Semex Introduce a New Generation of Polled Charolais sires from France

Semex has imported a group of five polled fullblood French Charolais bulls from their partner Charolais Optimal.

For more than 10 years, Charolais Optimal have been intensively breeding polled Charolais in France.  Their aim has been to develop a product for the world market that was of equal genetic merit to their leading horned bulls. 

The polled gene occurs in horned populations once in every three million matings.  Traditionally these cattle were discarded in France.  However, in a central region in France there were a group of breeders who had maintained a group of polled cows.  Charolais Optimal began with these cattle and the first product to reach Australia was the polled bull Martel SC born in 1996.  Since that time another four generations of breeding have taken place, with the best proven horned bulls being incorporated into the group to improve overall quality and to ensure the resulting bulls were competitive in the market.  The results, such as Paladin SC born in1999, have shown that they are not just polled, but indeed competitive with other French product.

Born in 2003, Uno SC, Unico SC, Ufano SC and Ulhan SC incorporate proven sires like Helsinki, Harnois, Berlin and Camus.  Amongst this group it has been proven by DNA analysis that Unico SC is homozygous polled.

 The fifth and most current generation of the program has produced Virgil SC, a son Le Rebel.  The significance of Virgil SC is that he is the first polled bull to be made available that has earned his place in the team based on his performance, not his polledness.  Virgil SC was the number one growth  and number one feed efficiency bull of his induction year. 

Already we have seen outstanding calves in Australia, and around the world from these new generation polled bulls.  Moving forward, French Charolais will continue to select for performance, conformation, feed efficiency and longevity with more and more polled bulls rising to the surface.