Cameron Sim-Angus
Cameron Sim-Angus is a cattle ranch owned and operated by Jerry and Linda Cameron. We thank you for giving us the opportunity to share our story with you. We’re a small, cow/calf operation located in north Florence or Cloverdale, Alabama. We are both happily retired, but our hobbies differ. Primarily, Jerry enjoys doing the day-to-day cattle business.
He has a livestock background with several years of raising and showing American Quarter Horses, plus raising llamas, miniature donkeys and emus.
Linda enjoys both vegetable and flower gardening, plus camping, backpacking, hiking and weight training.
We began our cattle journey with commercial cows/calfs, — only to realize we were at the mercy of the local sale barn and volume buyers. After fours years, we began looking at other options and decided to upgrade to registered cattle. Characteristics we were looking for included: calving ease, defined EPD characteristics, good conformation, hybrid vigor or “heterosis” and friendly dispositions.
Thanks to TJ Farms, we bought our first group of Sim-Angus heifers. The registration process took us back to the days of registering horses. This also sparked Jerry’s interest in researching bloodlines, EPDs and genetic qualities. He defined our objective as being a small seed-stock producer with a focus on phenotype, index-based selection and genomics. We feel that genetics over multigenerational family groups can provide you with a foundation of quality traits.
We’re still in a learning curve, but feel a good foundation of registered cows is the place to start. Plus, we joined both the Alabama Simmental Association and American Simmental Association to get to know more about the breed and meet other breeders too. We depend on the ASA database and conversations with established breeders in the business too. Speaking of the latter, Bradley Gibbs has been a tremendous resource for us to turn to when deciding on adding to the herd. Like we said earlier, we are a small operation and every addition to our herd is a time consuming and painstaking process to improve our genetics.
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Get advice from people who have been doing it for a lot of years.
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Do your homework on what it takes to run an efficient operation.
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Start small —so hopefully, your mistakes will be small.
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Be selective in your cow purchases by filtering in research genetics to fit your operation.
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Buy the best you can afford.
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Using AI is a good way to diversify and upgrade your genetics.
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Look for ways to market your cattle. For example, the ALSA is a great organization to help you network and sale in the Southern Region. Do a lot of tire-kicking before you buy, and buy from breeders that will stand behind their cattle.
Jerry's advice to someone new to the cattle business:
"God has truly blessed us with a great life giving us the opportunity to meet amazing people and the desire to raise great cattle. We look forward to enjoying more of this good life for many years to come."