The Genetics the Industry Walked Away From

Emulation, Rito, Ballot of Belladrum — and why the bloodlines the breed stopped marketing are still the right genetics.

By Isaiah Shnurman · Genetic Hedging Solutions

In the late 1980s, a bull was born at the N Bar Ranch in Grass Range, Montana. His name was N Bar Emulation EXT. He was double-bred Emulation 31 — his sire was a son of Emulation 31, and his dam was a daughter of Emulation 31. He would go on to produce daughters that held body condition on grass, bred back reliably, and stayed in herds for a decade.

EXT daughters could raise 60 to 70 percent of their body weight in a calf, and two weeks after the calf was weaned you would not know it was the same cow. That observation — from the people who managed those cattle — describes a cow that the industry has spent thirty years trying to remember.

The industry largely stopped marketing Emulation genetics in the 1990s. The catalog moved on to the next generation of sires. The breed associations promoted new Angus directions. The programs that continued selecting on EXT-influenced cattle did so without much institutional support and against the grain of what the catalogs were featuring. Those programs now have something nobody can buy at a production sale for trend sires.

What the Emulation Line Produced

The Frank and Tom Elliot family at N Bar Ranch documented what Emulation genetics actually delivered across commercial cow herds: maternal function at a level that most performance-focused genetics could not match in real grazing environments. It came out of a simple selection philosophy — breed the cow that works, not the cow that photographs well.

When you linebreed, and then you take a bull with a tight gene pool and throw him on the commercial man's cow herd where the gene pool is huge, it's almost like crossbreeding. EXT was double-bred Emulation 31. That genetic concentration, in a cow herd with broad diversity, produces heterosis effects without breed-crossing.

The Rito family through the Ideal breeding program produced comparable results: structurally correct, fertile, moderate-framed cows with the body capacity to harvest forage and sustain pregnancies without supplemental inputs. The Rito daughters that went into commercial herds stayed there. The programs that maintained Rito genetics while the industry moved to other sires are holding a card the catalog no longer features.

Ballot of Belladrum

Further back in the genetic lineage is Ballot of Belladrum — a bloodline that traces to the foundation Aberdeen Angus genetics of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, before the breed was exported to North America. These are the cattle that the breed was built from. The prepotency, the structural correctness, and the maternal function that characterized the original Aberdeen Angus were not marketing constructs. They were the result of decades of careful selection in a demanding Scottish environment.

Allen Creek Farm in Westport, Massachusetts is using Ballot of Belladrum genetics alongside Emulation and Rito influence in a working registered Angus program today. There is likely no other program in the American seedstock market doing this. The genetic combination is available from one farm in New England — and the cattle it produces reflect what those bloodlines were built to deliver.

This is not nostalgia. It is genetics research applied to real cattle in a real program. The bloodlines the industry walked away from did not stop working. The industry stopped asking them to.

The Alternative Genetics Argument

The GHS portfolio includes programs built on alternative genetics — Emulation, Rito, Traveler, and Emulous lines with proven mating combinations and methods — alongside programs built on solid and predictable cow families. Both have merit in the right environments and for the right buyers.

The argument is not that older bloodlines are always superior. The argument is that the daughter data — 25 daughters in three different herds over multiple environments — is the standard for proven, and many of the alternative genetics programs pass that standard while many of the aggressively marketed current-catalog sires have not yet been given the time to demonstrate it.

The genetics the industry walked away from are still there, in the programs that held them. The commercial producer who asks for them specifically will find that a small number of registered seedstock programs have exactly what the catalog stopped offering thirty years ago.

That scarcity is also a value.

Build good cattle, and it’s clear blue sky — endless opportunity.

If you would like to discuss this topic further, give Isaiah a call at 515.371.5065, or message or email him at isaiah@genetichedgingsolutions.online.