The Dry Creek Limousin herd is known for its temperament, milking ability and soft, easydoing, well-muscled cattle with adequate fat cover.   At Dry Creek Limousins, we buy in selected females and use AI sires that compliment our lines.   We aim for soft, feminine females and quality, production bulls that are structurally sound and excel on a minimum of fuss.

We run our bulls together in large paddocks.  Prospective buyers are left to themselves to walk amongst the bulls and make their selections.  This provides an excellent example of their docility.  As with any breed, never buy a “runner”.   You can, if you wish, view their siblings and parents (apart from an AI sire).  This is very important when buying a bull. The vendor must care about their product.   We took note of a comment from one of our repeat buyers –

“We leave the breeding to the stud owner and rely on their integrity because they know more about their cattle than anyone else.”

An important prerequisite for the Limousin breed is docility.  Why was this an issue?

In the 80s and 90s, Limousin bulls were highly sought after and commanded good money. So why would you steer a handy bull which was flighty and receive steer prices when as a bull you'd receive $1,000s.  Also, there were many instances where cull bulls and females were sent to the sales but were purchased for breeding, thinking they've got a good deal!  Unfortunately, this is still in practice today.  The breeder must be prepared to cull for docility as well as conformation.   One of the most difficult decisions to make is to cull a magnificent bull or cow when their docility is not acceptable.  Limousins are in the forefront with docility scoring.  Now, other breeds are looking at their docility and are following Limousins’ criteria.

This could be opening a "can of worms".  We called in on a customer of ours who had bought 2 bulls.  He was in a paddock with some breeders (another breed).  A nearby cow shot her head up in the air and took off.  We mentioned if she was ours she would be long gone.  The reply was you're a bit hard, she doesn't know your car.  We said 'that not only had you driven up to our bulls, you then walked (without us) through our bulls -  having never seen those bulls before'.  'Oh' was the reply. 

What gets the blame if she produces a runner???? The bull !!   

The Future:

With the demands of the Beef Industry in mind, we’ll endeavour to breed the best Limousin cattle we can for commercial cattlemen.  We look for traits that increase profitability, from the bulls and  the females, of muscle, milk, maternal, docility, low birthweights/calving ease and adequate fat cover.