Shigefuku

Shigefuku, tagged '005' in the Westholme numbering that continues from the live '001'/'002'/'003' patriarch bulls, is one of three additional black sires whose SEMEN Chris Walker's Westholme program imported from the ET Japan Company (Hokkaido) in 1998, arriving alongside 59 more females the year after the 1997 live shipment. He is a son of Dai 20 Hirashige, himself a son of Kedaka, placing Shigefuku deep in the main Kedaka (Tottori) lines and making him a paternal relative of Hirashigetayasu '001'. Breeders value him for the classic Kedaka contribution: higher growth rates, greater body volume, strong constitution and desirable coat type, with a noted strong inheritance from the influential bull Eiko. Because he entered only as semen and only via Australia (some of which was re-exported to the USA), he is easily missed on live-import foundation lists, but he is a genuine exported foundation sire and part of the Westholme genetic package that built much of the Australian and American Kedaka growth base. Period sire directories rarely picture Shigefuku himself — the bull usually shown is his son, 005 Shigefuku 13M — and the record shows how thin his line is: by one 2009 count there were only two sons and two daughters of Shigefuku J1822 in the world. Because he entered the Westholme program as semen alone, that scarcity is the whole story of his influence: he shaped the Kedaka growth base of Australian and American herds almost entirely through a handful of descendants rather than through numbers. He sits in the rarest corner of the founder set twice over: he is one of only 7 foundation sires whose published 16/16 shows no Tajima whatsoever, and he is the only one of them whose 16 parts are entirely Kedaka and Tottori — 12 Kedaka to 4 Tottori, with nothing else in him. Mazda is the one other founder generally described as essentially pure Tottori/Kedaka, though no 16/16 row was ever published for him to prove it.