 |
 |
THE INTERNET: HOW GARBAGE IS SPREAD There must be disembodied spirits of some kind out there in the void, floating about and dropping bits and pieces of irrelevant nothings and untruths here and there on the web. Why else would I find a sentence here and there from letters written by me so long ago that I have forgotten them, nor do I recall what newspaper or magazine published them. That information isn't given with the snippets. Taken as they are, out of context, they are meaningless. Is someone out there trying to make me look like an idiot? I wish they wouldn't do that, that's my job. There is also the case of the sentence taken out of the history of the Speckle Park breed of cattle as written by Bill Lamont, who along with his wife Eileen, and Mary Lindsay, was of the three and only founders of the Speckle Park breed of cattle. (There are others out there who like to call themselves founders or originals but if they can bring forth evidence that they did indeed create the breed, bring it on.) Bill related where he bought two Highland heifers (brown) from Mary Lindsay. That sentence, taken out of context, appears on the Web where are found various versions about Speckle Park Cattle, including various versions of origin. Only if one keeps ones sense of humour can these be called hilarious but I should say that some of them actually are funny.That sentence from Bill's own story was floated out there by somebody for some reason. What were they trying to prove? Oh, well, one of my original sayings (I think it's original) is that some of the most dangerous territory in the world can be found between human ears. When I discovered the records of the Speckle Park breed on the Canadian Livestock Records Corporation website, I was appalled at what someone had done to the records of the few animals of mine that were there. Pedigree not available. Pedigree not available!! Ye Gods! I can take my animals back in their pedigrees to COW #1 and to OLD POST. I suppose it was an accident that my cows suddenly had no pedigrees, of course? When I communicated with Canadian Livestock Records Corporation (C.L.R.C.) they informed me - and what else could they do - that they had to go with what was sent to them by the registrar or whoever had been hired, even if there was a mess. Isn't it odd that I, breeder Number Four in the Speckle Park breed and sister of Eileen Lamont, do not know my own cattle? Someone can mess up my records and get away with it and they are deemed right and my word is wrong. Here is the true story (and why would it be otherwise) of how I became involved with what was to become the Speckle Park breed of cattle. As with so many farm children at one time I grew up with a motley herd of cattle, some Red Poll, some who-knew-what. My mother went in to Jerseys and we shipped cream from them. In 1974 we had some Black Angus, from Lamont's, in the Jersey offspring, and I had a Brown Swiss heifer. From the diary of my mother, Winifred, November 30th, 1974: "Bill and Eileen came and brought Christine a heifer. I have to go out sometime and see the heifer. Christine says she is much smaller than Heidi, the Brown Swiss (heifer). That heifer, black with white spots on her belly, was sired by the Black Angus bull, BANDOLIER OF POST OFFICE. I cannot swear to it, but I believe she was out of a Mary Lindsay cow, which makes sense. I called her Speckle Belly or sometimes Silver Belly. As it turned out, she was carrying a speckled bull calf which was drowned in the womb. "Oh, damn," said Bill. I tried resuscitation but it was hopeless. I didn't swear in those days, I learned later. Bill never did swear much, ever. I wasn't really happy with that cow or that line. She was just a bit, "we'll do it my way", and her calves were what one might call baby beef, inclined to get very fat before they grew. Any heifers I kept, although they had nice natures, matured into massive blocks of fat. My second line, which I kept, came about this way. A neighbour's bull hopped into the Lamont pasture near Big Gully Creek and bred a heifer. (After all these years that neighbour is still embarrassed about that.) That bull was, to some extent and purposes, a Black Angus, but the fact is that he had Simmental in him. The heifer he bred was full sister to the first PUSSY CAT bull and the heifers sire was put down only as a speckled bull. In those days a lot of those bulls had the same name: Speckled Bull. Bear in mind that the Lamont's could not possibly know that a famous breed was going to come out of their pastures