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What's A Maternal Cow?

Northern Rancher

Well-known member
How do you define maternal-is it just raw milk production-calf weight weaned-longevity-maintenance costs. I'm fond of cows that raise a profitable calf every year without milking or eating herself out of house and home. There's several bulls that are over 100lbs for yearling weight and plus 30 for milk-no doubt there's alot of extra production available there but at what price. This is the biggest conundrum you face as a semen salesman-it's bad enough screwing up your own breeding program let alone giving your customer bad advice.
 

Andy

Well-known member
Milk is a growth trait in my opinion. I maternal cow is a cow that stays in good condition under normal conditons, has a live calf every year for 10 or more years, calves atleast every 365 days, and is docile. I maternal cow also needs enoungh preformance to make me money.
 

Badlands

Well-known member
Here's one for you NR.

It's about EPD.

I don't know if you have seen it, but the research from MARC in NE indicates that Angus are now producing the same YW, growth, and mature weight as Simmentals.

What are the YW and MW EPD of the sires that produced these equal weights to Simmentals?

71 YW and 32 MW.

Now if you check the AAA website you will see the current average YW and MW EPD for Angus cows are 63 and 31.

For "Current Bulls" they are 73 and 32.

For "Main Sires" they are 78 and 35.

For "Supplemental Sires" they are 80, with no MW EPD reported.

What does it mean?

The AVERAGE Angus of today grows as fast and ends up as big as the average Simmental.

What else does it mean?

HALF of todays Angus have the ability to be BIGGER than Simmentals.


Badlands
 

Mike

Well-known member
To me, Maternal means mostly "Milking Ability". Of course she has to get bred and bear a live calf, but when we get over that she has to raise a good calf to be Maternal.

Part of the equation that should be investigated more is "Butterfat" content of a cows milk.

Calves thrive on fat.
If a cow gives less milk than another and also has a high butterfat percentage, it is my belief that she is not having to utilize her mammary system to as high a degree as her herdmate that has more milk but less butterfat.

When we had a dairy years ago, I noticed that the Jersey cows that gave 1/2 the milk of the holsteins would raise a better calf and stay in better condition also. They would be more "Maternal" to me.
 

Badlands

Well-known member
Scary deal huh, northernrancher?

We actually had the Angus cattle to match Simmental growth 15 - 20 years ago, but people don't stop long enough to benchmark their progress to see if enough is enough.



Badlands
 

Northern Rancher

Well-known member
Well the Canadian Hereford breeders didn't do themselves any good when they tried to outgrow and out milk the Simmentals about all that happened was they gained about 30 pounds of BW and lost a bunch of doing ability. Thank god there were a few breeders that keep their sanity and stayed the course. We've got Angus now that milk like Holsteins-marble like Jerseys-claim to yield like a Limo. I hope those tough little black cows that popped out a dozen or so good calves no matter how tough things got don't become nothing but a fond memory.when I started ranching I bought a set of aged black cows with Charoilais calves on them. Great little cows I ran them for quite a few years before they finally ran out of gas. I ran into the old boy that sold them to me years later and he was giving me the gears about hooking a young guy with these old cows-I told him I'd been feeling guilty about screwing him out of his good black cows. I guess you'd call that a win/win situation lol.
 

lazy ace

Well-known member
This is going to be hard for me to explain. A maternal cow doesn't show up right away. She is one of those kind you don't remember or forget about. She simply takes care of herself and when she calves you simply go tag it and move on. When you brand, her calf isn't the standout but isn't the dink either. They are the cows that when you read there ear tag you say "no she don't look that old, good feet, good udder calf looks good....lets run her one more year."

No matter who you are you have a cow or two that you remember during calving for whatever reasons but if you think about the cattle you don't remember anything about. That pretty much means that you haven't had to deal with them for any reason. Those type of cattle to me are maternal.

That is about as clear as mud but I really appreciate the cows that I can't remember any thing bad about. Life is too short to deal with a bad bovine year after year.

have a cold one

lazy ace
 

Hanta Yo

Well-known member
We've found very high milking cows end up culling themselves from the herd because they don't breed back. IMHO I think EPD's that look good across the board are the best, and not selecting for maternal only.

We also purchased some Angus cows from a neighbor about 3 years ago, they were to calve in the fall, and they are HUGE. We have purebred Gelbvieh cows that are smaller than those Angus. We don't have very many of them left, either.

FWIW
 

sic 'em reds

Well-known member
Lazy Ace hit it for me.

I am with Northern as I sell for Accelerated Genetics. It's hard to tell guys what the good ones are because you can't tell for sure. This 100 + for yearling and 30+ for milk is rediculous. For my cows, and I tell my customers, think of what bulls were 5 years ago. They were almost too much then, but they were still practical, as far as EPD's go.

