Raising champion bull a team effort

Raising champion bull a team effort

A local cattle farmer and Strathroy-area cattle breeder teamed up to win top prize recently at the 101st Royal Winter Fair in Toronto with a prize 2,600-pound (1,179-kilogram) bull.

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Long before Kade’s Longmire became 2023 Simmental Bull Grand Champion, Rob Pomajba could see the bull was special when he arrived at his Chatham-area farm nearly 1,000 pounds (454 kg) lighter from Earley Livestock, run by the father-son team of Mike and Kade Earley.

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Pomajba, a “commercial man” who raises beef cattle, remembers telling Kade Earley: “He’s too good a bull for me, he should be in a purebred man’s hands.”

The Earleys felt the bull was the best one to work in his operation and “that’s one we ran with,” Pomajba said.

Kade Earley recalled going to the Pomajba farm earlier this year after Rob Pomjaba told them, “you better show this bull.”

When they saw the bull, they immediately agreed, Earley said.

The team prepares to show Kade’s Longmire at the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto, where he was named 2023 Simmental Bull Grand Champion. (Supplied) jpg, CD, apsmc

He said there was an attitude about the bull that made him special.

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Earley said when you walked into the pen, the bull was always “loud and proud, here I am would be a good way to describe him.

He added the bull was a “standout and everywhere you looked, he was kind of showing off to the best of his ability.”

Kade’s Longmire’s size was also impressive.

Kade's Longmire, tipping the scales at 2,600 pounds (1,179 kilograms), won the 2023 Grand Champion Simmental Bull at the Royal Canadian Fair.  The victory as a joint effort of the Chatham area's Pomajba Farms and the Strathroy area's Earley Livestock.  (Supplied)
Kade’s Longmire, tipping the scales at 2,600 pounds (1,179 kilograms), won the 2023 Grand Champion Simmental Bull at the Royal Canadian Fair. The victory as a joint effort of the Chatham area’s Pomajba Farms and the Strathroy area’s Earley Livestock. (Supplied)

“He is massive,” Pomajba said.

He added when they went to the Royal Winter Fair a few weeks ago, “we were worried we weren’t going to be able to weigh, because he was too big to go into the scale.”

Though Pomajba played a part in helping the bull develop into a champion, he credits the success to “working with good people and good stock.”

He added there is a lot of interest in the bull, now in quarantine before being offered for breeding.

Earley Livestock also took home top prize at the Royal Winter Fair for having the Champion Simmental Female, purebred heifer.

“I’ve been home a week and back to work and I don’t think it really set in yet that we got it done,” Earley said.

The Pomajba and Earley families have had a lot of prior success at the Royal Winter Fair.

Pomajba said he’s been going there for 42 years, beginning with his late father Frank Pomajba, and later with his sisters, Valerie and Elaine.

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