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Black Baldy Bulls (sw)

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I agree with Doc on this one........And Soap too.....
First cross F1s rule........
And poor quality cattle is just that........ I've bought lesser(cheap) quality cattle thinking that we could feed them into high carcass cattle..... It didn't work for us...( sows ear....silk purse...)
Now we buy good quality and pay a little more for them and the carcass value is way up...
We sell fats through the ring and those guys know the differance...

We keep two seperate herds most years Hereford and Angus to breed accordingly and AI for bulls......
 
Badlands, I don't know about the 7/8 - 1/8. Lots of the continentals were used at that concentration and threw to the exotic trait.

The biggest thing I see happening is like Soapweed's story of the guy running 4 bulls of different breeds in 1 pasture because the buyers like crossbred calves.

Even here on ranchers, some suggestions are use this new fangled breed on your already 3 way crossed cows.

When I was in school, the thrid cross was supposed to be terminal. But what happens? The heifers get retained and a 4th 5th and 6th breed are eventually introduced.

A true F1 will outperform either sire or dam everytime. These multi crossed animals are just generic.

I have bought enough trader cows to know exactly what kind of bulls are being used out there. I have talked with order buyers that just about cry when they see the bulls in the pastures.

Prior to BSE Alberta ag said about 80,000 bulls a year were used in Alberta cowherds. 1/2 were purebreds.

About that same time I got a neighbor that was "saving money" by keeping his own bulls to look at my pen of bulls. He was feeding his exactly the same ration I was feeding mine, but his "crossbreds" weighed 850 while mine weighed over 1000.
 
Jason
instead of the "my breed does it all" rhetoric. Why don't you post some proof of how your animals are so much better than the rest of ours.
Ps
wtf is "the exotic trait"
-muscling
-yield
-good feet
 
F1 balancer
balancer630.jpg
 
I see Jason, so what you are talking about is seeing variation in calves produced by having bulls of several breeds in the pasture, or guys running bull-of-the-month crossbreeding systems.

I agree, that will sure give you variation. Though it is often said that there is more variation within breeds than across breeds, that point entirely misses the fact that there are still definate breed differences that are heritable. For instance, Angus still brings marbling, and Continentals still bring REA to the rail, on the average.


Badlands
 
Genetic variation can exist just as well in purebred herds as it can in F1's or F2's. The trick to reducing genetic variation is selecting stock that have undesirable traits (IE big, little, spots, etc) bred out of them. If I have a purebred RA that is big and I breed him to a RA that is little, I have just increased the genetic variation for size. If you have phenotypically similiar breedstock from 3 breeds that have been bred to be a certain way intentionally , you get more heterosis and no more variation out of a F1 cow and different breed bull than you would from "registered" seed stock of random breeding or bull of the month breeding or might I add epd breeding with no regard for consistant phenotype.
 
I have seen crossbreeding gone wrong far too often.

I do however still agree 100% that if it is done well it is an awesome benefit.

An interesting article some could look up was written by John Crouch of the AAA called Fire and Ice. He was explaining how using low bw epds or high gain didn't mean you increased the standard deviation in those traits, but you could definately see breed improvement.

None of the major breeds can be said to be the same as they were in the 60's and 70's, and I think that is a good thing.

Angus cattle (and other British cattle) were far too small. The exotics came in and caused some havoc, but they sure did make breeders of Angus and Hereford step up to change their breeds.

The exotics were hard calving hard doing beasts, but they have changed as much as Angus and Herefords have.

Some went too far, some took short cuts, but by and large the breeds are better off for the changes.

The loss of demand for beef because of less marbling is another story, but I think there are enough good genetics out there to handle it.

This is one reason I think those that want Angus cows back to the size they were in the 60's, aren't doing justice to the cattle industry.

I have said before I will post pictures when I have the ability to do so. Posting pictures of cattle fattened for a sale are always pretty, getting a picture to do justice of an animal in their "working clothes" takes more time, time I spend making a living.
 
Too busy working to take a picture-thank god I never get that busy lol. Just point and shoot like the rest of us then take your lumps like a man.
 
Genetic variation can exist just as well in purebred herds as it can in F1's or F2's. The trick to reducing genetic variation is selecting stock that have undesirable traits (IE big, little, spots, etc) bred out of them. If I have a purebred RA that is big and I breed him to a RA that is little, I have just increased the genetic variation for size. If you have phenotypically similiar breedstock from 3 breeds that have been bred to be a certain way intentionally , you get more heterosis and no more variation out of a F1 cow and different breed bull than you would from "registered" seed stock of random breeding or bull of the month breeding or might I add epd breeding with no regard for consistant phenotype.
Click to expand...
I would like to suggest to EVERY breeder who is interested in understanding how Genotype and Phenotype functions as a team to read Red Robin's post over and over again! This lesson in the production of GOOD Beef Cattle is as succinct as most people could ask for! Well Done!

