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Chris and Robert Bianchi raise
registered Charolais and commercial cattle in California, about
80 miles south of San Francisco on the central California coast.
The cattle are a joint family operation with Chris’s parents,
Don and Carol Silacci, with help from Robert and Chris’s
daughter Erica. Erica is a sophomore in High School, and is very
involved in the ranch. She makes the fourth generation in this
family operation.
Some of the Bianchi cattle and
Silacci cattle are run together, and some are not. The
commercial cattle are all run separate.
Chris grew up raising cattle with
her parents. “My husband came from a dairy background; his
family had a dairy and then his father sold the dairy and is
raising beef cattle also. Robert grew up in Hollister, which is
not far from here,” says Chris.
“We run approximately 120
purebred Charolais cattle. We also have a couple other herds of
purebred cattle (different breeds), and about 300 head of
commercial cattle as well,” says Chris. “We use the Charolais
bulls we raise, to breed our own commercial cows, so we are
always aware of how they do and to make sure there are no
problems with any bulls we sell to anyone else. We’ve been very
successful using these bulls in our own herds, and we want to
make sure we don’t sell anyone a problem, in bulls they buy from
us.”
Bulls are sold private treaty at
the ranch, and through a number of consignment sales throughout
the year. “We’ve done very well and have had the sale topping
Charolais at various consignment sales around the West,” says
Chris.
“Our bull calves are run in the
hills with their mothers. After we wean them they go to Snyder’s
feedlot (a bull growing facility) at Yearington, Nevada. They
are put on test there, and have complete ultrasound work and
fertility tests. We have all that data on the bulls we sell. We
keep a few here at home, but the majority are fed there,” she
says.
Between the purebred and
commercial cows, the cattle are run on about 6000 acres in the
foothills. Even the purebred cows are run in the foothills
during winter. The Bianches have a few purebred Hereford cows as
well as Charolais. “The Herefords are Erica’s. She has some
Charolais also. The other purebred herd we have are Pinzgaur
cows,” says Chris.
“We used to market a lot of them, but not lately; the Pinzgaurs
are not a very popular breed. We use many of them for our recip
cows, because we know they are good mothers and have good
milking ability,” she explains.
They do some AI breeding, but
mainly use herd bulls in their Charolais herd. “We do quite a
bit of embryo work, however, to utilize a lot of different
bloodlines. We do close to 50 embryo transfers each year,” says
Chris. A veterinarian from the Lander Veterinary Clinic at
Turlock comes to their ranch to do it. “We go through and do all
the preliminary work. We set up all the recip cows, and
synchronize them, and he comes in and puts in all the embryos.”
They have about 100 cows they use
as recips, since they don’t use the same cow over and over.
“Depending on when she calves, we might breed her to a bull the
next time, and put an embryo in her again the following year. We
often rotate the recip cows this way, so they are not always
being used strictly as recips. This allows us a little
variation, and enables us to calve at different times of year
with the embryo calves.”
The purebred cows calve mainly in
the fall, but there are also some spring calvers. The commercial
herd is strictly fall calving. In their climate this is the best
time of year, since they have green pasture through winter.
“Typically our hill pastures start turning green in
November/December, though this year was quite a bit later. Our
pastures sometimes stay green into the first part of June, if we
have some late rains. But usually in May everything starts
turning brown,” she says. The summer months are when the cattle
need to be fed, to augment the lack of pasture.
Most of the purebred cows, and
Chris’s fathers commercial cows, are on a 300 acre piece in
summer—150 acres are used for his commercial cattle and the rest
for the purebred Charolais. About 60 acres of it is planted and
the rest of it is cut and windrowed, for the cows to use during
the dry summer months. “If we have spring calvers, they go to
the permanent pasture, and the rest go onto the dry hay that we
raise and stockpile (windrowed).” This works fairly well to feed
them through the dry months. In November they start bringing the
cows back out into the hills as that pasture greens up.
