Our family’s history in cattle began in 1903, when my great-grandfather, Salviano Monteiro Guimarães, made a decision that would change not only our destiny but also point to a new path for animal selection in Brazil. It was he who began, in the Cerrado of Goiás, the breeding and selection of a polled, white, functional herd — genetics that were born before they even had a name, but that years later would give rise to the Tabapuã breed*.

From the outset, functionality and packing plant conformation were priorities. Salviano believed in the importance of an animal that produced efficiently and delivered results. In 1929, he was already reaping the rewards of that ideal: during the 1st Agricultural Fair of Goiás, he presented to the public a selection of entirely polled cattle — something unprecedented at the time, which drew attention not only for rusticity and uniformity, but also for the press coverage that consecrated that historic moment. That was the birth of the Mocho Nacional and later the bull Japão, the zootechnical foundation of our herd and a precursor of the Tabapuã breed in Goiás.

My grandfather, Sebastião (“Dãozinho”), and later my father, Emanuel (“Nelinho”), followed that same path with determination. And even when measurement technologies did not yet exist, they already applied an intuitive and effective selection, based on the observation and good sense of those who know cattle in the field — by feel and by eye.

They were cattlemen. They drove herds in droves of up to two thousand animals, leaving the Bahia–Tocantins border toward the Central-West and the Southeast.

My father, Nelinho, took it a step further. He devoted himself to metrics and data. He wanted to prove what intuition already knew. In one of his initiatives, he monitored the slaughter of 600 animals of different breeds under the same conditions. The result was decisive: the polled cattle showed, on average, more than one arroba more than the others. In less than a week, he got rid of all the other breeds and began investing exclusively in our polled herd — now with more focus, more criteria, and even more passion. He was a born selector and, with mastery, built a herd with a consecrated genetics, awarded countless times in the country’s main show rings.

*Excerpts from the official book of the Tabapuã breed (ABCT/ABCZ)