Hilljack is the product of eighteen years and five generations of balanced, sensible cattle bred for industry relevance and genetic predictability. A son of the prepotent Hook's Beacon, Hilljack's maternal pedigree is stacked for practicality, moderation, and structural integrity, tracing to a 3C Wally daughter purchased sight unseen from Leachman's Cattle Company in 2002. The first calves are on the ground, and we're excited about the future with Hilljack walking our pastures. Check out his incredible EPD profile--17 EPDs above breed average with 11 traits ranking inside the top 5% of the breed (including the three production traits we never take for granted and never compromise on when we're making planned matings!)--and if you ever have the chance, stop by the farm and get a look at Hilljack on the hoof. We welcome your evaluation of him and anything else walking the pastures at Martin Farms any time.
MF Flower
ASA: 3381205
Herd Book was our pick of the 2021 Bridle Bit All Terrain Bull Sale based on his elite calving ease and birth weight predictions and his outstanding ratio for feed conversion. Herd Book is a moderate framed, soft flanked bull that appears to be the mama cow-making kind, and we think he'll cross especially well on bigger framed, performance-oriented females. His first calves arrived this spring and are looking good at weaning time.
Journey was our pick of the 2021 Triangle J Female Sale, and we have high expectations of this young female. A daughter of the powerful and prolific 2B donor, Journey's first flush to her #1 RightMate sire produced 24 viable embryos, so we're anticipating five calves by Global as well as her natural calf by her #2 RightMate, CLRS Hero, next spring. This young cow prospect is definitely one to watch so be sure and keep her on your radar! Visitors who have seen and evaluated her are amazed by her depth and spring and rib.
Co-owned with Running Springs Cattle Co., Nolensville, TN; Taylor Farms, Midway, TN; and All Beef,
Normal, IL
As one of the more anticipated females to sell during the 2022 sale season, Jolene was the popular crowd
favorite and high-selling lot of the 2022 Bred For Balance Sale from Clear Springs Cattle Co. Her pedigree
stacks two of the Simmental breed's maternal powerhouses in 316A and 106Z, and her dam's lineage of Top
Grade x Dual Focus x Nichols Legacy adds a great deal of confidence in this tremendous young female.
Jolene has produced embryos by Gibbs Essential and we're anxious to see the first pregnancy hit the ground
next January as well as Jolene's natural heifer calf sired by the high-selling bull from Bred For Balance,
HA Justice, owned by our good friends, Matt and Terri VanSlyke at Running Springs Cattle Co. We'd like to
thank all the Jolene partners for their show of confidence and their teamwork in owning a good young
female with so much potential for greatness.
Juno is a polled, non-diluted, 100% Fleckvieh fullblood Simmental with dark cherry red color, a sweetheart disposition, and a great future! After 50 years in the Simmental business, we figured maybe it was time to dance with the one that brought us. While shopping for a Fleckvieh bull last spring, Chris scouted Stanley Martins' highly respected herd for a female that might convince us to own our first fullblood, and he found Juno while visiting again last fall to attend Stanley's female sale. Sorting through about 40 weaned heifer calves, Stanley was impressed that Chris showed enough interest in the heifers to fight the cold Iowa wind at their backs, and after a few more weeks of conversations between the two of us and doing our due diligence to study on the issue, we made a deal with Stanley for the pick of his 2021 heifer crop, and Juno surfaced as the "still favorite" of the bunch. We now have two bull calf pregnancies and 11 embryos by Fairview Evolution, the $51,500 high-selling, homozygous polled, Canadian full Fleck sire made available to US producers by Brett Keet...Thanks, Brett! We can hardly wait to see these calves!
We found 9597G as a yearling attending the 2020 edition of the Gibbs Farms fall production sale. We weren't particularly shopping for genetics that day, but sometimes an opportunity comes along when you're not looking for one! Chris was impressed with this female's look and foot shape, not to mention the ridiculous EPD profile she was packing. It wasn't a big surprise so were a few other people. There was a lot of discussion in order to come up with a fair valuation, but we had missed out on a good heifer at Triangle J less than two weeks prior, and the one thing gained that day was a strategy that may have helped us get this one bought. We Ai'd Cassia to TJ Teardrop and then did an IVF Flush the same way, partnering with our friend to the south, Kevin Stephens, who had owned Teardrop. We each ended up with two pregnancies, and we decided to let one of ours go in the 2021 Seedstock Connection Sale where it was the high-selling lot at $7,700...almost half what we paid for Cassia and almost proving our valuation her and satisfying Chris' rule--that a female (unless she's intended to be a donor) pay for herself with her first two calves. Cassia is halfway there, and we have two more Teardrop heifers! Running Springs who purchased the lot got a beautiful blaze-faced heifer calf, and we're pretty proud of ours, too. This is a really good female with a world of potential, and we look forward to her Hilljack calf in 2023. Numbers out the you-know-what! We can hardly wait!
Blue roan is the new baldy! Bluebell was raised in a co-op herd by our friend Kevin McGehee, and it wasn't easy to talk him into letting go of her. Sired by a great-grandson of the Burtner "Virgina" cow, Bluebell's maternal pedigree traces to a Galant daughter, 1539F, that came into our program in 1980, making her a representative of the oldest cow family in the Martin Farms breeding program. With no known Shorthorn blood in the pedigree, Bluebell's dam--a product of Kevin's first registered female, LVL Garnet, Ai bred to Black Joker, was the first roan to show up in the family. Worth noting, another Garnet daughter--a red baldy just like her mother--calved in the fall of 2000 with a red roan heifer calf by Lchman Bodybuilder. We scratched our heads both times this gene surfaced, but the odd coloring can't distract us from noticing this is the right kind of beef cow! Bluebell is proof that it doesn't take a big-framed cow to mash the scales. She weighs 1700+ pounds and stays in excellent shape on grass and hay and a complete mineral. She's raised two blue roan heifers and averaged 10.5 embryos on two flushes, and if you make it to this year's Seedstock Connection Sale September 24, we'll find out together if anybody else appreciates this one as much as we do. Bluebell is due in January to Hilljack
HSCC/MF Black Camo
MF Pink x PVF Insight
Homozygous Black & Polled
MF Orchid C43A
MF Pink x V A R Index
MF Jade
MF Pink x V A R Index
MF Fuchsia
MF Pink x V A R Index
48C Pink 106C
MF Pink x PVF Insight
Owned by Karys Wilson
Crossville, TN
Owned by Running Springs Cattle Co. Nolensville, TN
WEF Praline
MSR Great Plains x MF Vanilla Bean
WEF Pistachio
MSR Great Plains x MF Vanilla Bean
It’s hard to quantify the impact of such an influential female on one breeding program. Chris found a two-year-old first-calf-heifer at Scotty Burtner’s mature cow herd dispersal in 1990 and thought she looked like the kind that would make “the best cow we ever owned” someday. From that day on, XN9 was affectionately known as “Virginia” and she became the cornerstone to our homozygous black and polled Simmental and SimAngus breeding program. “Virginia” was an extremely fertile and productive purebred Simmental female that raised 15 natural calves with a lifetime weaning weight ratio of 102. Her signature was her consistency, and her longevity in our herd compounds the influence she will continue to have in our program through the daughters and granddaughters she left behind.
