The Mastergen Sales team were delighted to be invited by Masterrind for an informative couple of days learning more about Europe’s largest co-opertive and their sire program.

The Master-Beef presentation gave us an eye-opener to the research and development Masterrind is investing in to produce a new breed of beef suitable for the use of Dairy which will keep calving ease to a minimal and maximize calf muscle growth when the calf is born. The traditional double-muscled Belgian Blues have traditionally been too-hard on the calving ease and therefore different blues ie: British Blues or Blue Crosses are alternative options the beef sire program is looking into.

During our visit we viewed two beef units which reared and finished beef, they also enjoyed showing off their pure beef cattle in the show ring. A couple of the highlights are pictured below:

A pedigree Limousin herd including an incredible 12yr Old cow who had her 9th calf at foot!

The next visit was to an even more impressive Charolais herd. This farmer had recently re-built some of his main farm building due to a fire, his enthusiasm and love for his cattle was certainly evident. He gave us a display of their show-winning bull and took us around the calving pen where his oldest cow at 17 years old had just calved down for the 15^th time! She was an incredible individual and a credit to the breeder.

The next day the team visited one of the bull studs owned by Masterrind just outside of the town Haselunne. Masterrind has the fourth largest selection program in the World, purchasing 200 bulls a year from 7,000 genotyped bulls and purchasing 800 embryos a year to maintain their elite breeding programs.

The afternoon herd visit was to one of Germany’s most renowned show-breeders of Henrik Willes.

Here we were lucky enough to view some of their team prior to their National show. Which also included the Dam of newly-released Sire AVATAR-RED. This impressive Awesome Granddaughter of the two-time WDE Grand Champion: Blondin Redman Seisme EX97 showed HUGE promise. She has an impeccable udder, so balanced throughout and looked to make and even better cow for the future.

The last visit of the trip was to view the progeny group prior to the National show, this consisted of a very impressive group of 4^th lactation Beart daughters and some early milking Puma daughters.

The Bearts in my opinion were anything I expected of the bull, strong, powerful mature cows, with excellent feet and legs and udders (despite seeing them after milking) showed a lot of texture and smooth attachments. Honest, hard-working milking cows!