a few fall pics/start of weaning

[R A]

It definitely depends on which direction you want to go. If you want to use Hereford and Angus in a two breed rotation to produce your females and then use a terminal sire, like charolais, then going back and forth between the two breeds will give you an average cross of 5/8 original breed of sire and 3/8 breed of dam with 67% heterosis--using a terminal sire then gets you 100% of potential heterosis in those terminal calves. Using a third breed in the rotation gets you up to about 87% heterosis in your females but you don't maximize it in your terminal animals unless you use a fourth terminal breed. Six of one--half a dozen of another. Going back to one of the parent breeds drops you back to 46% heterosis, so personally I wouldn't do it unless I was developing a rotational system to makes replacements. Depends on your numbers and infrastructure which system works best for you...oh, and if you believe in the effect of heterosis! Good luck! Your calves look good!

Thank you very much for this, WVGenetics! All this stuff is helping rule out things I "don't" want to try right now.....just need to decide what I "do" want to try. I'm willing to experiment, just trying to save what years I can, maybe....it's nice learning more of the odds of what happens when crossing this to this.

The way my pastures will be set up, I'll probably be able to a little of each scenario of what you typed and have some fun with it....seeing what I come up with.

Wow what a small world I use to work in Marshfield (06-08). I don't live far away from there now. I use t post and get along fine, a lot dont like them as they feel the wire will eventually short out on the post.

I can see that on the t-posts. Yes, small world. I was down there '05 to '07. My address was Marshfield, but I was closer to Elkland....still not far from Marshfield though. I had about 20 AQHA/APHA horses and a few bucking bulls when I was down there. Kept a few of the horses at a rental pasture basically in Marshfield, on the south side by a church...you might of seen them maybe. I had to work at the International truck part place there in Marshfield for a while. I used to founder myself at Tiny's buffet their every once in a while I went through there this year on the way to Eminence and seen some things have changed.

 

[George]

I have about 5 miles of fence and I use the yellow insulators - - - I have some that are so old they are almost white.

I keep a bucket on the golf cart my grand daughter drives and if we see a broken insulator we know where to shut off that section of fence and replace!

My grand daughter will be 4 in November and she knows to use the digital fence tester when opening gates to see if there is a large differance between open and closed. If not we just go for rides but if there is a differance she will drive right beside the fence that is pulling power until we find the problem. I'm not sure how many 3 year olds can locate and repair hot wire like her. We use the hi tensil fence but still have problems with deer either shorting to the woven wire or running thru and pulling down several hundred yards!

I used the dozer to make a golf cart path down both sides of interior fences and my side of boundry fences. Makes life much easier and has cut down on deer / fence problems as it allows them to know where the fence is. The first weekend of hunting still drives deer thru fences as I feel they are in a panic or might have never been here before.

 

[R A]

Thanks George for the input! That's great your grand daughter can fix the fence like that.....I like to hear stories like that!

 

[4Diamond]

Isn't Elkland the headquarters from the Holstein heifer mafia?

 

[R A]

Isn't Elkland the headquarters from the Holstein heifer mafia?

lol....probably I've never seen so many Holsteins in all my life...just grazing....not being milked...just growing. Don't quote me, but I think the one guy there ran 3,000 or so just himself.

 

[4Diamond]

Yeah there is atleast 3 big heifers guys in that country if not more.