American Freedom is a bull with a little different pedigree that we are excited to add to our lineup that will provide some more mating flexibility without taking a step back on quality and productivity. He is a proven calving ease bull with good growth and exceptional marbling. He is a stout, powerfully made bull with great feet, and comes from a great cow family in the Niobrara Red Angus herd. After a life-threatening injury in the spring of 2024, American Freedom semen has been pulled from the open market, and we feel very fortunate that we were able to purchase some of the very limited amount of semen that was available.
L30 is an Energize son that we used as a clean up bull on one set of our cows. He is a very deep-bodied and thick made bull with a great disposition, and comes from our highly productive Lena cow family.
L102 is a Dynasty son with a royal pedigree and a terrific set of EPDs. He is the last natural calf of our Lena U47 donor cow who was probably the most impactful cow in our herd over the last 15 years. We used him as the clean up bull for our yearling heifers this year.
Additional sires represented in the Rouse Red Angus 2023 and 2024 calf crops
After four years of Stockmarket dominating our sire line-up, it finally came time to move on, but in 2023 we didn’t move too far. Blue Chip was our pick of all the great Stockmarket sons out there. He offers the same do-it-all EPD profile of his sire, with an extra emphasis on calving ease. We certainly appreciate his high marbling, with his EPD at the top of the breed and his ultrasound ratio of 137. He is moderate framed but very long bodied, with extra muscle and style.
Paycheck is a bull that Biebers bought from Lundgren Angus Ranch in Kansas. He offers a different pedigree that is unrelated to most of our lines. We seriously considered using Paycheck two years ago, but ultimately went another way. His first set of sons sold at Biebers’ 2023 sale and they were the standout sire group of the entire sale. In fact, the top four high sellers were all Paycheck sons. We didn’t want to make that mistake again, so we made it a priority to use him in 2023. Unfortunately Paycheck is deceased and there is a very limited amount of semen left, but fortunately, we had excellent luck with our limited use, getting 16 pregnancies from 18 straws. Paycheck is one of the very highest WW and YW EPD bulls in the entire Red Angus breed, but is able to do that while keeping frame size in check. He also boasts both marbling and ribeye area at the top of the breed.
D49 is a Stormy son we raised and used as our heifer clean up bull for three years. We decided he was too big to breed heifers and he was with our group of cows at the home farm the next three years. We must have kept him one year too long, as he came up lame on a hind leg just three days into his seventh breeding season, and we decided that would be the end for a bull that has been a real favorite of visitors and neighbors. He was a moderate framed, deep bodied and muscular bull with a great disposition. His dam is an Epic daughter from the great Lena cow family.
Stockmarket is the leading son of Stockman who was the second high seller in the 2018 Bieber Spring Sale. He is a grandson of our Bieber Adelle 297Y donor cow. Stockmarket posts the kind of do-it-all EPD profile that we are striving for in our herd, with heifer safe calving ease, top of the breed growth, strong maternal predictions, and high end carcass traits. We just love our Stockmarket calves and now that we have some daughters in production we like him even more. His sons have been some of the most sought after bulls in the breed the last few years. He was our most used AI sire for four consecutive seasons. We still feel like he is as good of a bull as there is in the breed, but we have had to move away from using the Stockmarket line of sires just because many of our customers need some unrelated bloodlines to use on their Stockmarket influenced cattle.
Energize is our favorite Atomic son who was the high seller in the 2019 Bieber Spring Sale. Like Stockmarket, he is a grandson of our Adelle 297Y donor cow, but his dam is a Hard Drive daughter. He is a moderate framed bull with tremendous depth of body and thickness. We really like what we have seen from our Energize calves, they really stand out for being wide made and heavy boned despite having excellent calving ease. Energize is another sire who is quickly becoming one of the best and most widely used bulls in the Red Angus breed. As much as we like our Energize calves, we decided to move on to his son Jumpstart for the 2023 season.