DOC HARRIS
 
Jason said:
An interesting article some could look up was written by John Crouch of the AAA called Fire and Ice. He was explaining how using low bw epds or high gain didn't mean you increased the standard deviation in those traits, but you could definately see breed improvement.
Click to expand...
The standard deviation in BW for example is the problem. It's the heavies that cause dystocia. To lower the deviation , lower the genetic variability by selection pressure.
 
So in a rigid like begets like world there is no room to move or improve genetics?

What if consumer preference changes? Do all producers have to change cows? Or would it be better to change the direction of the cowherd through genetic selection?

I agree that good stock and sound management are the fastest way to good calves. So what do we do with the half of all cattle that by definition are below average?

Cattle that have flaws need improvement. The perfect cow hasn't been born yet. As the industry moves forward, targets change we expect to get more calf from less cows.

When a breeder finds a truely superior sire, he still needs to find a complimentary bull to mate the daughters too. The best breeders are the ones who never stay reting on their past accomplishments. They continue to do their best to improve the breed of their choice.
 
Jason said:
So in a rigid like begets like world there is no room to move or improve genetics?

What if consumer preference changes? Do all producers have to change cows? Or would it be better to change the direction of the cowherd through genetic selection?

I agree that good stock and sound management are the fastest way to good calves. So what do we do with the half of all cattle that by definition are below average?

Cattle that have flaws need improvement. The perfect cow hasn't been born yet. As the industry moves forward, targets change we expect to get more calf from less cows.

When a breeder finds a truely superior sire, he still needs to find a complimentary bull to mate the daughters too. The best breeders are the ones who never stay reting on their past accomplishments. They continue to do their best to improve the breed of their choice.
Click to expand...

If we culled the bottom half of our cowherd, there would still be a bottom half of the remaining half. If you culled that, the remaining herd would be a fourth the size of the herd you started with. And sadly enough, there would still be a "bottom half" of that fourth. If that "half" was culled, you would be down to an eight of the original herd, then a sixteenth, then a thirty-second, and pretty soon you wouldn't have anything left. :wink: :)

We don't keep rigid records. If a cow has all her teeth and is "with calf" in the fall, she usually gets to stay. Everything has ear tags, and some of the real bad actors or bad producers get culled because of notations in our pocket books. I would be willing to bet that cows in the "bottom half" of our herd one year, would have calves in the "top half" the next. In other words, that invisible line separting the top half from the bottom half changes from year to year.

"Moderation in all things" is a pretty good motto to live by. Even in bull buying, I don't even necessarily want "the best" bulls that a seedstock producer has available. The "best" bulls usually become the biggest. On down the road, daughters of these biggest "best" bulls go on to become the biggest cows. Pretty soon, the cows become too big to be efficient to a commercial cattle producer. My goal is to raise useful, uniform, moderate sized cattle that work for me on the ranch and go on to work well for the feeder, the packer, and eventually taste good to the consumer. For me, the Angus breed is my breed of choice. Outcrosses of that breed can work well, but staying with moderate-type cattle within the breed makes life simpler.
 
Jason said:
So in a rigid like begets like world there is no room to move or improve genetics?
Click to expand...
Jason no one can "improve" genetics beyond the genetic availability within a particular breed. You can never raise an Angus that weighs 6000lbs. The genetic information for a 6000 pound bull isn't contained within the genetic make up of Angus. There is however plenty of room to improve upon the average Angus cattle. One can make them more consistant or more efficient or more docile or bigger in relation to average or smaller etc. That's why in the late 60's or early 70's when the frame race was on, you started seeing markings and phenotype within the angus breed (and others) that obviously weren't angus. That 9 frame genetic information was more available in other breeds. Breeders used other breeds to do what they wanted to do quicker. That BTW is one of the lies of evolution. You can't invent genetic information. It's there , or it's not. A banana doesn't have the genetic information to become a horse.
 
An interesting thread for sure. I have to agree with Red Robin and NR. Those that manage crossbreeding will benefit and those that don't use it or mismanage it wil not capture the rewards.

True cattle breeders know which are their best cows year in and year out and have and will continue to propagate those females in subsequent generations because they know which cow families are their most easy fleshing, fertile, good udderd etc. Additionally not all use a scale to do it. The cow herd is still and will continue to be the basis for beef production. If we as producers make choices in our breeding programs that compromise our cow herd effieciency we have compromised our future.
 
