Your Choice In Cattle?

[Cody-n-Nancy]

What breed did you choose and why? Is there a difference between Black and Red Angus?

 

[leanin' H]

The difference is the color

I have seen a few red angus cattle I like. There was a poster on here that had fantastic red angus cattle. My bunch are Angus with some Simmental influence. I love a Hereford/Angus cross cow. Our country we run in receives 12 inches of total moisture in a year. It's plumb dry and water sources are scattered on a good year and damn far on a bad one. We need cattle that will travel and earn their keep. Our average cow will go 1100-1200 pounds. Bigger cows don't do as well although there are exceptions. I've always liked Maine Anjou cattle as well and have bought a few Maine influenced bulls. Grandpa ran Hereford cattle and they are dear to my heart. But buyers discount so hard on them I don't use them. I do have some great straws if some Hereford bulls in my AI tank. And I have kept some great heifers from them bred to an Angus cow.

 

[Cody-n-Nancy]

What about Brangus cattle?

Wonder what breed restaurant steaks are? I know one restaurant, I use to go to years ago, was called Stuart Anderson's Black Angus Restaurant. Now we go to Longhorn Steakhouse for Prime Rib or Ruby Tuesday's for Rib Eye.

 

[Faster horses]

I doubt if restaurant steaks are Brangus.
Black Angus is what is hot right now in restaurant trade. Interesting that in order to be
certified CAB (Certified Angus Beef) it doesn't mean the animal has to be straight Angus.
It has to pass stringent carcass qualifications but can be any Angus or Angus cross.
You might find this interesting.

What is Certified Angus Beef?

I was 18 years old when I first started buying beef to cook for myself. At that time, the butchery section of the supermarket was a generally bewildering place, but no label was more mysterious to me than the small “Certified Angus Beef” sticker, which seemed to promise quality while providing...

thetakeout.com

Red Angus is my favorite breed. When we changed from Herefords back in 1979, we wanted to go Red Angus, but there wasn't very many and there sure wasn't many for sale so we changed to Black Angus.
We raised straight bred Black Angus from then on, but a good friend of ours has Black Angus and crosses them on 1/2 Black Simmental and he gets a heck of a cow out of that. Then he goes back to a straightbred Angus bull on those 1/4 blood Simmental heifers. He's done this for years and he has one fine cowherd that really perform without being too big. Frame creep is alive and well in cattle across the country today. Some have just gotten too big for their environment. When you use a bull that has over 100# Yearling EPD you are going to get big cattle. We always tried to keep ours moderate. We had a dry cow once that weighed 1800# that fall when we sold her through the ring and that scared us big time. So we really did a turn around to keep our cows from being that big. In our country a 1200-1300# cow will work. We put a scale under our chute and I can tell you from that, whatever your cows weigh in the fall when you cull them, they darn sure weigh 100# more at home.

 

[Cody-n-Nancy]

I didn't mean that restaurants would serve Brangus. Was just wondering if anybody ever raised any. Wonder how good the meat is from them. I mean, the beef is part Angus and part Brahman.

 

[Faster horses]

I didn't mean that restaurants would serve Brangus. Was just wondering if anybody ever raised any. Wonder how good the meat is from them. I mean, the beef is part Angus and part Brahman.

Brangus is raised more in the south then the north. You seldom hear of them in the north country. The south likes them because cattle with a little 'ear' can stand the heat better. Also, their disposition can be a little......let's say........trying...but I think their meat should be fine. Someone will most likely answer your question that knows more than I do. Brahama cattle sweat through their hide like a horse however.

 

[leanin' H]

They run lots of Brangus influenced cattle on the Arizona strip and in southern Utah too.

 

[Big Muddy rancher]

I used a couple Brangus bulls for I think one year, The man that had them started using them because Angus were getting to small. I tried them because Angus were getting to big,
I did have a bit of hip lock so I sold them to a fellow for bucking bulls. I walked the bulls in and the guy that bought them told me the one cleared the arena after they bucked them.

 

[Leilani]

I have a mixture of brangus cattle , Brahman cattle, red angus , black angus, Hereford cattle, Longhorns About almost everything. And a lot of people buy them for their stocky muscle and build and also color people with longhorns sometimes buy bulls with spots and angus usually buy pure black or pure red. Not to take over but here's one of our baby longhorn/cross bulls that was born like 3 weeks Ago this was when he was first born but I'll get some more pics of him we will not keep him just because he's a spotted bull and we only like pure black or pure Red Bull's

 

[webfoot]

I am not the classic cow/calf operation. For a lot of years I have been buying old one and done bred cows in the middle of the winter. Calf them out. Mid August all the cows get trucked straight to the plant. The calves are kept until about the first of October when they have been weaned for 45 days or so. It has worked for me. As for breed I really don't care too much. There are some that I avoid but if the price is right to make them work I will bring most anything home.

