Bull ? for Soapweed, or others

[Tap]

I have been doing some thinking about how Soapweed buys his bulls vs. other options. I do not know about other operations, but in ours we try to use information from registered Angus breeders to make the best bull buying decisions. Even though a person feels swamped with all the information available. To get to my point, I think the ultrasound carcass information will someday (if not today) be very important as packers find out how an individual ranches cattle perform. So Soapweed, are you concerned about that point? Or do you think that as you are buying good sound bulls from people that theoretically are already using that info, that they are doing that work for you? So you are benefitting from it anyway. I just have to think that with technology moving as fast as it has, that we are going to have to change to keep up with it. I did not say I liked it, but I am reading the tea leaves.

One area that you ARE ahead of the game, is the price of bulls. We spend a lot of money on bulls and use them for as many years as feasable, but we buy the best bulls we can afford. It is easy to make a mistake now and then, and it is harder to get rid of a bull you paid too much for.

 

[Northern Rancher]

In a commercial operation so many things impact profitability more than carcass quality that unless you are retaininf ownership and collecting carcass data now they are of questionable value. For instance if you are running straight angus cows a gelbvieh or charolais bull etc will improve yield in one cross than years of selection for that trait within a breed. Conversely one Angus bull on and exotic cross herd will improve your marbling score more than selection within a breed. There are exceptions but that is a pretty good rule of thumb-if you don't know where your herd stands trait wise it's hard to use E.P.D's effectively-it's hard to know where to go if you don't know where you are.

 

[Soapweed]

I have been doing some thinking about how Soapweed buys his bulls vs. other options. I do not know about other operations, but in ours we try to use information from registered Angus breeders to make the best bull buying decisions. Even though a person feels swamped with all the information available. To get to my point, I think the ultrasound carcass information will someday (if not today) be very important as packers find out how an individual ranches cattle perform. So Soapweed, are you concerned about that point? Or do you think that as you are buying good sound bulls from people that theoretically are already using that info, that they are doing that work for you? So you are benefitting from it anyway. I just have to think that with technology moving as fast as it has, that we are going to have to change to keep up with it. I did not say I liked it, but I am reading the tea leaves.

One area that you ARE ahead of the game, is the price of bulls. We spend a lot of money on bulls and use them for as many years as feasable, but we buy the best bulls we can afford. It is easy to make a mistake now and then, and it is harder to get rid of a bull you paid too much for.

I'm just a simple guy that doesn't like to get bogged down with technology. The worst thing about bulls is that by the time you know how they are producing, it is too late to do anything about it anyway. To a certain extent, some of the producers I buy bulls from "have done their homework". Even though the bulls they raise are just unpapered cattle, they can still beget high quality offspring.

I've seen much effort go into AIing a lot of cows to one bull, and then the offspring not necessarily being all that desirable. A neighbor used a bull in such fashion one time, and the daughters had both undesirable udders and undesirable dispositions. Over a third of these young cows were sold early in life for those two reasons. I just don't like having all my eggs in one basket.

In multiple sire pastures, a person never knows which bulls are producing which calves. It is just a shot in the dark at best. My main bull buying criterion is eye-appeal, uniformity and a reasonable price.

My youngest son is intending to go to college and get "a education" :wink: in ranch management. Maybe he can do things right and get the outfit up to snuff in this 21st century.

 

[the_jersey_lilly_2000]

Soapweed....I'd say your plenty "up to snuff" on your operation. With your son gonna go to college for Ranch Management......he might come back and do a lil tweekin here and there, but just from your photo's and your posts I'd say he'll be doin real well to follow in his fathers footsteps. Yes ranching is moving at an exceptionally fast rate technology wise.....but if he's learned half of what you've been there to teach him. He's way ahead of the game already.

 

[Soapweed]

Soapweed....I'd say your plenty "up to snuff" on your operation. With your son gonna go to college for Ranch Management......he might come back and do a lil tweekin here and there, but just from your photo's and your posts I'd say he'll be doin real well to follow in his fathers footsteps. Yes ranching is moving at an exceptionally fast rate technology wise.....but if he's learned half of what you've been there to teach him. He's way ahead of the game already.

Thank you, Jersey Lilly, that was kind of you to say. Some days I do wonder. :? :wink:

 

[Jason]

I think Northern made a very important point of

if you don't know where your herd stands trait wise it's hard to use E.P.D's effectively-it's hard to know where to go if you don't know where you are.

For buyers like Tap, the epds are very low accuracy .05 to .40 on young bulls. Those numbers can climb as well as fall, and they can be biased by some false data.

Case in point. BT Ultravox. I used him based on his numbers. I remember the full page ad in the Angus Journal with his low bw (2.2) and high yw (131).

The first set of calves I got were all over 90 pounds. The second calf that came I told dad: "someone lied about the bw".

His bw epd after enough numbers came in is 5.1 and his yw fell to 101.

Still a useful bull on certian cows, but not what was advertised.