near Big Gully Creek. The dam of that heifer was put down as BLACK POINTED WHITE COW whose sire was SPECKLE POST. The dam of BLACK POINTED WHITE COW was BANDY#3, born on July 18th, 1964. BANDY#3 was sired by the Black Angus Bull BANDOLIER OF P.O. She was out of COW #1 from Mary Lindsay and Mary Lindsay knew that #1 traced back to the cow from the Formo Family, the cow that started it all back in 1937. The sire of SPECKLE POST was OLD POST, the grand champion Black Angus bull from the well-known breeder, Bill Dillabough, near Coleville Saskatchewan. In his day OLD POST was the highest selling bull at the Regina Bull Sale. After all that, let us return to that heifer accidentally bred by that roving bull. She at least had a pedigree of sorts, as you have seen, and it isn't correct to say it was an accident; the bull knew very well what he was doing. She was still on her mammy at the time. When her calf came the next year she did need some help bringing it into the world but she had a fine strapping heifer calf and did a good job of raising it. The next year Bill asked me if I would keep his coloured heifers along with a bull with my small herd. I knew he wasn't satisfied with the first line, which I did phase out. When he picked them up in the Autumn, he said I could keep one. I said I'd keep the one with Simmental blood in it as I knew he wanted his animals to have black faces, or faces with white hairs scattered through the black. The latter would be the colouring for which, years later, Debbie Ralston would coin the phrase, the perfect phrase of "frosted face" and I know that when she suggested it at a Speckle Park breeders meeting it was agreed that description be used. Although I knew that the white forehead would pop up once in a while I also knew that the Simmental blood would in time be bred out. We never tried to hide what had happened; it wasn't as though we had deliberately introduced pink pointed Maine Anjou or the world's tallest breed the slab faced Chinanina- and then shoved it under the rug only to have it crawl out and bite somebody someday. I wasn't sorry I kept that heifer. She had the long strong back we wanted and a good long hip. She was a heavy milker, too heavy, which meant that when she grew old it could be a problem even though the back attachment of the udder was good. Her female descendants had neater udders, however. She was a good mother and another excellent trait was that she became upset if she found herself on the wrong side of the fence. If a gate was left open or a tree fell on the fence resulting in a general exodus she wasn't content until she was back home, bringing the others behind her. In the days when most farmers milked cows and shipped cream, a bell would often be put around the neck of the boss cow. I put a bell on that cow and fell into the habit of calling her MARY THE BELL COW. Soon after the Speckle Park Association was formed I asked about recording my cows. I NEVER, EVER HAD AN ANSWER NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES I ASKED. Someone was being influenced by a little male chauvinism. It seemed like a case of "There, there, little woman, don't bother your little head about it." I hadn't had that from Bill before, male chauvinism, I mean, not much anyway. It was quite some time before I recorded MARY THE BELL COW under that name and many, many years later that I found out someone had recorded her as MARY JANE #137. I was not amused but I was to be even less amused when I found out more particular things. Meanwhile, MARY THE BELL COW/MARY JANE #137 gave me 12 calves including a set of twins, and then she developed arthritis. In those days we were fortunate in having Inter-Continental Packers on the west side of Saskatoon so I phoned them. When the time came I backed the horse trailer into the corral where I had put the old cow. The horse trailer had a ramp which would make it easier for her to get in. 