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Hybrid vigor vs genetic diversity of single breed

Gomez

Well-known member
Is it possible to find enough genetic diversity is a single breed (Black Angus) to come close to the benefits of cross bred animals? I wonder what my desire to keep an all black cow herd is costing me or benefiting me? I guess the only way to know is benchmarking the performance vs other herds or run more than one bull breed? Is the any benchmarking organizations that could shed some light? It's simpler to keep it all black cows and black bulls, but everything i read says up to 4 crosses yields benefit$. It sure is nice watching a pot load of all black steers run in the ring, but nicer to deposit a bigger cheque. :roll: Thoughts?
 

Northern Rancher

Well-known member
I think the benefits of crossbreeding and hybrid vigour and well documented from many unbiased sources. There are some pretty basic crossbreeding systems that will keep your cattle similar in type and colour. Alot of times chasing diversity within a breed will give you more variation other than colour than a well thought out crossbreeding program.
 

RSL

Well-known member
Not even close. The crossbred wins by a mile. There are reams of good research that support that. Conservatively an F1 bred to another breed will outperform a straightbred by 23%+. The other thing is that a lot of the benefits are in things that take a lifetime to select for. Fertility, health, disease resistance, etc. It also lets you balance carcass traits (marbling/yield) on your calf crop without sacrificing maternal efficiency (Terminal sire).
Our SMAN F1s are easily 100+ pounds heavier than our AN at weaning.
If you have a consistent plan and use bulls of the same type from different breeds you can have a very uniform cowherd.
Beef is the only protein industry that doesn't have hybrid vigour figured out. All of our pork, poultry and plant competitors certainly do.
 

PureCountry

Well-known member
RSL said:
Beef is the only protein industry that doesn't have hybrid vigour figured out. All of our pork, poultry and plant competitors certainly do.

How true. You spend some time talking to a true swine breeder, and they'll go on and on about how the Landrace x Yorkshire cross is the ultimate F1, and how some lines became too maternal and lacked carcass so they threw a Duroc in the mix, or went the other way etc, etc

They've had that all figured out for years. Some folks have with Angus x Hereford baldy programs, or Angus X Sim more recently, or Hereford x Charolais, etc, etc. For some reason, probably due to every breed promoting themselves as the Single Bullet Saviour, alot of commercial beef herds have gone with too much of this or that. As we grow our herd to match beef demand I think we'll be doing more crossing instead of sticking with 100% Galloway, and see where we end up.
 

Dylan Biggs

Well-known member
Our experience is that as a whole, our crossbred's always out due our purebreds by a noticeable margin, that was why I made the comment about
one of the purebred Angus bulls of mine being a pretty decent bull for a purebred Angus in the "bulls in working rig" post.
 
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