Breed and Hide Colour Premiums

[RSL]

In the reverse of the previous post that got me thinking about this a bit...
I deal with genetic evaluations for breeds nearly every day of the year. I also get the privilege of handling their data on a regular basis. It is interesting that there are so many complaints about breeds not being "identifiable" or homogenizing, and yet the very same consuming public makes statements that they would never use a lot of the traditional genetics. Not to pick on any one in particular, but traditional SM are seen as having too much milk, Full French CH as having calving problems, Fullblood LM as not enough growth, and the list goes on.
In this environment is it any wonder that the breeds have changed or homogenized at least in outward appearance and calving ease. Purity still exists as most of these breeds run a fullblood herdbook with DNA verification as well as the regular herdbooks which allow upgrading. Maybe it will come full circle, hard to say.
The challenge is that no one wants to starve to death waiting for their breed to "come back around" so to speak. They have all focused hard on calving ease, but they have also paid attention to colour and polledness.
We use more than one breed here (have used several in the past) and I can tell you that if you look that there are as many "too big, too milky, too hard calving, etc. in just about any breed if you look. There are also easy calving, etc. Unfortunately I have never found the one perfect bull ever.
I don't know if the question is in there, but I think most breeds from the purebred world are just responding to how their customer votes on their product (with $) when they poll them, colour them, downsize them and work on calving ease.
FWIW

 

[cutterone]

Well I'm in the minority on most sites as we have Braunvieh and I see you read the other post so I'll jump in a little. There is such a bias towards black hided cattle that all the breeds have been forced to copy-cat to make a living. I've seen great cattle of off black color get the heck discounted so bad that most commercial cattlemen stay clear of anything other than black. Many that have the black hide will not grade and grow as they should but as long as they recieve premium statis on price on even lower grading cattle it's better than a discounted price on better cattle. We all know the CAB thing is a sham.
We have experienced the same thing in the Bv breed and so some breeders are trying to develope black Bv. We've done a little of it and I'll be honest -they are not as good but money is what pays the bills. You can have great cattle no matter the cattle but if you are taking a beating then you are forced to convert. That's why I have said several times I would like to see the actual data from packers that support the black hided cattle grade and yeild better compaired to all other colored cattle.
My esperience tells me that when you chase one trait you give up something else and it normally ends up taking a nose dive eventually and a lot of producers some day will end up saying - remember when...

 

[Northern Rancher]

If producers retained ownership or had a mechanism in place to receive data back on their calves when slaughtered even if they sold them the perceptions and realities of the cattle business would stand on their head in the cattle business. Lack of knowledge about their own cattle is one of the biggest things holding back producers. Who do you believe-I had an interesting discussion with a good size rancher this morning about conflicting advice-the feedlot buys his calves wants him to run bigger cows-but he wants to run a more moderate female to cut down carrying costs. A $40 grid premium becomes valueless if it translates into $40 more expense on the cow side at home. Maybe our poor misunderstood Dads had it figured 40 years ago-the cows were bred to fit the home place and the bulls used fit the marketplace. The better end of cows generated the replacements. I think everybody should feed a set of their own calves just to benchmark their herd-if your afraid of losing money at it why would you expect a feedlot to bid with confidence. It's a conundrum!

 

[cutterone]

Right on!
One of the things we did here was to have some different breeds of cattle and cross them and feed the calves out, keep data, and butcher even bulls out and have them graded. I had to know out of my own personal experience based on our program and enviornment how they would preform. I will not sell breeding stock just on someone else's data or hype that looks good in a catalog.
I don't care what breed you run great mama cows have to be your base and hybrid vigor makes the best terminal cattle and crossbreeding makes sense and dollars. The problem in retaining interest is that many operators are too small and can't do it.

 

[Northern Rancher]

You'd be surprised how small a group you can feed-the lot I feed at has let me have my own pen for groups as small as 20. It's not a small place-40,000 head capacity. The first load I sent them was a bunch of outs-I thought if you can do a job on these your where the rest are going. The business is run on averages-how a breed should perform. I've got a little closeout in my hand on a group of ten head there is $282 difference in value between the top a AAA Y2 and the bottom which is a light AAA Y3. I think AAA Y2's are a pretty achievable goal and you'll still have a cowherd can graze into the wind.