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Straight bred calves out perform cross breds

S

scout

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Jul 16, 2007
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273
Location
southeast Iowa
I was flippin through a old issue of angus beef bulletin when i came across this article written by Larry Corah vice pres of cab llc . quote evaluating feedlot data bases straight bred angus calves out performed crossbreds. this is reflected in the analysis of the ISU database where the daily gain advantage of straight bred or high percantage angus calves was nearly 0.2 pounds per day resulting in a added value of $25 per head over the middle percentage angus calves.end quote
then he goes on to say quote Another piece of conventional wisdom has suggested that crossbred calves should be healthier than straight bred calves , hybrid vigor should over come the health problems prevalent in straight breds . current data suggest these assumptions are incorrect end quote
according to this gentleman every thing we know about crossbreeding ,terminal crosses is out the window. in my personal experiance a cross bred calf with good genetics on both sides will out perform and out kill a straight bred calve 90% of the time
 
You hit the nail on the head on your last statement. A crossbred calf with good genetics will out preform a strait bred calf with poor genetics and vise-versa. Most of the benifits to crossbreeding are small and sometimes unnoticed but when you add them all up they can be the differance in makeing money or loseing money.
 
Harris Ranch/ Lacey Livestock Study
400 straight black cows bred to 10 Angus and 10 Hereford bulls with specific EPD's to be as similar as possible.

Angus Sired Hereford Sired
494 Weaning Weight 503
645 After backgrounding weight 637
162 Days on Feed 163
3.47 ADG 3.65
7.89 Conversion-as-fed 6.88
70.55 Cost of gain 65.10
$ 0 Feedlot value difference $86.10

That is without counting the 5 angus sired that died after weaning to 0 hereford sired.
 
There is also the strong case for using environmentally adapted cattle to take advantage of the low costs associated with easy keepers, then using the Angus or other popular breed to produce offspring to suit the market requirements. Nobody can afford to overlook the free gains afforded by heterosis, as Andy said, these days it often is the difference between profit and loss.
 
this guy seems to want to throw everything from the past 200 yrs out the window over one study . personally we run angus simmy cross cows bred and started using hereford bulls last year changing over from angus and simmy bulls the baldy calves have about 50 to 75 pounds on the angus calves at 5 months
 
I discussed this article with our local extension beef specialist and he was quite familiar with it as it had been making the circle of the university professors and extension folks. The thing I was told was that the focus of the study that the article was written about was not to evaluate breed or sire differences. So, when it came to verifying parentage very minimal effort went into it. In other words, a black hide meant angus.

You can make numbers say anything you want to as long as all the details of the study aren't widely known.
 
Well, I am not sure about that. What I am pretty sure of was that the point of the study wasn't to prove or disprove the notion of Angus straight bred being superior to cross bred calves. They were evaluating something else, which of course I can't remember right now, and the "breed evaluation" was a secondary part of the data they collected. The Angus guys got a hold of the data and derived a conclusion from it that the author of the project never drew on his own.
 
Work Hard and Study Hard said:
RobertMac said:
Profitability starts with environmentally adapted cows!
Click to expand...

I agree 100%. retain your own replacements when and if they are good enough.
Click to expand...

Use environmentally adapted bulls, more heifers are good, replacement quality...outcross or crossbreeding reshuffles the genetic deck.
 

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