About Peak Dot: Peak Dot Ranch consists of 9000 acres including 3500 acres of tame hay in the “Wood Mountain Hills”, one of the elite ranching areas in Saskatchewan. The Ranch is made up of rolling hills and trees, with creeks that run all winter and spring fed dams. Peak Dot Ranch has been in the purebred business for over 40 years and is now one of the larger purebred Angus outfits in Canada. They run approx 750 cows and sell around 250 bulls annually, which are marketed through a spring sale, as well as a December sale.
I arrived at Peak Dot a few days ago and am having a wonderful time staying with Carson and Lana Moneo. Had a busy start here, as they’re in the middle of 2-3 week AI & ET program. My first day was spent helping AI cows that they run in a partnership program with Owen Cairns and Tracy Weist from Hillcrest Enterprises. Hillcrest runs one of the leading commercial recipient herds in the nation and has been running an embryo program for Peak Dot the last two years. In 2010, Peak Dot also began a new business venture with Hillcrest Enterprises in the form of Hillcrest Feedlot - a newly constructed 3000 head feed yard, 40 minutes east of Peak Dot Ranch. The goal is to fill the feedlot with all Peak Dot sired cattle & provide marketing options for Peak Dot customers.
I arrived at Peak Dot a few days ago and am having a wonderful time staying with Carson and Lana Moneo. Had a busy start here, as they’re in the middle of 2-3 week AI & ET program. My first day was spent helping AI cows that they run in a partnership program with Owen Cairns and Tracy Weist from Hillcrest Enterprises. Hillcrest runs one of the leading commercial recipient herds in the nation and has been running an embryo program for Peak Dot the last two years. In 2010, Peak Dot also began a new business venture with Hillcrest Enterprises in the form of Hillcrest Feedlot - a newly constructed 3000 head feed yard, 40 minutes east of Peak Dot Ranch. The goal is to fill the feedlot with all Peak Dot sired cattle & provide marketing options for Peak Dot customers.
Above is a photo of AI'ing in progress. We AI'd to SAV Bullet 0473 (pictured below left) & SAV Eliminator 9105 (pictured below right) and most of the cows were on their 2nd and 3rd calves - a lot of Predominant, Dynamite and Capacity daughters. The next day we flushed 14 donors - all Predominant daughters, bred to SAV Bullet or SAV Eliminator - & then implanted embryos in afternoon. Today followed much the same pattern, flushing 15 cows – a lot of Dynamite females but also some different bloodlines (as opposed to Dynamite and Predominant daughters). Also implanted more embryos (implanted close to 170 embryos and also froze a lot). The weather has been so unpredictable: it seems to rain all the time - everywhere is so saturated; there's lots of land not seeded yet (& getting VERY late to plant crops - such a short growing period makes it really hard); and the rain is meant to stick around for a while, with 50-75ml predicted over next week.
I’m already loving every moment here at Peak Dot & really looking forward to the rest of my stay. Hopefully in next few days we will start to take photos of the donor cows for catalogues, do more AI programs next week, haul bulls to pasture, tour around the herds …. Can’t wait to see what else is in store!!
