“There’s one commonality with every cattleman I’ve talked to – they are all seeking higher productivity because they know it’s essential for profitability,” says rancher Deb Brown, who is president of the Irish Black Cattle Association. Deb Brown and Larry Licking founded Long Pines Land and Livestock in the far northwest corner of South Dakota, along the Montana border and only a few miles from North Dakota. Deb’s son, Sterling, is an active part of Long Pines, taking on more of the day-to-day management.

“In the early and mid-2000s, we had what was probably an average herd of northern cattle. They were nice enough cows. We crossed them on Angus bulls, and it was fine. Until it wasn’t,” says Deb.

Our ideal animal needed to be of moderate frame, have high fertility and longevity, excellent maternal traits, easy to calve, good udders, excellent conformation and disposition, thrive in our weather extremes and have excellent carcass traits,” says Deb. “In other words, highly productive.”

It was a big order.

In 2007, Larry read an article about Irish Black and Irish Red cattle. The breed was developed by a pioneer in cattle genetic selection, Maurice Boney. He spent years developing his ideal female using a combination of American genetics, then crossing them with top Friesen bulls from Ireland. What he got was a very unique breed with exceptional productivity. Then he closed the books and set a system to keep the integrity of the breed’s genetics so that the traits remained predictable.

Photo by R. Hamilton Photography.

Long Pines mature bulls are settling 50 to 70 cows in about 50 days and often have a longevity of five or more breeding seasons.

Long Pines introduced Irish Black bulls purchased from Boney in 2008. But he would only sell them half as many as they usually used. “He told us mature Irish Black bulls would breed 50 to 70 females. And we went on a wing and a prayer and just decided the guy must be right because if he could sell us more bulls he would. It was stressful, and the longest winter of my life. The next spring the conception rates were high. Boney was right,” says Deb.

Irish Black and Red cattle revolutionized the Long Pines herd. “And our customers keep coming back for more,” says Larry.

This American-Made breed is worth checking out to capture traits that so many commercial cattle producers put on their priority list. Long Pines Land and Livestock offers purebred Irish Blacks and Irish Reds cattle through bull and semen sales, and female and embryo sales.

In a feedlot study by Diamond H Livestock, half-blood Irish Black steers were 21% more efficient when compared to the black-hided control group. The carcass results from this study were also impressive. Plus, only having to maintain half the bull battery with no loss in conception is a considerable saving. Long Pines reports that it's common for their bulls to last for five seasons or more.

Because of the extensive controlled breeding program by Maurice Boney, and the extremely stringent requirements of the breed registry, genetic predictability is very high. Due to a lack of numbers, there aren’t the EPDs available as with the common breeds. However, breeders such as Long Pines are using advanced genetic testing to obtain extremely valuable data that fills the void.