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RoperAB

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What kind of cows are you running and why?
If your a purebred outfit please state it.
 
I run Hereford cows, both polled and horned, and put Canadian influenced horned bulls on them. I like the disposition the cows have, and I am the only one in my immediate area with Herfs, so it is easy to find my cows if they get out!
 
Moderate framed white Charolais cows and Limo bulls. We use the Limo's for the muscle. The cows are thick, and when you add those big Limo butts, the tan calves that we get are just what we want to see. 8)
 
Char cows with Char bulls. We find they use the feed as good as any cross we've tried. The Limo x calves are sure ok with lots of eye appeal, and I do have one Limmy bull at the time. Our heaviest calves are white on white.
 
My commercial herd is mostly Angus and Angus/Shorthorn cross. I've got a couple Simm/Shorthorn cross cows that I ended up with by accident, and they're hellish good cows. And I still have a few old baldies that I couldn't say no to.

I'm also a startup PB Shorthorn breeder, but I'm a loooong ways away from even remotely being competitive.

I prefer the Shorthorn cross stuff for easy keeping, good grading, and feed efficiency. Unlike some breeds that promote themselves as the ultimate in cross breeders, I think that Shorthorns really can cross to anything and bring something to the table.

Rod
 
We have straight Angus cows bred to straight Angus bulls.

We are breeding for replacement heifers so our focus is on
maternal cattle. We find our Angus are basically trouble free.
We have a night calver for 3 weeks that loves to come here
because he doesn't have to do much. The calves have a lot
of vigor when born and the cows are good mothers. We have
managed to take the work out of calving with this program.

Been breeding Angus cattle since 1979.
 
After selling down in '02, I'm still building my herd up. Got mostly horned Herefords again with quite a few black baldies and a few straight black Angus. Sold the straight black heifers at weaning time and kept all the Herefords and baldies.

Also sold almost all the black and baldy steers at weaning and kept the red hided steers to sell as yearlings. Can't hardly give those Hereford steers away as a calf but they do about as well as anything else as yearlings. :D

I like the disposition, maternal, and easy keeping of a Hereford. IMO, it's tough to beat the product of a good Hereford cow bred to a Angus bull.
 
We raise registered polled herefords as well as brangus/hereford crosses.
 
commercial blacks and baldys with black limo bulls,i use angus on the hefeirs,this progam works good for me
 
After sleeping on this question overnite, I would qualify my answer to sound more like I use Charloais cows, but What kind do I like? I like the good ones. I guess about any breed has some of them.
 
Our commercial herd is Angus x Tarentaise, Ang x Shorthorn, Ang X Hereford, and Ang X Galloway, using all Galloway bulls, and steadily increasing in Galloway content. We also have a purebred herd of Galloways. They are the best fit for our operation of anything we've tried so far. They're smaller framed with lots of volume, flesh and dimension. Work great for raising beef and dropping costs. :wink:
 
Okay a really dumb question but if I dont ask I wont learn.
How much does the local market dictate what breed of cows you run?
Example around my place most run herefords, angus and black baldies. he only purebreed guys I know are on this forum. But if it looks like a hereford I call it a hereford. Now I know some who are running what looks like Charloais/ Limo crosses. These suckers are HUGE compared to what im used to looking at.
Anyway these generally seem to come from SK.
So is a thousand pound hereford worth the same as a thousand pounds of charloais or texas longhorn?
Im guessing not and its the local buyers in an area that kind of determines to some extent what type of cows you run?
If not then why not run bigger animals? Example On the outfit that I used to work, the neibhours charlais bull got in a breed some of our cows. Wow those were the biggest calves we ever had. They looked like giants and they just kept on growing until they were sold.
 
around here I take a hide discount, every one is sold on black cattle, but I will sit back and wait...the colors will turn again, from what I am seeing is the angus guys are in a buying ring and inflating each other....that bubble will burst, and I will be ready to sell them good calves
 
We raise registered angus and have angus based crossbreds. The registered have been around since the early 60's. Only run angus bulls.
 
RoperAB said:
How much does the local market dictate what breed of cows you run?
Click to expand...

When I started my own herd, versus working for others, I went with black because they were the hot critters at the auction market at that time and I knew I was going to need every last nickel I could eke out. Now that I'm established, most of the debt paid down, I can afford to run what I want. I found a market for my Shorthorns, so I don't take hide discount, and when I'm ready to finish my own animals, I know I'll have a leg up on grading.

Rod
 
DiamondSCattleCo said:
RoperAB said:
How much does the local market dictate what breed of cows you run?
Click to expand...

When I started my own herd, versus working for others, I went with black because they were the hot critters at the auction market at that time and I knew I was going to need every last nickel I could eke out. Now that I'm established, most of the debt paid down, I can afford to run what I want. I found a market for my Shorthorns, so I don't take hide discount, and when I'm ready to finish my own animals, I know I'll have a leg up on grading.

Rod
Click to expand...

Old timers tell me that years ago a lot of people ran shorthorns in southern AB. Everybody says they were great cows. Nobody can tell me<around here> why they dont run them anymore. Really I get the impression that a lot of outfits tend to run whatever type of cows everybody else is running just because everybody else is doing it.
The people that I know who run the Charloais/ Limo crosses seem to graze in SK in the summer, then truck them to AB for the rest of the year. Apparently AB cows dont like SK winters :lol:
Those Charloais/ Limo crosses seem to have lots of spark in them. I havnt really worked on them but I know from just riding through them they look wild eyed. Some herds will buck/kick and high tail it away from you if they see you coming 300 yards away. Im kind of guessing its because maybe there not used to seeing a guy on horseback? Haha Or maybe they are used to guys on horseback and when they saw me they thought "cowboy" We are outa here! :lol:
Anyway it seems like its mostly black cows or herefords around here<the outfits that im familier with>. If you see exotics there tends to be a SK connection.
 
RoperAB said:
Old timers tell me that years ago a lot of people ran shorthorns in southern AB. Everybody says they were great cows. Nobody can tell me<around here> why they dont run them anymore.
Click to expand...

A few things happened to Shorthorns:

1) Western Canada's fascination for those large framed exotics of the 80s. Thankfully, just a fad that quickly faded when guys realized just how inefficient those monsters were.

2) Angus breeders really made strides in improving their breed, while many in the Shorthorn industry kind of rested on their laurels. I've watched the same thing happen to Hereford.

3) The show ring. Shorthorns became very popular in the big city show ring, and those guys just simply can't breed a beef animal. So we saw Shorthorns move from small to moderate frames with lots of volume to those leggy, pencil gutted pieces of junk that seem to win the ribbons. Many new breeders looked at what was being shown, and didn't realize there were still Shorthorn breeders around who raised and fed BEEF animals. Unfortunately, those junk animals also made it into the semen catalogs of most AI guys, and I really don't blame anyone for not wanting to use junk. To this day, I rarely see a good Shorthorn in semen catalogs, even though I know they're out there.

Once the Shorthorn breed faded away, the Canadian and American Shorthorn Associations simply didn't promote as well as the Angus (and other breed) associations did. Those of us running Shorthorns are trying to change that, and with the help of a few feed studies, people are beginning to understand that Shorthorn animals are desirable in this cold hell we call Canada :)

Rod
 

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