Heck, why not another Hereford discussion! :P Attn:Whiteface

[Aaron]

Crunching some numbers today. Age of our bulls, # of daughters off of them, etc etc. Border pending, thinking about spring and fall cleaning the commercial and purebred herd this year, and possibly even a few in the summer if a previous buyer takes another walk through the herd.

Anyways, down to the nitty gritty. I have just roughly figured out a new bull plan which should keep our purebred and commercial herd here running for the next half dozen years at least. It involves raising a new 'homesteader' bull (AI) from our top commercial cow, and buying a new bull to replace our senior Optimum sire next year, or the year after.

Do you have any real good looking sons off of that Magna bull of yours, this year?...or are you planning to breed him to some powerful cows to calve next year? I love Pure Gold and think his straight shootin', no nonsense uniformity in his calves is just the key to 'kick it up a notch' in our herd. In fact, looking at the numbers, if Magna keeps his CE epd down to a respectable level below his sire's, I think you could be sitting on top of a little gold mine. Oh, I checked out Magna's dam pics and info on Warnken's site. With the exception of her teats (picture's not the best detail), I like her. What year is she? Good solid Butler and Rancher bloodlines for a strong cowherd. Most of my herd goes back to Butler and Domino.

I want to buy a good 'horned background' weaned bull calf either this fall or next fall. That way, if horns are still on him, we can lop/saw them off while he's young and can grow him out nice and slow.

Or maybe you have some Hattrick calves (you can easily sell me on Klondike genes) that are dandy...but not too dandy? I want breeding potential here...not something you want to take to show.

 

[Soapweed]

Please excuse me for interupting, but speaking of cows.......

Aaron: "With the exception of her teats (picture's not the best detail), I like her."

A cow without good teats is like a horse without good legs. Not much point in pursuing the deal.

 

[Juan]

Aaron.....
About the neighbor's polled Herefords;It doesn't seem that long ago to me but it was back in the'40s and '50s so alot can change in that time and you have the horned gene pool to draw on.Loose and sloppy sheathes sure can be part of the problem.I have a good story to tell about that.
We were useing angus bulls to breed heifers so one day I found a bull that had a prolapsed sheath.I called the local vet and asked what would happen if we just cut off what was hanging out.His answer"he'll bleed to death".I like to experiment a little so we put the bull in the chute heated an iron and went to cutting,being carefull not to cut into the shaft.Whenever I hit an artery I would cauterize it.We got around the whole mess and dropped a few pounds of maggot infested flesh on the ground.I should have mentioned that he could not urinate either.He was given a shot of pen. and turned in an 80 acre trap.About two wks. later the bull was missing I found him a couple of miles away,in a pasturewith only hereford bulls, trying to breed a cow.(Like me)He could only extend his shaft about a foot but he was giving it his best.The bull was brought home and later sent to the kill.Damned if that cow didn't give birth to a black baldy calf!!!














0.

 

[Jinglebob]

Juan;
You said, "like me" in the previous post. What did you mean? Are you a fence jumper too? :lol:

 

[Aaron]

Interesting story Juan. If you know an animal is going to die, best to just let the vet be and experiment yourself. Good to hear a success story every once in awhile.

We had a 4 1/2 year old bull in fall 2001 that was fighting in a pen. He started to run away alongside some 1/4 inch solid steel sheets that line the pen as a barrier, and his front foot sank past the bottom edge. When he lifted his foot again, he popped the hoof shell right off the toe and it started bleeding like an SOB. Automatically think to just shoot him, but then cauterized the wound and wrapped the toe with a heavy large wool sock. We doctered that bull for about half the winter (in the barn) until he had grown a hard enough callus on the toe. We ran that bull with a few cows in 2002. Can't remember if we did get any calves off of him in 2003 or not, but we sold him to slaughter in August 2002. By that time, the toe had started to grow back, but it was disfigured and he was too sore to travel with any stride in his step.


Soapweed, your absolutely right. Teats and udders are the #1 priority in a cow. Fertility is important too, but if she gets mastitis in one of her quarters, she isn't going to stay around long. I think that when you have pictures of a cow, you should take a picture of her udder as well. The picture I was refering to doesn't have the best resolution at the udder level, so I can't clearly distinguish between the teats.

These are the types of teats I breed for:

 

[Denny]

Aaron -I have some red baldy cows from a horned hereford bull udder and teats look the same as that cow you pictured.They really raise big calves but they really dont carry alot of udder other than up high between the legs.These cows are all 98 models and all have good udders yet with no pickle tits.

 

[Aaron]

Denny,

The top pic is also a 98 model and the bottom pic is a 02 model.

The key to milk production efficiency is to produce cows with basically nothing but pure cream for milk. You don't need lots of milk, you need high quality milk.

During the winters, you don't even see an udder on these cows from a side view, they are so tight in the udder.

Here's a back end pic of that 02 model and a following pic of her heifer calf last year in June.

Here's a pic of that 98 model and her steer calf.

 

[PPRM]

Aaron,

Nice cattle,

Pat

 

[Denny]

Yea they look good I would like to run a horned Hereford again on my straight black cows but I would have to slip one in around the wife she likes all black hmmm.My thoughts are the horned bulls make a better cross than those from the polled version.I am going to AI my redneck cows to a hereford maybe get a usable bull from one of those now to pick a horned bull to use.