The ranch grows most of the feed
for the cattle. “We also own a feed store in town. My sister and
my mother take care of that business and my husband, myself and
my father do the cows. Right now we are farming about 750 acres
of grain/hay. Last year the feed situation was so tough that our
pasture is just barely starting to get ahead of the cows now,
that are turned out,” says Chris.
Last year they had to buy feed,
more than usual, and fed a lot of corn stalks. The cows seemed
to do all right on it. Many people in their region had to
downsize their herds. “You can tell the effect this had on their
operations, from the bull market. There’s just not as much
demand for bulls right now because people have sold off so many
cows. Thos cutbacks are very apparent, looking at demand, and at
bull prices. Hopefully this next year will be better,” she says.
Their purebred cattle are treated
just like commercial cattle. “We rope the calves to brand them,
and use horses for cattle work. We have a few broodmares to
raise horses for use on the ranch.” This is a lot more efficient
than trying to work cattle with 4-wheelers. They handle cattle
the old fashioned way, yet utilize all the up-to-date technology
available in their breeding program, reproduction, ultrasound
data, etc.
One reason they raise a few
horses now is to make sure they have some when they need them.
“A few years ago we didn’t have enough horses; it’s kind of bad
when you need a horse and don’t have any to use! Now that we’re
raising some we don’t have that problem anymore,” says Chris.
Their daughter Erica is very
involved with the ranch and has a good herd of her own. “She’s
very excited this year; she filled our her state FFA proficiency
for beef production and was one of 3 finalists in the state. We
won’t know til next month what the final results will be. She’s
also trying to decide on where she’ll go to college.”
Their Charolais breeding program
has been evolving for more than 25 years. “My family had some
purebreds that we showed, when I was in high school. My parents
started breeding Charolais early on. At one time, a long time
ago, they had mostly solid black commercial cows, then they
started introducing Charolais bulls, primarily as a terminal
cross, then decided to raise Charolais,” says Crhis
The commercial cows now show a
lot of Charolais influence; most of them are sired by Charolais
bulls. “We also have a few black and red Angus bulls, mainly to
use on first calf heifers. In our commercial herd the cows are
yellow, gray, reds, blacks and whites, with some Angus influence
also, but predominantly the herd bulls are Charolais. The cows
are almost all crossbred, and wean off really good calves. They
are good size when we wean and sell them. We try to ship the
calves in late May or early June.”
The purebred Charolais herd has
grown larger over the years, partly due to some of the embryo
work they’ve been doing. “We market quite a few of the bull
calves. Most of the buyers use them for terminal crossing (which
makes an excellent feedlot calf). The last couple years we’ve
been selling our commercial calves with the electronic ID, so
they can be traced back to us, or tracked. They’ve been age
verified so they can be exported, if that was ever an option for
whoever purchases them,” says Chris.
The purebred Herefords are mainly
Erica’s and that herd is expanding as well. “What we are trying
to do with the Herefords is provide bulls for people that are
crossbreeding. We are using pedigrees and EPDs that would be
similar and complementary for anyone using black cattle—if they
wanted to switch and keep a crossbreeding program going. The
numbers on the EPDs would be very comparable to what Angus
cattle are, basically,” she says. This would give them a
different option rather than continually using black bulls.
“We are trying to build the
Hereford herd, with the philosophy that a person who’s only been
using black bulls might be able to use a Hereford bull that
would have the same numbers and comparable traits,” she
explains.
They also continue working with
their purebred Pinzgaurs even though that herd is smaller. “We
used to show them a lot, in earlier years, and had several
national champion bulls and females throughout the years. This
year the national show is in Puyallup, Washington so we will be
going back up there for that. The top end of that herd we breed
strictly Pinzgaur to keep them purebred, and then we use some of
the others as recip cows for the Charolais embryo program.”
Their family has enjoyed working with a variety of breeds and
crossbreds and thus they have a good feel for what their
commercial customers desire. |
