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Sitz Angus

I have known the Sitz family since they were a small outfit. They are very nice people and have grown their business well. They have very good cattle that do perform well in most conditions. That being said I still can't pencil heifers at $1200 let alone $2250! I use all Sitz bulls and they have really helped my program. Seems like the rest of the country found out about the upwards bull as they were very hot items. The upwards calves are awesome, easy calvers that grow real well. I couldn't afford to buy at their sale but they are good friends and I am glad that they did so well.
 
cowboyup said:
I have known the Sitz family since they were a small outfit. They are very nice people and have grown their business well. They have very good cattle that do perform well in most conditions. That being said I still can't pencil heifers at $1200 let alone $2250! I use all Sitz bulls and they have really helped my program. Seems like the rest of the country found out about the upwards bull as they were very hot items. The upwards calves are awesome, easy calvers that grow real well. I couldn't afford to buy at their sale but they are good friends and I am glad that they did so well.

I just read where Upward semen was selling for $200 a straw since the bull quit producing semen as a 5 year old :shock:
 
Oldtimer said:
cowboyup said:
I have known the Sitz family since they were a small outfit. They are very nice people and have grown their business well. They have very good cattle that do perform well in most conditions. That being said I still can't pencil heifers at $1200 let alone $2250! I use all Sitz bulls and they have really helped my program. Seems like the rest of the country found out about the upwards bull as they were very hot items. The upwards calves are awesome, easy calvers that grow real well. I couldn't afford to buy at their sale but they are good friends and I am glad that they did so well.

I just read where Upward semen was selling for $200 a straw since the bull quit producing semen as a 5 year old :shock:

that will proabably slow down the commercial guys, or at least this one it would. the cost of Upward sons will probably not be going down then either.
 
It can sometimes hurt a sale to get too good-Sitz's have been around too long for it to happen there I imagine. I've seen outfits where they kept adding bulls to dilute the average so commercial guys keep coming-it doesn't always work out so well. Sitz's is one Montana outfit I always wanted to visit but never managed to get there in my wanderings.
 
Northern Rancher said:
It can sometimes hurt a sale to get too good-Sitz's have been around too long for it to happen there I imagine. I've seen outfits where they kept adding bulls to dilute the average so commercial guys keep coming-it doesn't always work out so well. Sitz's is one Montana outfit I always wanted to visit but never managed to get there in my wanderings.

the Sitz sale is about like what Schaff's say about theirs..."affordable for the commercial cattlemen." :? :roll:
 
Nope. He was bred exactly like what we wanted. Traveler 23-4x Rito 054.
He was so bad we returned him (after he tried to tear up our stock trailer twice--once coming home (they said he would settle down) and then again when we returned him a couple of weeks later after he didn't 'settle down.' We had to choose another bull out of the leftovers and that bull was nice. Didn't think I would like his breeding tho, but he turned out fine--Vance Top Dawg and I can't think right now of the Traveler bull that was in the pedigree, but that particular line went on to be famous for making good cows.

Sitz used to have a problem with dispositions in their bulls. I have heard now that they hire someone to walk amoung them during the winter to
calm them down and that they are better. We haven't been to a Sitz
sale for ages; but they must be doing a lot of things right...
 
I think alot of the wildness in cattle come from the way they are handled.I bought some bred heifers out of North Dakota 8 years ago and they came of a ranch with dirt bike cowboys they are plenty wild. The feeding program is also important pail fed cattle are gentler then feeder wagon cattle. This I've noticed on my own replacement heifers last years were fed with a feeder wagon they are in with my weaned heifers now being pail fed for a couple months.

Having used Sitz Alliance and Sitz Value I can say they have no disposition problems with those genetics.
 
Oldtimer said:
cowboyup said:
I have known the Sitz family since they were a small outfit. They are very nice people and have grown their business well. They have very good cattle that do perform well in most conditions. That being said I still can't pencil heifers at $1200 let alone $2250! I use all Sitz bulls and they have really helped my program. Seems like the rest of the country found out about the upwards bull as they were very hot items. The upwards calves are awesome, easy calvers that grow real well. I couldn't afford to buy at their sale but they are good friends and I am glad that they did so well.

I just read where Upward semen was selling for $200 a straw since the bull quit producing semen as a 5 year old :shock:

I heard he is back and producing again
 
We sell alot of two year olds, some fall bulls and then some yearlings. Each different ages of bulls have a different disposition. The yearlings are ussually the best as they see people every day from the time they are weaned. The two year olds are ussually next as they see people the first winter and then go to pasture and don't see anything but a cowboy and a horse all summer and then they see people over the winter before they are sold, and then the fall bulls don't see anyone after they are weaned as they go right to grass for the summer. We try to walk through all of them every day but some never get as good as you hope.

Nothing spooks a bull more than a trailor ride, especially when he is by himself. No matter which bull it is, we always recommend that they never turn the bull into a pen all by himself. When he gets to his new home he is in a new strange place, just rode a noisy trailor, and now by himself - that is a recipe for a disaster.
 
