Plainview Simmental Farms started back in the early to mid-1980's with a group of purebred Angus heifers and a Simmental bull in an effort to raise show calves for 4-H Club.  These heifers came out of a breeding program with a long history of A.I. breeding.  Early on we started using black Simmental bulls.  One of the first bulls we used was homozygous black with tremendous growth and muscling.  We entered records and weights on his calves in the Alabama Beef Cattle Improvement Association (BCIA) and posted the highest 205 day weaning weights for calves in the BICA Program in the State of Alabama for two years in a row. Most of our foundation cattle came from this sire.  In the early 1990's we began an A.I. program using homozygous black and polled Simmental bulls (600U and Black Irish Kansas on his daughters).

      We moved the whole farm (including our cattle) from Auburn, AL to Amite, LA when I retired from Auburn University in 1998.  Here in Louisiana we operate on about 375 acres of pastureland and have become the largest Simmental breeder in Louisiana and the surrounding area.  We have continued to use homozygous black A.I. sires that we felt were the best in the nation.  In our selection of sires we have emphasized calving ease, weaning weight, yearling weight, maternals and carcass traits.

      We have entered our bulls in a number of bull tests evaluations and have been at the top of every evaluation.  In our first bull test evaluation in Louisiana we entered 2 bulls in the 2000 LSU All Breeds Grazing Evaluation.  One of the bulls gained an average of 5.32 lbs./day on grass for 150 days and the other bull gained 4.61 lbs./day for the 150 day test.

      In 2003 we entered 6 bulls in a Mississippi State University sponsored Grazing Test.  Our bulls as a group averaged over a lb./day (1.06) more than any other group in the test.  In 2004 LSU All Breeds Grazing Test our bulls gained 504 lbs. on the test (the most in the test) and in fact were the highest scoring bulls in every category evaluated including disposition and scrotal circumference.  In 2004 on a feed test in Mississippi on soybean hull pellets (a by-product feed) we had the highest gaining bull in the test (5.00 lbs./day).  Our bulls as a group gained an average of 4.5 lbs./day on this test with soybean hull pellets.