The Wright TL herd had a high horned silver grullo cow who was beautiful. Her registered name was Damn High. Many tried to buy her and finally Jack Montgomery got her for $30,000, in 1980, bred to Don Quixote. She had a thick black spotted bull who won some shows; he was very correct. I thought Don Abraham was the best black carrier by Don Quixote and tried to buy him from Montgomery. Montgomery tried to collect semen on Don but was unsuccessful at every collection place used. DA produced mixed liquid semen with electro ejaculate technique and was impossible to collect with an artificial vagina. When men with the AV came up close to him he would drop down and refuse to service. Montgomery spent a lot of money trying to collect him. There was a lot of interest in purchasing his semen.
The day came when I traded my half interest in Measles Super Ranger for Don Abraham. Cattle can be trained. We immediately started a training process for DA semen collection. Every 3 to 5 days we would put DA in a pen about 30' square with a cow in strong standing heat. When he decided the time was right and started to mount the cow, Za Johnson, DCC ranch manager would approach him from the right flank with a white 5 gallon bucket -- he immediately dropped off and refused service. He was given one or two more chances. Then he was removed from the cow. The same process was repeated over a dozen times. Finally about the 20th time in a 2 month span, he serviced a cow with a bucket pressed against his lower flank. With a few more training sessions he was trained to collect while being touched by a white bucket, and off to the semen collection center he went. All the frozen semen ever used from DA was collected that following few weeks.
As a result of the Don Abraham influence he sired Signal, the dam of Circle K Donovan. He also sired Rose Blade the grand dam of Gizmo, sire of Winchester. He sired Abraham, All Age World Champion Bull. Today if you breed to Wheels Up, Dark Dust, Drag Iron, Jest A Cowboy, Jamakizm, Line Drive, Clear Point, Flair Galore, Night Safari, Winchester, Rural Safari Son, Jango, Lightning In A Bottle, or many of the great Loomis black cattle, there will be Don Abraham in the foundation. Don Abraham is possibly the one single sire who passed on the black genetics to most of the black base cattle of today.
Now you know the rest of the story and the importance of a white 5 gallon bucket that helped create some historic genetics that we would not want to do without today.
