Hybrid Vigor Crosses Explained.

[Son of Butch]

Sorry Butch, you bring up valid points maybe in the morning I will feel like playing again.

Yeah, I'm just in a bad mood about paying high prices in a falling market.
F1s are clearly superior females, just sorting out my feelings about how much of a premium I can pay and still sleep comfortably.

 

[bball]

Going rate for quality F1s around here currently seems to be 1800-2500. I drove 4.5hrs one way to OH today to look at some GVxAN F1s. Quality animals. 2k average price..not heifers btw. 3-6 year old bred cows. 2k is my personal limit in current market for just about anything except a bull. And even at that price, I'm pretty nervous, but I firmly believe in quality over quantity..got to pay for quality..and so do the guys that buy from me.

Edit to add: I wouldn't expect to buy a registered animal for 2k, before any purebred guys jump on me

 

[bball]

Which brings me back to my original question.
How much more per head can I afford to pay for the F1 bred heifer?[/quote]

Butch, I plugged in $2000 for F1 and used $70 (per the study) and the difference would take a touch over 6 years to justify. So anything after sixth year is when you would see a return based on a 2k$ F1.

Very interesting assessment/analysis on your part.

 

[Stocker Steve]

Clearly paying $1800 more per head for the F1 is not worth it.
Which brings me back to my original question.
How much more per head can I afford to pay for the F1 bred heifer?

Harlon does this calculation periodically for English F1s using NPV or time value of money. About $100 sticks in my mind. Of course you can afford to pay more than this when calves are $3 a pound. :nod: Goggle Beef mag for the details.

The deal in short eared cattle country is usually red baldies. They often sell for less than straight blacks but they are worth more.

 

[tdc_cattle]

What happens when you use black Herefords, SimAngus, Beefmaster or other cattle that are a composite bred as your Purebreds?

 

[dun]

What happens when you use black Herefords, SimAngus, Beefmaster or other cattle that are a composite bred as your Purebreds?

Not sure about Beefmasters but the same would probably apply as with the others. Not as much heterosis unless you throw in another purebred. About like using a 3 way cross.

 

[tdc_cattle]

Maybe I wasn't clear or I'm not understanding you. I'm talking about crossing say black simi's with black Herefords then breding the resulting heifer to a Beefmaster bull. All three of those are "pure bred", but they are also all crosses. Beefmaster really pushes retained heterosis in their advertising.

 

[Stocker Steve]

Yeah, I'm just in a bad mood about paying high prices in a falling market.
F1s are clearly superior females, just sorting out my feelings about how much of a premium I can pay and still sleep comfortably.

Bought some more running age Herford cows this week for $1100. Will breed them simi for "black baldies", and retain the best of the $700 heifer calves.
Bred black heifers are running $1500 to $2000. So F1s will cost me less than the blacks that most favor around here.

 

[Bigfoot]

I don't know anything about what the books/research/gurus say, but common sense tells me the more dissimilar the parents, the more heterosis in the calves. That's what I pursue, and have decent weaning weights.

 

[dun]

As soon as you start throwing in the same breed from both sides, i.e. angus, you start loosing heterosis. Some times referred to as "breed regression".

 

[WalnutCrest]

We are about 5 months away from our first Aubrac (French) x Mashona (African) F1 calf. I'm looking forward to seeing what we get...

Relating to the above question about whether or not using "straight bred F1s" loses heterosis vs other conventional straight-breds, the answer gets to how much homozygosity exists in the "straight bred F1s"...the more homozygosity that exists the more they'll breed like traditional straight-breds.

 

[tdc_cattle]

Sorry if I'm being alittle dense in this. I'm just curious how heterosis works using breds that were origionally multiple breds. So if I used an F1 out of a sim angus, Charolais x and bred back to a beefmaster bull I'd still get retained heterosis Or any composite bred as long as they aren't all crosses of one bred.