 

[leanin' H]

Webfoot that model has worked well for many guys out this way too. They buy short term cows and calve them. Flesh up the cows and ship them and the calves help make up numbers for a complete semi load of calves when added to their own calves.

 

[Haytrucker]

I don't own any cows currently, but if I did, I would like a a 1/4 Hereford-1/4 Shorthorn- 1/2 Red Angus cow to use 1/4 and 3/8th's black Simmental bulls on. Just my thoughts, but that ought to take advantage of all the hybrid vigor there is. My favorite color is alive...

 

[Evans]

I don't own any cows currently, but if I did, I would like a a 1/4 Hereford-1/4 Shorthorn- 1/2 Red Angus cow to use 1/4 and 3/8th's black Simmental bulls on. Just my thoughts, but that ought to take advantage of all the hybrid vigor there is. My favorite color is alive...

I've got red Angus cows with Hereford bulls. They cross good and the buyers want them.
I like Shorthorns. I havnt seen any in years! They are antique cows. I miss seeing them.
To my eye a Hereford is what a cow should look like. Haha but fewer and fewer people agree with me. Course there are high headed Herefords out there to.
My best cows actually red Angus that are mixed and kind of a throwback of a line of Simmental bulls that where horned with long curly yellowish hair.
Actually my best cows with brains,good moms, good feet,etc do everything on their own are never the flashy good looking ones regardless of breeding.
Its funny how you can keep hfrs out of a great cow but yet they just dont always turn out like their mom. Haha cows are kind of like people.

 

[Haytrucker]

True story, Evans. Outcross genetics? My Dad was raised with Herefords and when he took the place on he bought a (gasp) Angus bull. Bought Hereford heifers and black bulls for quite some time. About the time the last neighbor who still ran straight Herefords bought a black heifer bull Dad drove a fair way and bought a Shorthorn 2 year old bull. Dark red with some white on his belly. Next spring we had 58 Shorthorn sired calves, neighbor to the north had 8, and the neighbors to east had 12. Ours were March calves, theirs April . Gained 75 pounds at weaning, click, just like that. My cousins fed two of his steer calves out of baldy cows the second crop for 4-H and finished 1, 2 in their class, and the better one was reserve champion behind a Chi cross. You have to hunt but those genetics are still out there. His daughters were awesome cows, bred Angus. When Dad sold out probably 80 percent of the cows were his, the oldest, coming 12. 4 sold as broken mouth or open.

 

[DosArroyos]

I just took an 18 year old Brangus cow to the packer that just didn't make enough milk for her last calf to make it.She was a super good momma cow.She'd put a 150 lbs of herself into a baby and would bounce right back after I'd pull the calf off of her.She'd stay off from the herd for 4 or 5 days even while I was cubing the others and even after that she'd come in,but tell her baby to stay put and not come into the evening feeding frenzy until they were good and agile.Make them mind her too and scold them when they didn't.Moms like that are not the norm.It hurt to see her go.

 

[Faster horses]

In SW Montana a ranching couple had Shorthorn X Angus herd and those were eye-popping, soggy calves! I loved seeing them. I've always liked Shorthorns. When we first started out, the fella that got us started on our own had some roany colored cows and they had great calves. I always wanted some....never got any...but our milk cow was Holstein X Shorthorn and she was a dandy. She was blue roan and of course we called her "Blue." She was BIG, and gave the best milk. Sad day when she was done. She didn't have many heifer calves, and I can't believe we didn't keep any, but I don't think we did.

My favorite breed is Red Angus because Shorthorn are in short supply and we never had much to do with them as they weren't real popular in our area. When we changed from Hereford to Black Angus back in 1979, you couldn't find many Red Angus cattle to buy so we went Black Angus. I like the Red Angus because I think they tolerate the heat better and I feel they have a gentler disposition as a rule. We got into some Black Angus cattle that were downright mean. On our outfit, cattle have no reason to be mean or wild. They are handled quietly, always. We started noticing the dispositions were changing when we raised some 2 year olds that were a certain breeding, and NOT EXT. All the bulls we used came from one outfit and we have to think that was the cause of the problem. Our older cows were generally all good to handle for the most part. It was disappointing. As you all know, getting a heifer to her 2-year old year is expensive so it was a real loss. We never expected it because the bulls themselves were okay, not particularly hard to handle, no moreso than any other bulls. Some of the nicest bulls were Mytty In Focus sons.