Alongside his wife Sarah, daughter Laura and son Ben, James Cooper owns and manages Tomschoice Limousins, one of the most renowned Limousin herds on both sides of the Irish Sea. Based on 130ac in the Nidderdale Valley in North Yorkshire, England, the herd has to date sold seven bulls to studs in the UK and Ireland, while an eighth is currently in the process of negotiation. It is indeed a remarkable achievement for a single pedigree herd, but what makes the story all the more impressive, is the manner in which this success has been achieved.

Foundations

The first cattle purchased on the farm were Limousin X and Hereford X Friesians.

From there, the herd was gradually built up to around 20 cows, and progeny would be sold at store sales just before Christmas and would usually do well. What James soon realised, was that producing 20 animals a year was not going to pay many bills.

Upon that realisation, they decided to look at going down the pedigree route.

“Naively I assumed that if you won at a few shows and everyone would come flocking to buy your animals,” James reflects with a smile on his face.

The farm’s first pedigree purchase was Stoneleigh Ginger at Leyburn in 1996, with a heifer calf at foot and in calf again.

“My friend Tom picked her out – she was Tom’s choice,” James exclaimed.

From that day, the herd has steadily increased numbers to 53 cows calving this year, with the aim to get to around 60.

Humble beginnings

After establishing a pedigree enterprise, Tomschoice cattle started appearing at shows and for the first three years they consistently stood at the wrong end of the line.

“But we were learning,” James says, “and when you are at the bottom of the heap the learning curve is steep and swift.”

For several years, bulls were taken to Carlisle but there was no great sales of note until some success in 2000 with a bull at £4,410 (€5,070). A few show winners, breed and interbreed champions came along in the few years after but all-in-all the herd was still struggling.

By 2009, James was trying to chase the perfect bull, the £100,000 bull.

“We were producing good strong bulls with plenty of cover but they were lost in the market with hundreds of other bulls,” he said.

The nearest Tomschoice Limousins got to their target was one sale at £13,000 (€14,942) and another at £10,000(€11,494), but at that stage most of their bulls had either gone for slaughter, had bad legs or were just not saleable.

It was only then, that a sudden realisation struck: Tomschoice Limousins were producing show winning bulls that no one wanted to breed from. Bulls with bad calving figures that had plenty of condition.

Building a unique brand

The herd needed to make changes. It needed to think about what customers were asking for.

James recalls “the first question when looking at a bull nearly always was, ‘will it calve?’ closely followed by, ‘will it kill me?’ and then ‘will the calves grow?’ Another remark often made was ‘the bull has too much condition on, he’ll just melt away’.”

The Limousin Society Bull Survey in 2011 also confirmed this, with the top three requirements from breeding bull customers being; easy calving, docility and over feeding of sale bulls.

It was with this realisation that Tomschoice Limousins set about developing a brand that had a unique selling point.

Something that would differentiate Tomschoice Limousins from the rest and ultimately create higher demand for its cattle.

The first port-of-call was to deal with calving difficulty.

“We did not just want easy-calving as we didn’t want to produce cattle with narrow hips and no growth,” James said.

“Therefore thinking slightly laterally, we decided upon trying to purchase a bull with short gestation, reasoning that if the calf was in the cow for a shorter period of time it would be smaller.”

He was decent looking, but most importantly he was in the top 1% of the breed for gestation length whilst still being in the top 25% of the breed for 400 day growth

There is research supporting this point, showing that the increase body weight of a calf from six-to-nine months is about three times greater than the increase from three-to-six months and by 230 days, foetal growth is at around 0.33kg per day.

With sights set on short gestation, the next challenge was to find a suitable bull.

“We purchased Homebyres Drummie, at Carlisle in May 2010,” James recalls.

“He was decent looking, but most importantly he was in the top 1% of the breed for gestation length whilst still being in the top 25% of the breed for 400 day growth.”

Unfortunately, this first attempt proved to be unsuccessful as the bull turned out to be only be semi-fertile.

Back to find another bull, Kaprico Eravelle was purchased. He was in the top 1% for gestation and the top 1% for 400 day growth. His locomotion was good, he had a decent head, had super length, a very big pair of testicles and had a lovely temperament.

“We had our first calves out of him in December 2010. They all but fell out of the cows at around 282 days. They were so small, I remember thinking ‘what have we done?’ Then suddenly at about six-to-eight weeks old, somebody must have been in the shed overnight with a bicycle pump and pumped them all up. They were performing exceptionally; plump calves and super growth rate.”

We have lost one or two good looking animals following this policy but the herd is much better without them

From this point, Tomschoice Limousins has consistently out-performed the breed average for gestation length, something that has become a major, unique selling point.

To tackle docility, the farm started to halter-train everything on-farm as yearlings.

While it was convenient for customers, it was primarily used as a method of selection. The farm operated a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ rule to eliminate animals with poor temperament. “We have lost one or two good looking animals following this policy but the herd is much better without them,” James pointed out.

Catch the eye

And while figures are becoming more and more important, bulls still need to look the part and satisfy a good stock person’s eye.

Thinking back to potential customers complaining that bulls were too fat, over conditioned and unfit, a decision was made to sacrifice a small paddock and to turn bulls out every day after weaning.

“We find that they are waiting at the door every morning wanting to go out,” James said. “We rarely get locomotion issues now as the exercise keeps them fit.”

Following on from that, calves are weighed every 100 days.

“We found that they were doing just as well with the additional exercise; the young bulls particularly had less fat cover and looked raw,” he explained.

“What we are now seeing is that we are producing bulls with reduced 400-day weights as we rein in the feeding regime but at the same time the bulls are of higher genetic worth and their progeny will grow at a superior rate.”

Bonus territory

When the herd finally started to produce a unique product, the decision was made to go one step further and offer a product with added value for money. A high health status is the first thing. The herd is Johnes and BVD free which has been made very significant since the Limousin Society started health declarations at sales in 2007.

All bulls are also semen tested prior to sale and James even guarantees farmers their money back if the bull doesn’t work. Finally, all bulls sold have a full DNA and myostatin tests and their genetic indexes are updated accordingly.