I do have an interesting experiment in progress. In the fall of 2005, we kept about two thirds of our heifer calves for replacements and sold the rest. In January 2006, we sorted off the biggest and best half and wintered them with one neighbor. The "lesser half" was wintered with another neighbor. We kept these two bunches separate all last summer. The bigger better heifers were bred to sons of Connealy Lead On, and the smaller heifers were bred to sons of Bon View New Design 878. We tagged and year-branded all of these heifers at about Thanksgiving time. We will be able to tell which bunch these heifers (future cows) were in all of their lives by the color of their ear tags. My experiment is to see if the "top half" as calves will remain in the top half as the years go by.
 
Soapweed said:
I do have an interesting experiment in progress. In the fall of 2005, we kept about two thirds of our heifer calves for replacements and sold the rest. In January 2006, we sorted off the biggest and best half and wintered them with one neighbor. The "lesser half" was wintered with another neighbor. We kept these two bunches separate all last summer. The bigger better heifers were bred to sons of Connealy Lead On, and the smaller heifers were bred to sons of Bon View New Design 878. We tagged and year-branded all of these heifers at about Thanksgiving time. We will be able to tell which bunch these heifers (future cows) were in all of their lives by the color of their ear tags. My experiment is to see if the "top half" as calves will remain in the top half as the years go by.
Click to expand...

Good experiment Soap. But the calves from these heifers will only contain 1/4 of the genetic material from those two popular angus bulls, which means that the majority of the genes will have come from the dams of the bulls and those heifers parents.

You could have doubled the odds of consistency?/accuracy? of those sire groups in one breeding by AI'ing those heifers to those bulls.

My guess is that you will need to pay really close attention to the differences in those heifers' calves to get any reliable info.

Keep a detailed record and let us know how it turns out. Will you weigh the calves at birth? And do you calculate 205 day WW's?
 
So most of you are getting my point. Raising good cattle is not a destination, it is a journey.

As Soap pointed out the harder you cull the higher the average line moves, and that is my goal. To have my average cows above the industry average.

We face economic realities as we do this. We need numbers to make a living, and I am sure we all have a few cows we wish we could cull tomorrow, but we know they will still make us a buck, and we need that buck to keep operating.

RR, I know some did take genetic shortcuts in frame size, but not all. Dad was a leader in "bigger than the average" back in the early 70's. He sold a heifer for a record price in '73 that stood for many years. Too bad his business deal wasn't as good as his breeding accumen. He got 1/6 of the sale price for himself, then he donated that to charity, but that's another thread.

When I joined dad as a full partner we had to rebuild the herd from next to nothing thanks in part to his own success. A backer from North Dakota didn't like the high prices the best cows were bringing at a dispersal so he backed out on dad during the sale.

Anyway we went and got semen on a son of that record selling heifer, then a record selling cow. This was in the early to mid 80's, some said the bull wasn't big enough, we liked his depth of body. Those daughters were the best cows I have ever seen. Sales promoters came and said they were awesome, but needed some more frame, we politely nodded and said thanks for your input and continued to look for bulls with the same depth.

We have found good bulls, but never one of the same quality. A few years later as those same cows were still looking great the same sales promoter came and said they were just about the best set of cows he had ever seen. We reminded him he thought they needed more frame just 4 years earlier.

During this time I remember taking the heaviest wpda bulls to the Calgary bull sale and having to no sale them, because they were 4 inches shorter than the other bulls there that weighed 200 pounds less. Those bulls later sold privately to a herd in Montana where they produced the heaviest weaning weights the ranch had seen in it's history.

I remember getting laughed at when I first used New Trend 315. He was too small they said. I didn't use him much because his bw was all over the place (113 pound bull calf), but I have 1 daughter still going at 16 years of age and I only had 2 daughters to start with.

But I still keep trying to get better.
 
In the 70's I had a neighbour who bought bulls from me for his 3-way rotational cross, the steers of which went into his feedlot.
Due to the variation in performance between the different sired calves, we worked out an agreement whereby I produced his F1 heifers out of my older cows which I no longer selected bulls from, and he only bred the terminal calves, all of which went into the feedlot. This proved a more profitable option for both of us, and simpler management for my neighbour. The uniformity of the feedlot calves coupled with the heterosis, paid dividends for him, and I recieved a premium for the heifers, and the F1 steers fetched a higher price (heavier) than the purebred steers.
Smaller producers should look into similar networking instead of juggling several breeds of bull in an attempt to achieve their ideal cross for market.
 

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