1.03: Travers Smith ~ Background

(From Chp. 1 ~ 1966, titled "Foundation Work," in a book begun several years ago by SMSmith to document the early history of SBL and Simmental in North America.)

For many years, Travers Smith of Mountain View, Alberta Canada had sought to improve the performance and profitability of his cattle. The Smith Ranch endeavor, since the days of Travers' grandfather, beginning in 1899, had focused on commercial and purebred Herefords. But like most ranches, the Smith one had suffered its share of down times. The Smith men always considered themselves cattlemen, but they had, in various times of financial crisis turned to sheep and horses to keep afloat. Travers endured his own cycles through sheep and horses (arabians, miniature shetlands, etc.) but always with a few beef cattle on the side, knowing that when things improved, the cattle would become the main focus again.

In the 1950s and early '60s, Travers continued his search for ways to improve his Hereford stock. He felt there had to be increased milk production by mother cows if the daily gain of calves was to be improved, but the divide between beef and milk producing animals had resulted in essentially single purpose animals—either beef or milk, but not both.

Travers was open to innovations and tried crossbreeding and Artificial Insemination (AI) before they were generally accepted practices, but the results, though improved in performance, didn't always have the eye-appeal that the market demanded. Many times it seemed a losing battle.

Travers began looking at purebred animals, with high performance and progeny records to get the improvements he wanted, but the process seemed painfully slow. He believed in the value of record keeping and performance, so he joined the Performance Registry International (PRI) and began putting his own animals to the test. (Some of his Hereford testing was still in process as Simmental began its North American explosion. In 1967-8 and 1968-9 Travers' Hereford Herd Sire produced the highest gaining group of five at the Stanford Progeny Testing station at Stanford, Montana, and at Billings, Montana.)

In the meantime, Travers was always seeking new information wherever he could find it. In the spring of 1965, he received a 2-page report (with letter dated March 29, 1965: reproduced hereafter) from Hobart F. Peters, geneticist with the CDA, Lethbridge Research Branch, detailing crossbreeding results for several breeds. Travers was impressed by the Hereford/Brown Swiss superior performance records and determined to pursue that direction.

In addition, over the winter of 1965-66, he witnessed firsthand in a home-ranch/government-supervised performance test, how a neighbor's ¾ Brown Swiss / ¼ Hereford bull included in the test out-performed his (Travers') good Hereford calves: 878 pounds to 600 pounds at 245 days. Clearly, it was time to make some changes.

(For additional information on performance interests, see posts of May 8 & 10, 2010)