A new gift arrived last week at the University of Alberta's Kinsella Ranch, courtesy of Senator Dan Hays.

They received 78 Hays Converter cattle, which is a unique research breed for Alberta.

Dean of the Faculty of Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences at U of A, Dr. Stanford Blade, says Dan Hays' father, Harry Hays, had the idea to create this breed which would be perfectly suited for Alberta.

"His approach was to do crossings between Hereford, which makes sense from an Alberta context, but then to use Brown Swiss, and Holstein cattle to try and bring in all the traits that he felt were important to Alberta."

Blade says, the breed was originally created by a specific regime of crossing within the three breeds.

"First they were doing a lot of culling as they were trying to find those specific traits around everything from body form, feet, all kinds of things that certainly Harry Hays was starting to look for, and now that those traits have all been established, they do breed true, and really they're a nice synthesis of all of the very aspects that they were originally looking for in the first three way crossed that they were doing."

Blade says, the best thing about the Hays Converters, is they mature quickly, meaning they reach their selling weight faster.

They have never had Hays Converters at their research ranch before, so it will be a nice addition, Blade says.

"The addition of this herd is going to give us a chance then to start to look at even other kind of things, like some of the qualities of the Hays Converter cattle in consideration to the other genetics that we have out at the research ranch."

Blade says, It's an exciting opportunity since U of A has a number of research programs, and Graduate students, doing work on livestock production, specifically around livestock genomics.

"It will allow us to tease out some of those questions of genetic value and what it is, how we can actually manage some of those traits more effectively, not only by the old methods of kind of doing this by eye or by observation, but by using these very powerful genomics techniques that will allow us to make breeding progress much more quickly."

Blade says, in his conversations with Dan Hays, he thinks it has always been a desire to use the cattle commercially, and he believes there is breeding stock in Britain and Australia.

They received 73 cows and five bulls, and Blade says, more Hays Converters will be joining the herd at the Kinsella Ranch next year.

 

Send your news tips, story ideas and comments to jgiles@goldenwestradio.com