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Best Angus Bull and Some Planning

Silver said:
Grassfarmer said:
Not sure I follow you silver.... Any Charolais, Limo, Gelbvieh, Saler, Simmental, South Devon (to name but a few) that is black has been mongrelized with Angus blood.
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Ahh... perhaps we were saying the same thing. I took what you originally said to mean that a black simmental (or other) was a black that was mongrelized by virtue of it's non angus blood, and therefore took that as a bit of a shot against non british cattle.
And my favorite thing to do on here is play devils advocate just to keep things interesting.
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I think this is all the Pot calling the Kettle black. It would be quite the undertaking to determine WHO Mongrelized WHO when it comes right down to it. :shock: :D
 
:lol: I think the issue of hybrid vigour and mongrelization is a tough one. I think nearly every commercial producer can benefit from hybrid vigour at some level. It is also not the be all and end all or we would all have Brahman x Angus cows.
Tough to say what mongrelization is. I think the Scots had some battles over red vs. black a few hundred years ago (still ongoing?).
Pure vs. useful is an impossible thing to argue and they may or may not be the same thing. Is a hybrid or a composite bull pure? No, but he still might be useful.
I am not pure, but hope I am useful too. :shock:
 
Not really if you go back to Europe and study the history BMR. The only source of black polled genetics there are Galloway and Aberdeen Angus - both from Scotland. There are a few black horned cattle in Europe like the occasional black Highland and possibly the Dexters, Kerrys etc, again mainly in the UK. On mainland Europe ie "the continent" viewed through British eyes there are lots of white, yellow and tan and some red cows ie "the continentals". The fashion for "mixing and matching" colors is very much something that happens in North America and in Australia. Unfortunately this genetic pollution is spreading back to Europe as they now use a few black Limo bulls in Scotland.
 
MYT Farms said:
Big Muddy rancher said:
Don't worry MYT your young, you have lots of time to make mistakes. :wink: :lol:
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Oh, gee, how encouraging. :-) Well, I'll stick with my blacks for a while. I mean, my Black Angus. A little Hereford to get some F1 crosses. Thanks for all the help. BTW, who's the hottest Angus and Hereford sires going today, respectively?
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I would run away from the hottest next big thing.I'd pick one direction and stay the course.If it's female's your after pick some good moderate cattle and stay the course no matter what the fad of the week is.If you get the Angus Journal toss it in the garbage.I would look around your area 10 to 20 miles away look and see who the (REAL) successful ranchers are and try to learn something from each.If I lived as close to Kit as you do I'd model myself after his cattle the bred heifers sold in his fall sale collect quite a ticket and maybe you could become a Cooperator herd.
 
Denny said:
MYT Farms said:
Big Muddy rancher said:
Don't worry MYT your young, you have lots of time to make mistakes. :wink: :lol:
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Oh, gee, how encouraging. :-) Well, I'll stick with my blacks for a while. I mean, my Black Angus. A little Hereford to get some F1 crosses. Thanks for all the help. BTW, who's the hottest Angus and Hereford sires going today, respectively?
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I would run away from the hottest next big thing.I'd pick one direction and stay the course.If it's female's your after pick some good moderate cattle and stay the course no matter what the fad of the week is.If you get the Angus Journal toss it in the garbage.I would look around your area 10 to 20 miles away look and see who the (REAL) successful ranchers are and try to learn something from each.If I lived as close to Kit as you do I'd model myself after his cattle the bred heifers sold in his fall sale collect quite a ticket and maybe you could become a Cooperator herd.
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Ya, I get the journal because you get two or three issues every time you renew with the AAA. They want to make sure us Angus youth members are steeped in bug EPD's and pretty side pictures. :-) Sometimes it makes you think you need that to survive in business and then you suddenly realize it'd kill you. Me, anyhow. Well, why I wanted to know who was the next big thing is because that's probably not where I want to take my herd. I've searched locally for cattle because, like you said, using cattle from guys who are successful in my area would most likely be a pretty safe bet. My herd is pretty well full of PCC genetics. I wouldn't have it any other way, either. They have certainly proven themselves over and over. I'd love to grow big enough to become a co-operator herd. I'm gonna pick up about 35 straws of Emancipate this year. I'm also gonna pick up some 320N semen as I said. He's from Coleman Hereford Ranch. They live in a similar environment and have produced some very good cattle as well.
 
