The Domino Boys

As a Hereford show bull, H. C. Larry Domino 12th won ribbons wherever he appeared, from champion of Chicago's International Livestock Show in 1947 to reserve champion of the American Royal Show in Kansas City. Last week his owner, C. A. Smith of West Virginia's Hillcrest Farms, sold a half interest in Larry Domino to E. C. McCormick, an Ohio insurance executive and owner of McCormick Hereford Farms in Medina. The price: $105,000, the largest sum ever paid for half a bull.

Half-Owner McCormick, who already owns Hillcrest Larry 7, one of Larry's sons, will share Larry's siring services with Smith. "It sounds like a lot of money," said an executive of the American Hereford Association last week, "but with that kind of breeding, McCormick might get his money back in one sale."

At Faraway Farm near Winston-Salem, N.C., M. W. Larry Domino 5, an uncle of Champion Larry Domino 12th. was also in the news. Owner Donald A. (for nothing) Leach, a former adman now in the breeding business, had bought him in 1951 for "more than $10,000 and less than $25,000," and trucked him from Texas to North Carolina. But Larry began showing signs of listlessness and lameness in one leg. Leach's veterinarian, Dr. James T. Dixon, diagnosed Larry's ills as rheumatoid arthritis. While Larry lost weight--and his interest in heifers--Leach persuaded a friend at Merck & Co., Inc. to send him thirty-six 500-mg. bottles of cortisone.

After only two shots, said Leach, Larry kicked up his heels--and cocked his eyes around the pasture "the way bulls do when they are looking for heifers." The next day Larry kicked down his fence, and in a month he had regained all his lost weight and his interest in his career. The seeming cure was the first reported after the use of cortisone in bulls. Last week Larry was servicing two to three cows a day; since his recovery he has sired 15 calves.

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