Bulls from Campbell County farm populate pastures throughout world

By Sarah Watson

Published: April 12, 2008

Slideshow: The Bull Men

RED HOUSE — It won’t be long until a purebred Hereford heifer and bull will start roaming the California high desert, almost 3,000 miles from their Central Virginia birthplace.

They’ll graze on sagebrush and juniper, not lush green Campbell County pastures.

Throughout the year, they’ll live on almost 7,500 acres in tiny Adin, Calif., instead of about 2,750 acres belonging to Knoll Crest Farm in Red House.

These cattle are unique because they were bred to possess strong genetic traits that are sought after by beef producers around the globe. They’re the product of years of specialized breeding by James Bennett and his three sons, Paul, Jim and Brian.

The Bennetts have developed a national and international reputation for providing top-of-the-line bulls and heifers, whose seeds are sown throughout the world.

Every year, about 350 bulls born on the Bennett farm are culled to about 250 that will be sold to other producers for breeding purposes, James Bennett said.

“We feel like the cattle that we sell into another seed stock operation would need to meet the same criteria that we’d use on the ones we’d want to keep,” Bennett said. “If not, they’d be best served as hamburger.”

Saturday, Knoll Crest Farm hosted one of its semi-annual bull sales, where producers from throughout the region came to purchase between 80 and 90 bulls, many of which were born last spring. While the bull sales are a major event for the farm, much of the Bennetts’ sales come in private negotiations.

Most of their bulls are sold to the average producer and run between $2,000 and $4,000. However, every year the Bennetts sell a few rare top bulls that could fetch prices upward of $70,000.

The Bennetts’ customers don’t just purchase animals, but also buy semen or even frozen embryos. Orders come in from as far away as New Zealand and Australia for frozen embryos to be implanted in surrogate heifers, which will raise the calf as their own despite having no genetic link.

Knoll Crest Farm was started by James’ father, Paul, in 1929. In 1944, he brought the first registered herd of Polled Hereford cattle in the state, James Bennett said. Polled Herefords are a breed of hornless beef cattle that originated in England.

Over the years, the Bennetts’ herd, which started with four bulls and four heifers, has been carefully selected and bred to produce animals that have a variety of specialized traits. In 1972, the Bennetts developed the Red House Bull Evaluation Center, which was under contract with Virginia Tech to performance test bulls from other regional breeders. That program was ended in 1998 because it no longer fit their business goals, Paul Bennett said.

In 1981, the Bennetts introduced Gelbvieh cattle, a German breed known for having strong maternal instincts and growth. Ten years later, they added Angus cattle, a dominant breed in the beef cattle industry.

The farm leases bulls to other artificial insemination companies, which means the Bennetts retain full ownership of the animal. The bull is sent to a facility where large amounts of his semen are collected and frozen in liquid nitrogen. Each unit sold brings a royalty back to the Bennetts and some leases can collect upward of 40,000 units.

Several Bennett bulls have their seed stored in banks throughout the country and are advertised in trade publications. One bull has been dead for 10 years, but his seed is still highly sought after and enough was stored that it’s still sold, James Bennett said.

In addition to bull seeds, the Bennetts also work with frozen embryos as a way to produce many more calves of the same lineage in a shorter amount of time.

“You can take what you hope to be a super cow — a cow that is just genetically in every respect superior to the average of the breed — and you can generate multitudes of calves,” James Bennett said.

The cow is “super ovulated” through a process similar to human fertility treatments and when she cycles, she is artificially inseminated. About seven days after insemination, a veterinarian collects the embryos and freezes them in liquid nitrogen.

Whoever purchases the embryo will implant it in a surrogate cow, where if it takes hold, it will grow to full term. That process is about 60 percent effective, Paul Bennett said.

“The cow has it and it’s totally unrelated to her. She doesn’t know it. She accepts it and thinks it’s her calf,” James Bennett said.

Three of Bennett’s four sons continue to live and work on the farm on which they were raised. Each has their niche interest in the farm’s operations, with Paul building the genetics program, Jim managing the crops and feed, and Brian overseeing the farm’s machinery and the business side of the operation.

Their children are also involved and some have expressed an interest in continuing to work on the farm, Paul Bennett said.

The cattle that will soon be en route to California were purchased by Kathy DeForest, a rancher who, along with her husband, Tom, own about 250 cows and 12 bulls.

DeForest said she wanted to start raising purebreds and in December, she found the Knoll Crest heifer in a breeding database and contacted the Bennetts.

She and Tom flew to Lynchburg in March and spent a day with the Bennetts looking at the selected heifer and learning about their operation. It was the first time she’d traveled so far for an animal, she said.

“I looked all over the country,” she said. “I don’t want to just go out and build a whole bunch of Hereford cows. I want a small herd of elite cows.”

They spent “a lot more than I’ve ever spent on one cow before” on the heifer, Kathy said, and also decided to purchase a Hereford bull.

“We’re not wealthy people. It’s something we want to do and we want to start out with the best quality,” DeForest said. “The world is a smaller place now where we can take a day to fly to Virginia.”

Virginia Angus Association Field Rep Dan Wells, middle, keeps an eye on bidding while acting as the ringman during Saturday’s spring bull sale at Knoll Crest Farm in Red House, Va.  The first bull of the sale sold for $14,700.

Cattle folk sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to James Bennett (center) during Saturday’s spring bull sale. Bennett, who runs the farm with his three sons, celebrated his 75th birthday Friday.