Flashdrive is a Hard Drive grandson who puts together a really impressive set of data. He has an interesting pedigree, besides being a grandson of Hard Drive, he is a grandson of Forefront, a bull who has done very well in the Bieber and Pieper herds but we haven’t used ourselves, and is also a great-grandson of the Basin Lass 7409 cow who we owned and who did a great job here for us. Flashdrive’s dam has gotten off to a great start with her first four calves, posting an impressive 109 MPPA, and has found her way into the Bieber donor pen. Flashdrive excels in growth and carcass traits, which has given him breed leading Gridmaster and ProS Indexes. We mainly used him on some of our light birth weight cows, and really like what we have seen from his calves thus far.
Hard Drive proved himself to be one of the best bulls in the Red Angus breed in the 2010’s. He is an outcross to most of our herd, while providing breed leading growth, marbling and REA. He has tremendous depth and spring of rib, with above average bone, great feet and an excellent disposition. His sons were really in high demand in the Bieber production sales when he was in use. His dam really did a great job as a donor for Biebers, producing Hard Drive, Deep End and Gladiator, and sold in Denver to Twedt Red Angus for $30,000. We have daughters in production now, and they are doing a great job. Hard Drive semen is very rare, and we are only getting Hard Drive calves through our ET program currently.
Additional Sires which have impacted the Rouse Red Angus Herd
Spartacus is a son of Samurai who was the high selling bull in the 2014 Bieber Red Angus Production Sale. Spartacus is a stout boned, thick, deep bodied bull with a great disposition and feet. He has been a very good calving ease sire for us. His calves have great vigor at birth, which is a hallmark of the Samurai calves as well. We used Spartacus for 5 years, but have moved on to the next generation, using some of the many great Spartacus sons available, including Trojan, Maximus, In The Black, and Gladiator. The only thing keeping us from using this sire line any harder is the number of females in our herd who are already related to him, but rest assured that the Spartacus line will continue to be well represented in our herd.
We feel that Atomic may be the best son of Andras Fusion out there. He is a deep bodied, soggy made bull who has a terrific combination of calving ease, growth, maternal, and carcass traits. We really like the soft structure and easy moving design he transmits to his progeny. After using Atomic as a full fledged sire group for four years, which is rare for a sire in our program, he has been replaced by his son Energize. Despite the fact that we have moved on to Energize, we still think very highly of Atomic, and really like the daughters we have in our herd.
We purchased Deep End as the high selling bull in the fall 2015 Bieber sale. Deep End is a Rollin Deep son who is out of Hard Drive’s dam, combining one of the all time great sires at Bieber’s with one of the most productive cows to come out of their herd. Deep End puts together an impressive combination of breed leading growth and carcass traits. He provides added frame size and length to his progeny, is heavy boned, and has dark red color with a terrific disposition. We have used him both AI and natural service, but unfortunately he suffered a breeding injury while covering cows in 2020 and his natural service career has come to an end.
Rollin Deep was the high selling bull in Biebers’ 2012 sale. He is the leading son of Roosevelt, and his dam is one of the very best cows to come out of Biebers’ herd. Rollin Deep has tremendous depth of body, thickness and a great overall phenotype. His calves have excellent growth and carcass, and his daughters make top notch cows. Much like his sire, Rollin Deep’s sons have been very well received by commercial cattlemen and purebred breeders alike. Rollin Deep semen is hard to come by now, and going forward we will only have a limited number of Rollin Deep progeny coming from our ET program.
Samurai is a Cheyenne son that we raised in 2010 and was purchased by Select Sires. Samurai calves have been doing a great job for us, as well as for Bieber Red Angus and breeders around the country. Nothing makes us happier than seeing the footnote in the Select Sires catalog calling him “one of our best for customer satisfaction”. Samurai has a tremendous spread from low birth weight to high growth. His calves are thick and deep and have excellent structure and movement. His dam was the best cow in our herd for years, and Samurai’s daughters look like they will carry on her maternal success.
