Gerald Fry

[PureCountry]

Kaiser wrote: "I would tend to disagree
Mr. Goodrich, everything that glitters
"IS" gold. Or the equivalent of gold
anyway. It's all in our attitude. If you
look at that shooter glass after you
have emptied it and the glitter in the
bottom is not gold, we tend to think of
it as something other than good and want
to rid ourselves of it. If we think it
is gold, or something good, we just
enjoy the experience."

Whatever you say, 'cause whatever you
just said in all that makes as much
sense as an elevator in an
outhouse.....I think. lol

[grassfarmer]

Yes, congratulations Per - I have a lot of respect for the WSGA and I'm sure you'll make an able leader.

So returning to the topic has Fry or anyone else any theories regarding the length of head on female cattle and whether that is always linked to the longer back/higher maintenance type?

[per]

Is there a correlation from Fry's measurements to eye appeal? In other words can you get the right relationships between girth and top line etc by looking at them?

A cow needs to look like a female. I dislike long necks and the crown of the head has to be even or above the back line. I also don't like long narrow heads and go for 1/3 shoulders, barrel and hind end. Not a thing scientific about this but these seem to be the type that work on grass on this outfit. So that goes to the original question, does measuring have any correlation to those visual traits?

[perfecho]

As per Per.....is Fry's method a "yardstick measurement" for what some "oldtimers" would consider balance and eye appeal?

[rkaiser]

I think that you can train your eye to predict a higher linear measurement score, but what is eye appeal? We have seen what eye appeal has done in the show ring.

If the old rancher you speak of, is identifying a bull that would more than likely be the bull who would win out in a battle to breed females in the wild, he may pick a higher scoring linear measured bull.

We were talking about the cow herd developed naturally on the Aleutian Islands, and from what we all saw, the masculine, heavy fronted bulls with balance and moderate frame and size created a herd of fairly compact and hardy beasts. I would suggest that a frame 7, pencil gutted, barley eatin Agribition Champion would get his ass kicked on the Aleutian Islands.

[rkaiser]

http://www.alaskameat.com/

they look pretty funky to me....

[PureCountry]

All the mature bulls have the same
admirable qualities - heart girth, short
necked, big crest, very masculine, not
leggy, and as thick in the chest as they
are in the hip, maybe even thicker. All
these things create the kind of "eye
appeal" I look for in a herd sire.
That's my opinion.

The young cattle are always green
looking in a natural grass based herd
like these Alaska cattle. They don't
look like most of us think a yearling
should, because we've become accustomed
to 1400lb yearlings, unfortunately.
Somehow we've forgotten that there's a
secret recipe to getting cattle to
1400lbs in 12 months, consisting of
barley, silage, supplements and
hormones.