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Eastern NE KS | You can bet the ET breeders are considering the dam as seriously as any AI sire. If you follow the cutting horse industry a winning and therefore popular sire can show up multiple times in a 4 generation pedigree. To me it is amazing how often he may appear.
The difference I see is some breeders are trying for that one super animal vs. many cattle folks are wanting a superior calf crop, year after year. These two thing are not at all alike.
I traveled to Ohio to attend the Champion Hill Annual Production sale 2-4 years before the owner sold out. The farm was heavy into SAV genetics and they did a lot of ET work. I found a pen of full sisters ~ 6 head. While birth dates covered 2-4 week spread, the weanling heifers' current weight spread 200-250 pounds.
That was quite disappointing. Sale revenue across the pen was surprisingly strong. The top seller set the stage for the siblings with buyers bidding up on them in hope that she would hit her stride and mimic the attributes of the 'best' of the bunch. For the sale, not just this pen, there were several heifers sold for around $50k. The sales manager always announced the buyers name. And the Junior Angus Show 'industry' rolls on.
When addressing your situation, you have a better feel for both the positive and negative attributes of bull in question. If you can assess that the positive has a great chance of contributing more to your herd then I'm not concerned that you dipped into the same pool. Just remember, the half siblings you talked about share somewhere close to just 25% each other's genes. The prospective bull to buy is half that assuming he is sired by a fairly unrelated bull. My point is don't let your(my) imagined affinity for the grand old bull cover up a serious evaluation of the prospect.
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Since we’re talking bulls
