new years day picture project

[IL Rancher]

Nice looking Bulls elwapo.. What type of ration do you have them on if you don't mind me asking? Seem to all have real nice depth and length, especially for short yearlings. But they are all far to clean looking to be on this place... If a bull isn't covered in mud this time of year, well, he just isn't trying

Good luck with your sale.. Gosh I like that red one.

[elwapo]

thanks IL. All our bulls are on free choice hay and limit fed 50% barley 50% screening pellet ration we buy from landmark feeds. The grain/pellet ration is kept at 1% of average weight and includes a vitamin/mineral package with rumensin. We work very hard at keeping them well bedded with straw. It is difficult in the freeze/thaw weather we have had for the past month.

[IL Rancher]

Okay.. Not a low energy but not one of the super hot rations either... They look nice.. Also got to say I like the look of that red Balancer.. F1 so 50/50 eh? Does the Gelbvieh yellow color ever come through in the calves or does it stick more to the darker red...

Dang... One of these days..... Nice bulls again and if I penned my cattle I would be strwaing them so deep. They are all on a 75 acre field right now and luckily there are some sand ridges that run through... The cows stay clean but the bulls, who are in a pasture just seem to find the mud...

[elwapo]

We have bred most of the yellow out of our herd by using darker herd sires and heterozygous black bulls on the red cows to darken the color some. Most of my customers prefer red or black, although I still get the od call looking for the gold color. We don't single trait select for color so if there is a good bull calf that is lighter red or gold he stays a bull. We do, however, try to eliminate the diluter gene so that we can mate our cows to black or red bulls.
One thing I learned very early in the purebred business is that everyone wants a low energy ration fed bull, but nobody buys them! I believe I feed ethically and have not had any problems with bulls breaking down because they were overfed. Those yearling bulls have to have some condition going in to do a good job in the breeding pastures. We target 3 lb per day rate of gain.