Ferme Gagnon inc. is a family business that has been in operation for more than 25 years. We are specialized in superior genetic cattle production. We are located in Chénéville, Québec. Our herd includes 90 registered Simmental cows and 40 Black Angus cows for a total of approximately 350 heads. Our operations are taking place on about 1,000 acres, including 500 cultivable acres. Our crops are mainly composed of dry hay, hay silage and corn silage.
All our animals are on a Canadian performance program and we are also participating to a supervised provincial program named PATBQ (Programme agri-traçabilité des bovins du Québec). With this program, we are assisted by an agronomist from the provincial ministry when evaluating our performances on the farm, such as the weighing of our calves during weaning, the weights at birth, etc.
We also carry out artificial insemination on more than 90% of our cows. It is an excellent way of increasing the genetic level in the herd by using the best breeding bulls in the world. We are also performing embryo transfer. This technique consists of inducing hyper-ovulation in our cows and then fertilizing them and collecting the embryos to implant them in cows called "receivers", which we have prepared. This way, our best cows can produce a dozen or so calves per year. This technique is a great way to quickly increase the quality level.
Ferme Gagnon inc. holds two breeding stock sales per year. Our bull sale in March, and our female sale in September. We are offering our clients subjects with the best genetic in the world at very reasonable prices. Our bull sale will take place on the farm on Saturday, March 17, 2012, at 1:00 p.m.