 

[cbcr]

Post by tdc_cattle » Sun Dec 20, 2015 12:45 pm

Sorry if I'm being alittle dense in this. I'm just curious how heterosis works using breds that were origionally multiple breds. So if I used an F1 out of a sim angus, Charolais x and bred back to a beefmaster bull I'd still get retained heterosis Or any composite bred as long as they aren't all crosses of one bred.

Yes you would still get heterosos / hybrid vigor with that cross. What you would have is an animals that is 1/2 Beefmaster, 1/4 Charolais, 1/8 Simmental and 1/8 Angus (this is if the sim-angus is a 50/50 animal).

We have a chart on our website http://www.compositebeef.com/why-composites.html that shows the various amount of hybrid vigor from purebred to 8 breed crosses. This cross that you would have would be a 4-breed composite and would have approximately 65% hybrid vigor.

 

[Rafter S]

I don't know anything about what the books/research/gurus say, but common sense tells me the more dissimilar the parents, the more heterosis in the calves. That's what I pursue, and have decent weaning weights.

That's always been my understanding. That's why the heterosis is so strong when crossing Brahmans with English or Continental breeds. You're not only crossing breeds, but species (bos indicus and bos Taurus).

 

[ANAZAZI]

I don't know anything about what the books/research/gurus say, but common sense tells me the more dissimilar the parents, the more heterosis in the calves. That's what I pursue, and have decent weaning weights.

That's always been my understanding. That's why the heterosis is so strong when crossing Brahmans with English or Continental breeds. You're not only crossing breeds, but species (bos indicus and bos Taurus).

They are not really different species. They are just one species, some argue that there are subspecies called "taurus" and "indicus", this is a neat way to clump groups of breeds together, that is all.

The less related, the more heterosis is true none the less.

 

[Muddy]

I don't know ANAZAZI, taurus and indicus are completely two different animals and there are many differences between these two species (not breeds) in biologically terms.

 

[Rafter S]

I don't know anything about what the books/research/gurus say, but common sense tells me the more dissimilar the parents, the more heterosis in the calves. That's what I pursue, and have decent weaning weights.

That's always been my understanding. That's why the heterosis is so strong when crossing Brahmans with English or Continental breeds. You're not only crossing breeds, but species (bos indicus and bos Taurus).

They are not really different species. They are just one species, some argue that there are subspecies called "taurus" and "indicus", this is a neat way to clump groups of breeds together, that is all.

The less related, the more heterosis is true none the less.

Then maybe they're classified differently now than they were when I was taking ag classes in college 30-some years ago.

 

[ANAZAZI]

I don't know ANAZAZI, taurus and indicus are completely two different animals and there are many differences between these two species (not breeds) in biologically terms.

One can breed crossbreds teach other. One can produce 1/2, 1/4, 2/4, 3/8 an so on. Crossing species like this does not work, if there is offspring, either all progeny or all male progeny will be sterile. this is part of the definition of the word "species".

 

[ANAZAZI]

That's always been my understanding. That's why the heterosis is so strong when crossing Brahmans with English or Continental breeds. You're not only crossing breeds, but species (bos indicus and bos Taurus).

They are not really different species. They are just one species, some argue that there are subspecies called "taurus" and "indicus", this is a neat way to clump groups of breeds together, that is all.

The less related, the more heterosis is true none the less.

Then maybe they're classified differently now than they were when I was taking ag classes in college 30-some years ago.

Yes probably, in any modern book they are considered the same species.

 

[Muddy]

I don't know ANAZAZI, taurus and indicus are completely two different animals and there are many differences between these two species (not breeds) in biologically terms.

One can breed crossbreds teach other. One can produce 1/2, 1/4, 2/4, 3/8 an so on. Crossing species like this does not work, if there is offspring, either all progeny or all male progeny will be sterile. this is part of the definition of the word "species".

Fertility in hybrids is another whole subject. Some species can produce extremely fertile hybrids while other species could only produce sterile hybrids.