The other thing is a lot off cattle caretakers (people that really can look after their cows) can't spot the difference between a super bull and a cull. 95% of the buyers that come into my yard just look at the biggest bulls and that is their selection. If I were to hide the biggest bull they would come back and pick the biggest in the pen without blinking.

I have had the opportunity to meet a small handful of master cattlemen. People that could sift through a pen of bulls and "see" what they were bred for. One guy came after one of my sales and he told me the best gain bull but which one was the high seller. Took him 30 seconds.

 

[Badlands]

Just because he BW came up doesn't mean someone lied about it.

Because he had a low BW and high WW and YW, he was used.


When he was used, everyone all found out that his BW was more inline with his WW and YW, though his YW wasn't as high as everyone thought it would be early on.

So, he turns out to be high BW, high WW, high YW instead of the curvebender.

Doesn't mean anyone lied.

With his sire and MGS, it shouldn't be any surprise that his BW would have come up. He would have been a risky bet at best for low BW.

Badlands

 

[Tap]

posted twice

 

[Tap]

I have been doing some thinking about how Soapweed buys his bulls vs. other options. I do not know about other operations, but in ours we try to use information from registered Angus breeders to make the best bull buying decisions. Even though a person feels swamped with all the information available. To get to my point, I think the ultrasound carcass information will someday (if not today) be very important as packers find out how an individual ranches cattle perform. So Soapweed, are you concerned about that point? Or do you think that as you are buying good sound bulls from people that theoretically are already using that info, that they are doing that work for you? So you are benefitting from it anyway. I just have to think that with technology moving as fast as it has, that we are going to have to change to keep up with it. I did not say I liked it, but I am reading the tea leaves.

One area that you ARE ahead of the game, is the price of bulls. We spend a lot of money on bulls and use them for as many years as feasable, but we buy the best bulls we can afford. It is easy to make a mistake now and then, and it is harder to get rid of a bull you paid too much for.

I'm just a simple guy that doesn't like to get bogged down with technology. The worst thing about bulls is that by the time you know how they are producing, it is too late to do anything about it anyway. To a certain extent, some of the producers I buy bulls from "have done their homework". Even though the bulls they raise are just unpapered cattle, they can still beget high quality offspring.

I've seen much effort go into AIing a lot of cows to one bull, and then the offspring not necessarily being all that desirable. A neighbor used a bull in such fashion one time, and the daughters had both undesirable udders and undesirable dispositions. Over a third of these young cows were sold early in life for those two reasons. I just don't like having all my eggs in one basket.

In multiple sire pastures, a person never knows which bulls are producing which calves. It is just a shot in the dark at best. My main bull buying criterion is eye-appeal, uniformity and a reasonable price.

My youngest son is intending to go to college and get "a education" :wink: in ranch management. Maybe he can do things right and get the outfit up to snuff in this 21st century.

I surely brought this up as a conversation topic, and not as a we are right you are wrong thing Soapweed. Probably the main reason I was "picking" on you, if you could call it that, :wink: is that you are open to sharing your operation, and theories. I am here to learn, and I can see that you run a good operation. I think I read once that feedlot performance, and other non-carcass traits were several more times more profitable than carcass traits alone. I just find all aspects of ranching interesting, and I am here to learn.

I can think of a decent example of non traditional thinking. We should probably test our forage (cut and standing) more than we do. When we have an open winter like this one, so far anyway, we are able to feed cake and let cows forage for the most part. We feed a few # of high protein cake every other day, along with grass, or poorer quality hay later on. If we were to feed a balanced ration, we would probably see that we were lacking a few things, but since we calve a little later and the cows are on the gain well before bull turn-out, they usually milk well, and breed back pretty good too. And we feed them no mineral either. My point is that we all need to look at our ranches in the big picture to see the sum of things. I say that what you are doing looks to be working well, I just wanted your input on what you saw for the future. I also believe that Soapweed Jr. could learn a lot from his old man. And I bet you learned a lot from yours.


Another thing I forgot to add is that we are fairly finicky about where we buy bulls as we look for seedstock producers who run cattle as least as tough as we do. I don't think a lot of bulls would produce cows that would stand up to range conditions. At least they don't seem to run them in a way that allows the non-performers to fall through the cracks. So sometimes we have to pay more for the kind of bulls we like.

Have a good one.

 

[Red Robin]

I'm watching fellas and interested in both operations. You guys both look to do a good job. Do either of you men put much emphasis on phenotype? Volume , length, etc. ?

 

[Jinglebob]

Another thing I forgot to add is that we are fairly finicky about where we buy bulls as we look for seedstock producers who run cattle as least as tough as we do. I don't think a lot of bulls would produce cows that would stand up to range conditions. At least they don't seem to run them in a way that allows the non-performers to fall through the cracks. So sometimes we have to pay more for the kind of bulls we like.

Have a good one.

To me, this is very important. I don't want to have cattle that will not work in my country, run on low inputs. So why buy bulls from someone who doesn't run cattle like that?

