mom told me not to even try to get home. We got the last room at the motel on the west side of town and stayed there until morning. As is typical for April snowstorms in Iowa, as soon as it's over it climbs to 60 degrees. The snowplows went out and we were home by noon the next day. I don't know why, perhaps as a memento to an eventful trip, Dale left his worn-out pair of cowboy boots in the crotch of a tree at the motel. I haven't checked, but I don't think they're still there.

Oakview Irish Bess, daughter of Lazy D Ultimate Type. Top selling female at the Iowa Beef Expo.

I suppose it was the lack of success in my quest for increased frame size, but somewhere along the line I decided I needed to try something else. This is what drew my attention to the Irish Shorthorns and Lazy D Ultimate Type. I had some reservations because I knew there was no actual recorded ancestry on almost all of the Irish cattle. If you pull up Ultimate Type's registration paper, you will see there are no animals listed behind his sire, Deerpark Leader. It just says "foundation." I really didn't consider the lack of documented ancestry very much at the time. He was a tremendous bull, his relatives in this country were extremely successful, and he was in the herd book. His first heifer calf was the top seller at the Iowa Beef Expo and I remember ASA Executive Secretary Roger Hunsley was extremely complimentary of her. Ultimate Type was one of the best breeding bulls I ever used and have often thought of the fame he would have gained had he been in a more noted herd. He was recognized by the ASA as a Balanced Trait Leader for several years.

In spite of the relative success of the Shorthorn herd, the lingering effects of the 1977 total crop failure still lingered. Things just seemed to pile up. Sometimes it seemed as if the light at the end of the tunnel was a train. We had fed several loads of cattle for many years. The order buyer we used retired, and another took his place. We had never fed black cattle because at that time they just didn't grow. Well, the new order buyer got a hot deal on some black heifers for us. They were done when they got off the truck. They weighed maybe 450 pounds and were just finished. We typically successfully sold grade and yield to either Bookey Pack or IBP in Des Moines. Nobody would touch these heifers. We got them to about 800-850 pounds and that was it. We ended up selling them to a small packing plant in Mason City or Fort Dodge, I can't remember which.

Lonny’s granddaughter Katie Rouse “showing a high frame-score Hereford”.

The buyer also sent us a group of Polled Hereford heifers. These were big-framed, growthy heifers that weighed in the mid-600 range. About 2 months later, our well-trained eye determined that most of these heifers were bred. Definitely not the calves we were told they were. We calved them out and then later fed them as heiferettes. On the bright side, we truly learned to appreciate the milking ability of our Shorthorn cows. I had basically been working for Dad on the farm with a small herd of cows of my own. To help out I purchased the hog operation. It might have been a good thing had the hog market not tanked and the price of the corn I needed to purchase shot through the roof. I sold my steer calves as feeders and felt fortunate to get $.60/pound and hoped they weighed 500. Several of us sold bull calves at the Beef Expo for around $500 to a big Western outfit. After the sale, their agent told us we had to take the calves home, feed them for 2 months, bring them to Omaha on the first of April, and the big outfit would take them and send us the money when they got them sold. We were told we had to transfer ownership of the calves immediately. That didn't sit well with a couple of us and we refused to relinquish the little security we had. Lots of nasty phone calls, but that's exactly what we did. I think we got our $500 about May 1 and then transferred the papers.

I had two 3/4 brothers, both sired by Clark and out of Foxdale Favorite Robin cows, Admiral Halsey and Monaco Prince. I absolutely loved those bulls. However, I decided to sell Prince at the Polled Congress. I hated to sell one. The morning of the sale, Dale Studer came up to me and said that Admiral Halsey had jumped a gate at home for some reason, got hung up halfway over, and died. Kathie had called him and said Mom and Dad didn't want to tell me because they were afraid I'd pull Monaco Prince from the sale and they knew I needed the money. Both were true. I loaded Prince up and headed home, still broke. I'll never know what caused Admiral Halsey to jump that fence. There was nothing on the other side. Nothing. Of course, the gate had been hung correctly, not just wired to the post. If it had been just wired, it would have fallen and he would have been fine. I still have a few straws of his semen I'd love to use someday.

Of course, then interest rates spiked to 15% for farm operating money. All the money I had used to buy out the hog operation was borrowed. Try taking 15% off the top of everything you sell. I wasn't the only one. It was universal. If you didn't live through the 80s, it's hard to understand. It affected everyone in the rural communities, Farmers, ag businesses, local grocery and hardware stores, you name it. We were taught that if you worked hard, you would succeed. I think all of us were working as hard as we could. You relied on your faith, family, and friends to get through. I guess we were blessed to make it through to the other side. All the hogs were sold, so the only thing I had left was my cow herd. I made the decision to finish my last year of college and sell the cow herd. Duane Sicht of Missouri purchased the entire herd including Lazy D Ultimate Type.