I just came home from one of the largest feeder cattle markets in our state sells avg 2500 to 5000 per week. A long time friend and USDA market reporter. He said Limousin are flat dead saw large 1 red (good draft) sell for 7 dollars less and weighed less than the 40 pound heavier weight blacks.
Interesting one of the areas largest cattle buyers (lane county feeder yards in kansas) stopped buying from this auction (market reporter said).

The cattle traders are trying to call orange Charolais feeders. Red Angus Cross with a dash Simmy in them. Red Angus sired. To my knowledge no Red Angus Bull sales here and maybe three breeders in 100 mile radius of the auction. After that statement was made a draft of Red Angus calves came in at 10 to 12 less than the top cattle today.. Top today was 96.50 on 55o pound calves (not yearlings) Thats the real world today.
 
20P will work good for grass finishing-he sure grew up on a grass outfit-not too many exotic cattle will finish on grass-it's not what they've been selected and bred to do. Breeds get into alot of trouble trying to copy the best attributes of other breeds instead of complimenting them. The Bluegrass Charolais bull looks like he's made right-on good thick British cows he might get the job done. There are plenty of Angus and Hereford bulls that are too big for grass finishing. We sorted and weerighed about a 1,000 yearlings today at the yards two loads of exotic yingyangs took probably half the crews time. I don't why people don't sex and colour cattle at home before they load them-would save alot of shrink at the yards.
 
No, actually I've never used Herefords in my life. Fine cattle by all accounts - I particularly admire the Anxiety 4th herd that Jim Lents has. A real breed of cattle, line-bred by a master breeder.
 
No question there are some real good Herefords out there. However people that just want any Hereford are going to get trashed. Finding the good ones and paying for them is a hard deal.
 
OK, let's not get too much into the breed deal here. I'm breeding some of my good black cows to a Hereford bull. The semen is reasonable and the herd track record is excellent. As Silver said, there's more variation in a breed than between them. I'm coming to believe that's right. I think this bull combines fleshing ability, efficiency, muscle, and growth very well especially for being a British breed bull.
 
......I don't think you really gain much over straight angus. Angus (british) x Hereford (british) isn't really gonna gain you that much heterosis.....
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I believe that to be a fundamentally flawed statement. Look at the research data and it does not support your argument. Breeding Baldies is an excellent way to use complimentary breeds and the correct way to utilise hybrid vigor. Breed a baldie to a charolais or other pure, continental terminal sire and you get the product that everybody wants for the feedlot.
Deciding that you like the Angus x Saler is also a valid choice but it makes more sense to breed a straight angus cow(which is small) to the Saler bull (which is large). Breeding a Saler x Angus female to a Saler x Angus bull has a number of disadvantages. Your cows will be bigger hence higher maintenance costs, you will lose hybrid vigor and you will lose consistency in your calf crop.
The craze of marketing F1 or hybrid bulls is a con in my opinion. It allows the breeder to sell "curve bending" performance bulls because they are utilising hybrid vigor to achieve it. The bulls cannot pass these traits onto their calves consistently because they are high in hybrid vigor but low in genetic prepotency. The commercial buyer who purchases the cross bred bull then misses out on the hybrid vigor and will get little consistency in the offspring.
You talk about "scrubs" - crossbred bulls are the definition of that - and it was all we had before the master breeders came along and selected cattle into distinct types or "breeds".

My bias on this issue comes from being involved with a breed that was developed fairly recently (post WW2). I have had the privelige of seeing first hand the effort and skill that it takes to develop a breed and if you knew how difficult a task that was you would not be so keen to mongrelize our existing breeds. It is often said there are very few herds of purebred cattle that outlast the vision of one man. It is an even greater challenge to create a breed and have that outlast the creators vision. Please lets not throw away the breeds we have and go back 200 years in cattle genetics.[/b]
 

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