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I Remember Back When…
by Sam Howell
You can always tell when a person is getting old. They tend to start many of their conversations, or in this case, their editorial, with the phrase, “I remember back when… ” In as much as I’m now old, I have every right to use this phrase!
Let’s discuss herdsire selection. I remember back when everyone bought a boar.
The Summer Type Conference was normally where you started your search. There, you could preview the first pigs out of the previous year’s hot, young sires.
The “who’s who” of the breed were there. You’d load your hogs, the wife and the kids, and off to type conference you’d go.
When you finally arrived, you’d unload and water your hogs, drop the family off at the motel and head back to the fairgrounds to start your search.
You knew exactly what you needed. As you carefully looked through the boars, all of a sudden, there he was – everything you’d hoped for – your next step. No question in your mind, he would be your ticket to greatness!
You couldn’t wait to tell the family that you had just found the one that would put you on the map. He was so good, you decided that if it took a little more money than you had planned on spending, so be it. No doubt in your mind you had to own him!
The next few days were filled with anticipation. In your mind, you could see your next year’s pig crop. All you had to do was buy the boar.
As with many things in the purebred business, your best-laid plans sometimes don’t work out. During the course of the show, a problem or two would develop. Either the show’s judge found him and made him champion, or someone with much more money than you also found him.
In either case, there was a good chance you weren’t going to get the boar. Talk about disappointment. Your plans just went down the tube.
You asked yourself, “Now what do I do?” And you found yourself with two choices. 1) Wait for the next show, or 2) look a little deeper at the boars that placed down the line.
If your decision was number 2, you bought the best you could afford, you went home and bred around his weaknesses and made the next generation. That’s the way breeding livestock is – there’s no guarantees.
For those of you that are old enough to have lived this experience, you may also remember that the “popular boar” you thought you just had to have often didn’t breed his way out of a wet, paper bag.
What was once a disappointment turned out to be a blessing a year later.
A little off the subject, but along the same lines, I see and visit many of you in a year’s time. I see, in my opinion, the good, the bad and the ugly. Depending on the number of visits I make, I might see all three in one day.
It’s not uncommon to look through a man’s pig crop and be told they’re sired by five or more sires, out of a set of sows also sired by a multitude of different boars. The only thing consistent about the pigs is they are all the same color!
As I visit with you folks, I’m confronted occasionally with some of your concerns – one of which is our shrinking genetic base. It’s been pointed out that we are down to three or four lines in each of our four breeds. And the question is, “What do we do?”
I wish I had the answer. But I know one thing for sure – if we all continue to breed our sows to the same few boars, we are not going to help our situation.
Three principles of breeding hogs haven’t changed in my lifetime. They will never change.
1) Every time a purebred sow gets mated to a crossbred boar (poor choice of words – they are now called “exotics”), that is one less purebred litter to select from.
2) Every time a purebred litter is castrated for show-barrow production, that too, is one less litter to select from.
3) Every time a boar is passed out as a no sale and finds himself at a local buying station, he, too, will never sire a litter.
Like a man once said, “How do we know if a young man can or cannot play ball if he always sits on the bench?”
Likewise, how do you know what a boar can or cannot do if he never gets a chance to breed sows?
I have a tremendous amount of respect for those breeders (I said breeders, not followers), that are willing to study their lessons, then step up and invest in a future herdsire . This select group is not willing to let someone else make their breeding decision, nor are they satisfied to breed to a picture in a book!
I remember back when Eddie Robinson of Wellsville, Mo., teamed up with Wilbert and Dennis Moench of Terra Bella, Calif., and purchased the boar they called LFC6 Frontier 273-4 from Tracy Lorenzen of Chrisman, Ill. That investment worked out alright!
I remember back when Dean Myhre of Caledonia, Minn., joined forces with Terry Stade of Shakopee, Minn., and invested in the boar called KTF7 Rising Sun 15-7 from Tony Holcomb, Yuma, Colo. A wise decision, wouldn’t you say?
I remember back when Ross and Jason Hirschfeld of Benedict, Neb., called “the fieldman ” at the NSR Weanling Pig Extravaganza to have him buy a boar for them. The sight-unseen purchase of the boar from Jerry McLemore of Ninnekah , Okla., and Larrie Moyers of Newcastle, Okla., named LMJM1 Full Moon 10-2 has proven to be a nice investment!
I remember back when Dean and Kay Christian of Woodward, Iowa, also called “the fieldman ” at the Howard Parrish fall sale in Edon , Ohio, and asked if he would buy them a boar. The less-than-$1,000 investment they made in HP0 HP Red Ace 26-3 worked out quite well at the SWTC in Lubbock, Texas, this year.
In just the past six months, we passed out (did not sell) close to half the boars that were shown at Ark City, Sweetwater and Lubbock.
Many of them needed to be tried on a few sows. The really sad part is that they could have been purchased for the floor price of $350.
As I wrote back in my first editorial in 1993, “Consider buying your genetics in ‘Aluminum Containers’ (Alum Line, Featherlite ,Hawes ). You might just have more money in your pocket at the end of the year!”