Shorthorn-Simmental x being shown by Lonny’s daughter Betsy

I got my degree in Ag. Ed. at Iowa State and got a teaching job in eastern Iowa. My daughters, Betsy and Andrea, were old enough to start showing and Dad let us borrow a few steers and heifers. Most of Dad's calves were Shorthorn-Simmental crosses so we had a few of those along with a couple of Shorthorns. I eventually purchased a few Shorthorn heifers from him and we started slowly rebuilding the herd. I think we had 3 daughters of Lazy D Ultimate Type and a daughter of Prairie RR Babe Ruth my daughters purchased from Dean Fieser.

About this time the ASA herdbook was thrown wide open. About anything with size had been used in the Appendix program, now called Shorthorn Plus. The ASA board determined that once an animal reached the 15/16 level it was considered 'purebred'. Black hided cattle were not to be considered purebred regardless of the percentage they reached. The previously discussed bull Ayatollah was considered a purebred Milking Shorthorn, but not a purebred in the ASA herdbook because he had some genetics in his background that the ASA did not recognize. Eventually the ASA declared him a 7/8 Shorthorn, eligible to sire purebred Shorthorn calves when mated to a purebred Shorthorn cow.

Mike Studer had a 7/8 grandson of Ayatollah, out of a 3/4 Shorthorn cow that went back to the noted Chianina bull Black Power Play, that we purchased. His name was MR Red Man and we had great success with him. His sire was Lefty 83rd, recognized as a purebred Shorthorn (15/16) since his sire was the 7/8 Ayatollah and Lefty’s dam was a purebred Shorthorn. Red Man's dam was considered a 3/4 Shorthorn since she went back to Black Power Play and was out of a purebred Shorthorn. Confused? There's a reason why I entitled this article Hodgepodge.

Later the ASA determined that Maine Anjou had enough Shorthorn genetics in their development that they allowed full blood Maine Anjous into the herd book at the 3/4 Shorthorn level, and I took full advantage of that. I raised a bull, Oakview Powerplant, sired by the full-blood Maine Anjou bull Etula, and out of a granddaughter of another full-blood Maine Anjou bull, Dollar II. Here's where it gets even more confusing unless you lived through it. He was considered to be 5/8 Maine, 7/8 Shorthorn, and he sired purebred Shorthorn calves. Here’s how ASA came up with those numbers: From the Maine Anjou standpoint, Oakview Powerplant was a direct son of the fullblood Maine Anjou bull Etula, so he was 50% or 4/8 Maine Anjou on the sire's side. On the dam's side, his mother was sired by a bull I raised named Oakview Sultan. He was a direct son of the fullblood Maine Anjou bull Dollar II and out of a purebred Shorthorn cow. Since Dollar II was fullblood Maine Anjou, Sultan was 4/8 or 50% Maine Anjou. Sultan was bred to a purebred Shorthorn cow, so the resulting calf, the dam of Oakview Powerplant, was 2/8 or 25% Maine Anjou. Add the offspring percentages together and you get 5/8 Maine Anjou. From the Shorthorn view, Etula was considered 3/4 Shorthorn since he was a fullblood Maine Anjou. Powerplant's dam came in as a purebred Shorthorn. Her grandsire, Dollar II was considered 3/4 Shorthorn as a fullblood Maine Anjou. His son, Oakview Sultan, sire of Powerplant's dam, was recognized as a 7/8 Shorthorn since his dam was a purebred Shorthorn. Powerplant's dam was considered a purebred Shorthorn (15/16) since she was sired by a 7/8 Shorthorn bull, Oakview Sultan, and out of a purebred cow. So, Oakview Powerplant came in as a 7/8 Shorthorn. (3/4 bull X purebred cow. Remember a 15/16 is considered purebred). Aren’t percentages amazing!

The genetics were not remotely connected with what we started with. In a span of less than 10 years, we had incorporated the Irish Shorthorns with little or no documented ancestry, and whatever genetics the cattle world offered through the Appendix Shorthorn program. By then Scotch-type Shorthorns had all but disappeared. The dual purpose type had been all but absorbed into whatever other genetics were in the breed. During that time period it was the same for every breed of cattle in the U.S. The Milking Shorthorns accepted Australian and New Zealand genetics and even Red & White Holsteins. The Angus basically accepted whatever blood produced 'typical Angus'. I knew a young man that claimed his class winning 'Angus' heifer at the Iowa State Fair had blood typed purebred Angus, but she was sired by a fullblood Maine Anjou bull. He had registration papers from both the Angus and Maine Anjou Associations. I was there as he loaded her on a trailer as he had sold her after the show in Des Moines and heard him ask the buyer if they wanted Angus or Maine Anjou papers or both.

The rat tails of the Herefords led to speculation of perhaps some Simmental blood? There are very, very few Continental breeds that resemble at all what their ancestors looked like when they were first imported into the U.S.: i.e. Black Simmentals, Maines, Limousins, Chianinas, Salers—now with black coats? Right. It happened. People used whatever they thought they needed to improve what they had. We might long for the good old days, but I guess the folks that 'invented' the first of every breed used whatever tool they had at their disposal to mold what they wanted. Things are no different today. I guess we're lucky there are some old-time, heritage genetics around, though, of nearly every kind.

A Shorthorn Heritage (Part 8): Hodgepodge