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- Herdsires
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Todd Farms was started in 1972 by Dick Stoddard and son Kirk. After some research they found a "new" breed which had been introduced to Canada in 1967, called Simmental. A local dairy farmer was approached and a deal was struck whereby he would breed some of his cows with Simmental semen and a premium would be paid for the resulting calves.
In the spring of 1973 the first ten 1/2 blood Simmental heifers came to the farm. These females were raised and they generated 3/4 bloods and on to Purebreds. In 1976 we purchased our first fullblood and did one of Quebec's first embryo transplant in 1980. We extracted 8 embryos and with great success we had 8 pregnancies. We converted to a completely fullblood herd with Fleckvieh in the herd as early as 1985.
The herd grew slowly to about 25 cows, then in 1995 Todd Farms hired Robin Jamieson as farm manager. Over the next few years the herd nearly doubled. We blended a mix of traditional fullblood Simmental with Fleckvieh influenced sires to incorporate the strengths of both , with an emphasis on lower birth weights, structural soundness, and udder quality in our cows.
In 1998 we started reviewing the markets throughout North America and were impressed with the Angus breed. The inroads its breeders were making in carcass data collection, their marketing strategies, and the quality of the Angus cattles led us to believe that Angus would compliment the Simmental breed very well. After a lot of discussion we decided that due to the slight local bias against black cattle at that time, and the fact that most of the commercial herds in Quebec were Simmental and Charolais based, Red Angus would be a better fit for our customers. We bought our first Red Angus that fall, added 6 more females in the spring of 1999 and the Angus herd had started.
In 2000, we reevaluated our situation again, after numerous requests for polled Simmental bulls. Color pattern was also an issue with customers, as people wanted cattle with solid red colour and goggled eyes. The popularity of purebred Red and Black Simmental was growing in the western provinces and in the U.S. since they offered the solutions to both issues. The decision to start breeding red cattle was made since we realized that fulfilling our customers demands was the most important concerns and not he "fullblood" status. Since then we have introduced black Simmental into the herd for a complete offering of one stop shopping.The herd currently consists of 60 Simmental cows.