ABOUT US
The Batty Family's roots are in agriculture as far back as we can track. We have been at our present location for four generations and have been breeding Simmentals since the late seventies. A serious back injury in 1999 forced us to sell the majority of the cattle and kept only a few Full South African Import females. After somewhat recovering we continued to import and build a herd of exclusive South African Fleckveih Genetics.
ABOUT THE CATTLE
Full South African Flecveih
My brother and I had discovered in the early 1990's that there was very unique Fleckveih Genetics in South Africa and they had been there over a century. This was appealing to us as the conditions there were harsh at times and herds were managed as range animals rather than the high management Fleckveih genetics coming from Europe. When the World Congress was scheduled for South Africa in the mid 1990's we convinced our father (Jim Batty) to attend. He returned with a lot of photos and videos that really captivated our interest. We went back the next year and catalogued all the major herd's and proceeded with our first importation. We were interested in genetics that contained at least 15/16 South African content. This proved difficult as they import new blood from Germany and Austria to keep expanding the gene pools.
Throughout the fall of 1996, we organized our first importation of embryos which landed here for planting in April of 1997. Since then we continued to import embryos from only the most elite. This has allowed us to build a very strong herd of females. We also took the approach of retaining all four top females instead of marketing them. This has allowed our cow families to build and develop. We are now in a position where we can showcase the herd. We have been breeding exclusively with bulls raised on our own Farm or bulls raised on my brother Ron's Farm in British Columbia.
FEEDING AND DEVELOPMENT
We have strived to produce the best breeding stock possible for our customers' success. We develop and market our cattle very different than most cattle breeders. They are managed on hay and grass even after weaning. They receive no high energy food or supplements other than salt and mineral. We mostly fall calve and the bulls will get a very limited amount of oats for January, February, and March, but they are usually fourteen to fifteen months old before January comes around. The bulls then go to grass for another season and are marketed as two year old bulls the next winter and spring. The females are bred to calve as three year olds. This approach allows us to develop the cattle much slower than conventional means, but we have found this makes excellent breeding animals that last considerably longer than conventional animals, especially when it it comes to bulls, where breeding into their teens is relatively common.
We also have found that buy taking more time to develop allows us to really reduce our input costs to the point where it costs us less for a two year old bull than a highly managed and fed yearling.
BULLS
We usually have a good inventory of bulls for sale year round.
FEMALES
The cow families are now mature and we will be offering females for sale privately.