'Get in," I said to her. She got in. At Intercon she was immediately dispatched. No on and off trailers. No chivvying around, no shouting, and no more stress than was necessary for the cow - or for me. It was a bad day when Intercon shut down and our later efforts to create such a facility as a co-operative was shot down. Of her offspring I kept CARNATION, CLASSIC AND BLIZZARD. Bill was quite taken with them and wished he could buy them but Tom Lamont, who might have had an idea of what would soon happen, told him he didn't think they were for sale. Bill and Eileen moved to Salmon Arm soon after to a beautiful place they acquired in the hills so it was a good thing the cows had not been sold to him. They would have gone to a very different place indeed as it turned out. They were, for me, foundation cows. When I wrote to Canadian Livestock Records Corporation about my records on their website I was sent by mail a copy of papers of what was supposed to be a cow recorded by me (AND SHE CERTAINLY WASN'T) as CHRISTINE'S WHITE COW, #135. No farm name, but her sire was put down as a BULL B who was sired by BANDOLIER OF P.O. and her dam was out down as BLACK SHORTHORN COW, no date. Nothing else. "BLACK SHORTHORN!" I exclaimed LOUDLY. That had to have been SPECKLE or SILVER BELLY, my first cow, the line I discontinued. She sure as blazes wasn't a SHORTHORN, although she was certainly black. I phoned Lamonts. "BLACK SHORTHORN!" Eileen exclaimed loudly. The only Shorthorn they ever had was during their early days on the Blenko Homestead, near Big Gully Creek. They'd bought her from one of the Grahams near Lone Rock. I think that might have been the roan cow which, when I was learning to milk as did all the farm girls worth their salt in those days, Bill and Eileen thought was calm enough for me to milk. She kicked, no amateurs for her, thank you. I could never keep many cows, twelve tops, since most of the land is crop land. I put up fences so I could do rotational grazing (long before men were going to pasture school to learn how) as I cannot stand over-grazed pastures choked with sage brush, or around here, buck brush, which is called by other names elsewhere and which has been developed as a garden shrub, proving again what is a weed in one place is a special plant elsewhere. Because the original females of the Speckle Park breed were often of horned derivation horns or scurs might show up once in a while. I think my records show four animals with horns or scurs. There's nothing wrong with selling a horned or scurred bull to a commercial breeder but I do not think these animals, male or female, should be registered. New breeders should be told of the horned gene. Then there is the red gene. New breeders should be told about that too. Bill did keep a few good red-speckled heifers and Eileen said it was a shame to see good red-speckled heifers butchered. For years, Bill rail-graded animals as did we very early breeders, in order that a female, or less likely a male, should get into the general public. Another reason was that we received a better price, as "colour" in cattle was used by the buyers at the stockyards to discount our cattle. Everything then was supposed to be buckskin. This is completely stupid and in the long run will be seen to have done harm. After that everything was supposed to be black. I have seen, on the C.L.R.C website and elsewhere, errors in the names of some cattle. The registered Black Angus bull CloverDALE Revolution 5W has been turned into CloverLAKE Revolution 5W while the Black Angus Bull BANDolier of P.O has been turned into BARDolier OF P.O. A Bardolier bull Bill and Eileen used was Bardolier of ALTARIO 7X. Some people don't seem to think playing fast and loose with the names matters. I do not agree. I think it's sloppy if not corrected. Anyone can make mistakes but these should be corrected. Why not? The Melchior's had, in a few of their Speckle Park, a Black Angus bull owned by the Batschol group, south of Battleford, Sask. On the applications for recording of his offspring they put his name, breed, registration number and so on. The papers came back with all that deleted. He was just a BLACK BULL. (Oh, yes, and just which BLACK BULL was that?) Try as they might, they could not get it corrected. They also had their bull DUKE changed to DYKE and their bull JOCK turned into JAKE. Couldn't get those corrected either. They were the breeder and owner but they didn't count. One of my great-nephews, Craig Blyth, who hasn't come up against this sort of thing (yet) said in alarm when he heard all of the above, "You can't mess around with registration papers; that's the history!" How right he is, but what happens in livestock breeds is also the history of the humans, good, bad, or indifferent, who control them. I shall now provide THE CORRECT PEDIGREES, and photographs where available, of those cattle owned by me at the time, which were put by someone on the Canadian Livestock Records Corporation website. And in due course I shall add more of mine on www.speckleparkoriginal.com , and of others, as you will discover. Stay tuned, or whatever is said nowadays. Stay connected?
|