BRG has it just right. Anymore I load sale bulls by myself after having too much ''help''. Come spring there are a lot of hormones floating around in breeding bulls. One of the reasons I prefer to deliver bulls.
 
BRG said:
We sell alot of two year olds, some fall bulls and then some yearlings. Each different ages of bulls have a different disposition. The yearlings are ussually the best as they see people every day from the time they are weaned. The two year olds are ussually next as they see people the first winter and then go to pasture and don't see anything but a cowboy and a horse all summer and then they see people over the winter before they are sold, and then the fall bulls don't see anyone after they are weaned as they go right to grass for the summer. We try to walk through all of them every day but some never get as good as you hope.

Nothing spooks a bull more than a trailor ride, especially when he is by himself. No matter which bull it is, we always recommend that they never turn the bull into a pen all by himself. When he gets to his new home he is in a new strange place, just rode a noisy trailor, and now by himself - that is a recipe for a disaster.

Angus 62 said:
BRG has it just right. Anymore I load sale bulls by myself after having too much ''help''. Come spring there are a lot of hormones floating around in breeding bulls. One of the reasons I prefer to deliver bulls.

Good points from both of you. If I am buying bulls, I never buy just one. It is always best to have at least two in the trailer and in the corral so they can keep each other company.

When my dad was raising registered Herefords and selling a hundred or so bulls per year, we found that it sure kept them more gentle if we fed them by hand. Just walking through and being with them makes a world of difference in their dispositions. One year we got several self feeders, each holding about five tons of feed. These were put out in good-sized pastures. All we had to do was keep feed in the feeders and make sure the windmills were working. That was an easy summer for feeding the bulls, labor wise, but some of them were pretty woofy on sale day in October. We went back to hand feeding for this reason.
 
I've only seen one bad bull meltdown in a trailer-we stopped after about an hour on the road and he was flipping out but by the time we got to where he was going he was fine. Cattle that are naturally quiet are pretty tough to make wild ours only come to the yard to get pregtested and are quiet as dead pigs for the most part. It's the ones that are a bit genetically inclined to be sketchy-they don't need too much encouragement management or handling wise to perform at their full potential. The Sitz Value bull always struck me as a pretty good kind of bull.
 
Northern Rancher said:
I've only seen one bad bull meltdown in a trailer-we stopped after about an hour on the road and he was flipping out but by the time we got to where he was going he was fine. Cattle that are naturally quiet are pretty tough to make wild ours only come to the yard to get pregtested and are quiet as dead pigs for the most part. It's the ones that are a bit genetically inclined to be sketchy-they don't need too much encouragement management or handling wise to perform at their full potential. The Sitz Value bull always struck me as a pretty good kind of bull.

probably wore himself out. :lol:
 
It's funny to think of it-if we'd never of stopped to check on him his whole psychotic episode would of went unnoticed-he was quiet to load and quiet when he came off lol.
 
I thought that the Upward bull calves were some of the better calves I've seen out and around Angus circles this late summer and fall. I think the bull offers some good. Looks like they will grow a lot and might be on the larger end of the spectrum of Angus cattle, depending on what you like. Wouldn't bother me much. At one breeder's place the Upward sire group (when sire groups were sorted up) were the most "active" in the pen. Just one place on one day, so I wouldn't call it entirely scientific measurement.

Heck, we're still trying to figure out which old bulls worked well. Always an evolution and information comes too late in this cattle business. We pretty much figure out what worked several breeding seasons after the decision was made. Can't go back and continue a good thing or quit a bad thing until it's too late.

:wink:
 
Not trying to beat a dead horse here, just wanted to clear up something...the bull I spoke of was delivered by Sitz and unloaded
at the vet clinic. When he came out of the trailer he put Sherry and
the vet on the fence...and when we loaded him into our trailer, we
had the gate open to the nose of the trailer and he just kept going...
right into the nose. Raised the roof, but it was a stout made trailer,
thankfully. We got him home and unloaded him, he never did quit
pawing the ground when you walked by. The day we took him back,
we opened the gates and he took Mr. FH every chance he got; then
when we got him in the trailer and shut the back gate, the fellow
from Western Ranch Supply happened to drive up and this bull was
doing his best to tear up the trailer. The fella said, "You aren't gonna
keep him in that trailer!! Mr. FH ran and got in the pickup, drove forward and slammed on the brakes a few times...
and we got on the road back to Harrison...and when Jim Sitz had us back up the the pasture to let him
out, he tried to take Jim through the trailer. When the gate swung open,
that bulls back almost touched the top of the trailer he made such
a big lunge to get out and he ran off...

Like I said, I didn't want to beat a dead horse, but guess I needed to
tell the rest of the story...he had two weeks to settle down and if cattle
are wild at our place, they've had lots of chances NOT TO BE!!
 

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