There is no way in my mind, that a guy needs to breed to an Angus bull with more than a +20 for milk and +85 for yearling. These cattle are gonna end up like the Holstein. Bones and nothin else.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
A neighbor of mine bought a bull from Diamond D a few years ago-- Used him for 2 or 3 years and kept a bunch of heifers out of him...Said the heifers from him are some of his nicest producing cows...Diamond D came back and saw him and the heifers when they were delivering some more bulls and bought him back- and are now using him as one of their herdsires.....DDA Broadside 52B-- but if you just went on his EPD's they'd scare you away....
BW -4.0
WW + 6
YW +17
Milk +13

But he's a chunk of beefsteak and raises calves the same way.....
 

Denny

Well-known member
Badlands said:
Here's one for you NR.

It's about EPD.

I don't know if you have seen it, but the research from MARC in NE indicates that Angus are now producing the same YW, growth, and mature weight as Simmentals.

What are the YW and MW EPD of the sires that produced these equal weights to Simmentals?

71 YW and 32 MW.

Now if you check the AAA website you will see the current average YW and MW EPD for Angus cows are 63 and 31.

For "Current Bulls" they are 73 and 32.

For "Main Sires" they are 78 and 35.

For "Supplemental Sires" they are 80, with no MW EPD reported.

What does it mean?

The AVERAGE Angus of today grows as fast and ends up as big as the average Simmental.

What else does it mean?

HALF of todays Angus have the ability to be BIGGER than Simmentals.


Badlands


Today's simmentals carry more angus blood than most angus,30 years ago a simmental looked like a holstein-hereford cross now they are pure black what a hoot.
 

Northern Rancher

Well-known member
Back in the 70's the Wye cattle were in ever A'I' catalogue-I don't think they went frame crazy the next 20 years like some did. Back in the 90's I went of a cattle tour with a couple buddies-14 herds or something in a week-several different breeds-it was an eye opener to say the least. The MARC in Nebraska was an interesting tour-the Great western Beef Expo and Colorado State were good too. We went through Heartland Cattle Co. in McCook Neb. when they were just getting the first heifers into breed. Of all the 'NAME' breeders we went to I thought the Oschner's in Torrington,wyoming were pretty solid cattle people-had a good honest set of Horned Hereford cows. We toured the home of the current Denver Champion hereford bull at that timeand it was the crappiest set of any cows that we looked at. It was an intertesting week got to meet some real characters and saw some good and not so good cattle in six different states-I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
I just really appreciate the ads the Oschners run. I don't know their
cattle, but always thought I would from reading their ads.

We had an intersting cow buying experience when we were in W.
Montana. We needed some cows and found some registered cows
to buy from some brothers that cut their herd down every three
years because of a shortage of pasture. The cows we bought were
good ones. So we called and wanted to know the next time they
sold, as we were interested in more. The brothers came to our
place and looked at the job the cows were doing and we got to be
friends. We bought the next cows that were for sale 3 years later,
and those were just good cows. No problem. Interesting that the
next year they called and had some younger cows for sale.
Some coming twos and coming threes. That was strange, because
they had never offered that age group for sale before.

We drove up and took a look. These young cattle didn't eyeball
like the others we had bought so we quizzed them a bit. We found
out the sire of the group of heifers. I asked them if they kept them
what they would breed them to. They didn't hesitate. They said
"Shearbrook Shoshone." Anyone that knows anything about Angus
cattle knows Shearbrook Shoshone was the number one bull for
milk at that time.

Well, put 2 and 2 together. These heifers were sired by
Fairfield High Guy. A bull with no milk. They bred the milk right out
of their cattle with one bad cross.

We didn't buy the cows.

As far as we are concerned, maternal means built like a mother cow;
acts like a mother cow; milks like a mother cow and breeds back on
time and be able to do it with minimium/no problems. I think to be classified as maternal, the cow has to be balanced in all maternal traits.

I think we really have to watch the milk in the Angus breed
anymore. It is getting to be TOO MUCH. We try to get a milk EPD
around 15, and no higher that 20. Too much milk causes too many
other problems.

I think Mikes comment about butterfat is very interesting.

In our literature in our mineral business, you should see the difference
in requirements between Avergage milking cows and SUPERIOR
milking cows. It 's an eye opener for sure.
 

DiamondSCattleCo

Well-known member
Mike said:
Calves thrive on fat.
If a cow gives less milk than another and also has a high butterfat percentage, it is my belief that she is not having to utilize her mammary system to as high a degree as her herdmate that has more milk but less butterfat.

When we had a dairy years ago, I noticed that the Jersey cows that gave 1/2 the milk of the holsteins would raise a better calf and stay in better condition also. They would be more "Maternal" to me.

I've noticed the same kind of thing around here Mike. The cows who have a thick, rich milk simply have a better calf on them. One of my girls ended up with a malpresentation as a heifer. When I milked her out, I'd never seen colostrum so thick in my life and it carried over to her milk. She doesn't the most milk of all the cows, but she frequently has the biggest, growthiest calf in the field.

Rod
 

mwj

Well-known member
What I wonder is who is milking all these beef cows to get the milk volume for the milk epd's. Does everyone look at calf growth and bag size, then make a wild guess? Does anyone do a 24 hour milk study on there cows to base there figures on?
 
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