Our Program
***A PERFORMANCE LEGEND FOR 70 years***
TOP QUALITY PERFORMANCE BULLS TO SIRE TOP QUALITY FEEDER CALVES WITH UNIFORMITY, CONSISTENCY, AND EXCELLENCE. CROSSBREED WITH THE BEST! Or add more consistent performance to your purebred herd with our linebred outcross genetics.
The March 2023 Charolais Journal’s article documents the added value of Charcross calves: “White Gold…” CHAROLAIS March 2023 JOURNAL by EDJE – Issuu — flip the pages to page 22.
OUR 2026 SPRING Bull Sale is Saturday, APRIL 18th. 100 bulls offered. Auction starts 12:30 p.m. MDT at Great Falls Livestock Auction, Great Falls, Montana. Online bidding and telephone bidding is available with pre-registration at Western Livestock before the sale day.
Cobb Charolais is one of the largest registered Charolais herds in the USA, with over 650+plus registered enrolled females. Our herd has been closed, selectively linebred and culled for 70 years for a consistent and uniform balance of fertility, milk, docility, outstanding feedlot conversion gains, carcass traits, early maturity and sound conformation, all raised within our harsh, challenging Northern mountain foothills environment. Wintertime temperature swings of 70-100 degree differences within 24-hour periods are common, due to the roll–sometimes 100 mph+–of warming chinook winds off the mountainsides. Our cattle have to express the resiliency demanded by these conditions. The ranch ranges in elevations from 4500 feet up to summer breeding pastures at 6000 feet. We do not PAP test our bulls, as the results are accurate only at the elevation where the PAP test is taken, not for other elevations. Additionally “brisket disease,” pulmonary hypertension, dropsy, “mountain sickness” or heart failure in cattle at the higher elevations is unknown in the Charolais breed.
Our animals are not bred for the goals of the show ring, but rather to fit the demands of the beef business—from birth to slaughter in the quickest possible time with the greatest possible profit. We have dehorned, scurred and polled animals in two calving herds, spring and fall, with only the top half of the bull calf crops offered for auction in yearly April and November sales. Only the best on test, only the best for sale. All are “one brand” and home raised, performance and fertility tested here at home in our own feedlot at 5000 feet elevation.
WHAT IS THE COBB SECRET? EFFICIENT LINEBRED ECONOMICS
Early in the 1960’s, the Cobbs experimented. Buddy built his own small feedlot, successfully fed out and marketed young Charolais bulls for a local Montana supermarket chain under the trade name of “Charmont–Red Yearling Beef”–one of the nation’s first “branded beef” programs. But after realizing the explosive potential of their purebred Charolais as top performance beef cattle, the Cobbs concentrated their efforts toward seedstock production. From this valuable experiment, they learned data which enabled them early on to raise a specific “type” of Charolais, one that would grow and finish out to a top quality carcass more quickly and efficiently. Linebreeding increases the homozygosity of these desirable traits for more consistency and predictability, especially when used for outcrossing or crossbreeding.
As early as 2003, 36 head of newly banded Cobb purebred Charolais feeder steers averaged 3.77 lbs. of gain per day, with a 3.83 lb/day dry matter conversion, NO GROWTH IMPLANTS OR ANY ARTIFICIAL HORMONES. From this same group of steers averaged a dressing percentage of 63.7% off an average 693 lb. carcass, live weight of 1088 lbs., averaging 2.2 sq. inch ribeye per cwt. And these superior feeder steers were CULLS from the 2002 spring crop of bull calves BEFORE the best were placed on performance test. Their half-brothers and cousins were tested, then culled again, and 150 remaining bulls were offered in our April 2003 sale to our usual crowd of commercial and some purebred producers, with many repeat buyers. A COBB BULL SALE OFFERS YOU ONLY THE BEST ON TEST, ONLY THE BEST FOR SALE–GUARANTEED.
The cows are studies of excellence in themselves. The “stacking” of performance upon performance in the Cobb female pedigree has produced a cowherd unequalled in its genetic ability to produce and reproduce superior beef animals at a profit. For 70 years, in one of the most demanding of environments, we have concentrated on reproductive efficiency, always selecting for replacement females that possess the genetic prepotency for fertility, calving ease, milk production, easy-fleshing phenotype and quiet, docile temperament to offer their own personal contributions towards their progeny’s performance ability. Sound, reality-based cattle.
Replacement heifers with MT Nat’l Guards on Benchmark Rd., Ahorn Basin Fire of July 2007.
70 years of selection for calm dispositions and docility.
We now genetically test our bulls through Quantum Genetix, the originators of leptin testing, of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada.
They are tested for the same terminal cross characteristics we had tested with Neogen Labs.
We DNA tested our herd sires since 2006 with Neogen’s Igenity commercially-oriented Beef Profile Report:
The updated benchmark report for carcass characteristics shows how our herd sires compare with the 180,000 other bulls of 17 breeds in the updated Neogen Geneseek Igenity Beef Report USA database. The scoring demonstrates the measurable quantity of desirable genetic traits inherent in the animals. Generally higher scores are more desirable, EXCEPT in the traits for RFA, or Feed Efficiency, where a lower score is better. A tight set of numbers shows predictability and consistency. In addition to their gain performance test data, the ultrasound data on every sale bull over the past 20+ years demonstrates our herd’s trends of producing low backfat carcasses with the bulls’ weights demonstrated in more muscle, cutability, and good ribeyes as well, along with that profit-enhancing feed efficiency. All highly heritable traits to be passed onto their calves, providing especially good balance for crossbred calves with traits from their British breed dams.
WHAT IS THE COBB SECRET? EFFICIENT LINEBRED ECONOMICS
ALL OUR BULLS ARE “ONE-BRAND” AND HOME-RAISED, DEVELOPED ON-SITE ON OUR RANCH BULL TEST STATION, selected with real-world performance records, backed by 70 YEARS OF PERFORMANCE RECORDS. EPD’s and carcass ultrasounds available. Fertility-tested and guaranteed for the breeding season.
All good reasons to buy your next set of bulls from Cobb Charolais.
M035, ABC Magico Toro M606303
ABC AQUILINO’S E246 SON, M901931, during his first breeding season as a yearling, July 19, 2018.
Cobb Upper Ranch feedlot & bull testing station
