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Is the optimum cow fact or fiction????

Turkey Track Bar

Well-known member
I wish I could take credit for these thoughts, but I can not, Troy Marshall penned this piece that in my opinion offers a lot of good thoughts. What are your thoughts on it?

Cheers---

TTB :santa:

A recent symposium at the National Western Stock Show looked at the optimal beef cow. The conclusion was that the optimal cow exists, but no one knows who she is.

By its nature, "optimum" is never optimum for long when you're talking about biological animals. With the genetic tools we have available today, the optimum beef cow of 20 years ago should be a sub-par cow today.

Differing geographical locations, management practices and marketing programs can all dramatically shift the definition for what the ideal beef cow is. A farmer in Iowa retaining ownership on all his calves and selling them on a carcass-weight basis through a value-added beef grid has a totally different definition of "ideal" from a rancher in Arizona who sells all his calves at weaning.

The optimum beef cow has to be determined via a total-systems approach, where efficiency is measured not only at the ranch gate but throughout the production process. Efficiency, in and of itself, has to be separated from all the rhetoric to get to the science of it.

It's almost universally accepted, for instance, that animals with smaller frame scores equate to more efficiency from the cow side but less efficiency from the fed-animal side. However, the data would indicate there's really no difference in biological efficiency as it relates to mature size. And that -- while frame size is a moderately good indicator of mature size -- it's certainly just an indicator trait. Small isn't necessarily better.

To find the optimum beef cow, you have to have a very good understanding of the resources, economics and marketing opportunities of a given operation. Then you fine-tune mature size, milk production, growth, mating systems, etc., to that set of resources and factors.

Multi-trait and balanced-trait selection has always been the answer, but marketing and the laws of differentiation have always encouraged single-trait selection. That's why there's so much discussion about that optimum beef cow.

The odds are you won't find her in a situation where the goal is to maximize production and carcass traits. Likewise, you won't find her where somebody is trying to ignore everything past the ranch gate, either.
-- Troy Marshall
 

Soapweed

Well-known member
RobertMac said:
Finding your "optimum" cow is one thing...replicating her is another.

I am more interested in finding the optimum "herd" instead of focusing on individual animals. In other words, seek a good optimum average and kick out the extremes.
 

RobertMac

Well-known member
Soapweed said:
RobertMac said:
Finding your "optimum" cow is one thing...replicating her is another.

I am more interested in finding the optimum "herd" instead of focusing on individual animals. In other words, seek a good optimum average and kick out the extremes.

You got it, Soapweed!
 

Soapweed

Well-known member
RobertMac said:
Soapweed said:
RobertMac said:
Finding your "optimum" cow is one thing...replicating her is another.

I am more interested in finding the optimum "herd" instead of focusing on individual animals. In other words, seek a good optimum average and kick out the extremes.

You got it, Soapweed!

Gee, it is fun when we agree, RobertMac. :wink: :)

As far as having nearly an all-natural product, our outfit would qualify if it wasn't for the fact that we do implant our calves. We don't use any fly control on our cattle, and haven't for ten or twelve years. (God gave them tails, right?) We don't purchase any fertilizer, but instead feed our cattle hay out on the meadows in the winter to help put natural fertiziler on the ground where we put up hay in the summertime.

I am glad I didn't pick this spring to not implant our calves. This fall, our calf weights were down by 37 pounds. If we had not implanted, I would surely have attributed the loss of weight to this fact. I think there were several factors for our decline in weight. We calved this spring about a week later than normal, and we started selling a week earlier than last year. On average, our calves were two weeks younger. Another factor was that about 25% of the calves were out of first-calf heifers. Add to this a hot dry miserable summer. Every time we checked windmills during the hottest part of the summer, the cattle would all be hunkered up around the tanks and water holes. They would be standing closer than you could possibly pack them into a corral.

Anyway, next spring might be the year we don't implant the calves and shoot for an all-natural end product.
 

Juan

Well-known member
Soapweed said:
RobertMac said:
Finding your "optimum" cow is one thing...replicating her is another.

I am more interested in finding the optimum "herd" instead of focusing on individual animals. In other words, seek a good optimum average and kick out the extremes.

Ditto----------We do that and don't implant.
 

PureCountry

Well-known member
It's very simple in my mind....the optimum cow for all operations is the one that makes a profit. How could we argue that? I have some that admittedly aren't fun to look at, but they bring in a live calf every year - they're profitable.
 

PPRM

Well-known member
I know what her udder looks like...I know how much time I have to spend pulling her calves.....I know how she mothers her calves....And I now what her calves look like at Weaning,

;-}


PPRM
 

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