I read one time, that you should always buy bulls from someone who runs cattle in the same type enviroment as you do. Makes sense to me.

 

[lazy ace]

There are a lot of things that should be considered when buying bulls but Northern Rancher hit the nail on the head about carcass. We have been ultrasounding our purebreds for while. When we started our ultrasound guy said not to get to wrapped up about chasing it. He recommended that you shoot for breed average. We have found that when you do this you chase certain carcass traits anyway.

Tap if you want to find out what your heifers have for carcass you could ultrasound them and then you would know where you need to go as far as carcass.

Have a cold one

lazy ace

 

[Jinglebob]

Tap if you want to find out what your heifers have for carcass you could ultrasound them and then you would know where you need to go as far as carcass.

Hmmm. Now thas a good idea. Maybe we just need to "have more cold ones" Tap, so we can think of things like that.

 

[ET Doc]

Lazy Ace and Tap,
My son and I do carcass ultrasound as part of my vet practice. At first it was all bulls that we did, but it wasn't long before we were doing quite a number of heifers.
Most of those heifers were for commercial ranchers. The purebred guys were willing to do their bulls, because their bull customers demanded the information, but few were willing to do their heifers, since no one was pushing them for the info.
The commercial ranchers are way ahead of the purebred breeders in this area. I'm still amazed that the purebred breeders are reluctant to do their heifers, since these are their future cowherd.
There is such a huge difference in the value of carcasses at slaughter, especially if you sell on a grid, that it will soon be vital information for the feedlots to have, and will trickle back up through the production chain.

 

[lazy ace]

Lazy Ace and Tap,
My son and I do carcass ultrasound as part of my vet practice. At first it was all bulls that we did, but it wasn't long before we were doing quite a number of heifers.
Most of those heifers were for commercial ranchers. The purebred guys were willing to do their bulls, because their bull customers demanded the information, but few were willing to do their heifers, since no one was pushing them for the info.
The commercial ranchers are way ahead of the purebred breeders in this area. I'm still amazed that the purebred breeders are reluctant to do their heifers, since these are their future cowherd.
There is such a huge difference in the value of carcasses at slaughter, especially if you sell on a grid, that it will soon be vital information for the feedlots to have, and will trickle back up through the production chain.

We have been doing both bulls and heifers. I agree with you that heifers are more important to have done. Once you have those done you build up your information base on your cowherd. Do you send your information to the CUP lab?

have a cold one

lazy ace

 

[lazy ace]

Tap if you want to find out what your heifers have for carcass you could ultrasound them and then you would know where you need to go as far as carcass.

Hmmm. Now thas a good idea. Maybe we just need to "have more cold ones" Tap, so we can think of things like that.

JB you and Tap are always welcome to have a cold one with me. If you play your cards right I'll even give you the combination to the lock I have on my fridge! :wink: Cold ones are valuable in this area.

have a cold one

lazy ace

 

[Northern Rancher]

Is it much use ultasounding heifers that are just raised on hay and grass-do they have enough fat cover to make realistic comparisons-just curious. I know in our situation we've got marbling pretty well covered but could use some more yield. Don't want to lose out on doability etc looking for it-it takes awhile to find cows that are adapted to my shoddy management.

 

[ET Doc]

Lazy Ace,
Yes, we send our images to CUP Lab. They are the gold standard of the industry, and I have confidence that we get good useful and unbiased data from them.
They have a new software coming out soon that will let us scan feedlot cattle at 65-100 days on feed, and project how many days they need to be fed to make choice.
Last year we had a client who had a good offer on some fed steers of $23 per CWT for choice and primes, but would be discounted hard for selects or yield grade 4's.
We sent the images to CUP and they helped us pick out the ones that would have been discounted. The feeder then sent those few to his local locker.
CUP has been really good at doing the research needed to bring ultrasound to where it is today.

 

[ET Doc]

NR,
You are right that cattle need enough feed to be able to express their genetic differences. We have several similar situations that we ultrasound for and in those cases, we wait and do the heifers after the breeding season when they've been on summer grass long enough to have adequate nutrition for awhile.
We've found that when we pull the bulls is a good time to do it, or shortly after.
In our area that usually equates to July and August. The heifers are in as good a condition then as they are going to be under ranch conditions, and we get some really good IMF readings on these cattle as well as rib-eyes. You can see their genetic differences then.

 

[Northern Rancher]

We did a little study back in the day before marbling was included in our grading system and ultasounded a bunch of Hereford and Angus steers off grass to ascertain fat cover-we then slaughtered them and got them government graded. They fit in surprisingly well and the people who bought them loved the beef. Up till 40 years ago all our cattle were finished on grass it's sure not an impossible thing to do with the right genetics and grass management. Late summer can be a great time to pack pounds on yearlings-the last ten years the yearling run starts just when the cattle will really go to town-the days are cooler and the flies are gone. Grass Finishing is soo old that it's new again-but it's not for the faint of heart or uninformed.