A few in this bunch over 800

[cowgirl8]

We don't baby our bulls. They never see a bag of feed, they get moderate hay and if the winter is bad and manure stacking, we put a protein tub in there with them. We've bought enough reg bulls to know that if your bull works, hes not going to look like edited pictures in a bull magazine. In person this bull is short and compact, holds his weight and is very gentle that passes onto his calves..

 

[elkwc]

We don't baby our bulls. They never see a bag of feed, they get moderate hay and if the winter is bad and manure stacking, we put a protein tub in there with them. We've bought enough reg bulls to know that if your bull works, hes not going to look like edited pictures in a bull magazine. In person this bull is short and compact, holds his weight and is very gentle that passes onto his calves..

The same can be said about the bull I retained last year. He weaned off his mother at 8 months at 1000 pounds with no extra feed except for being on wheat pasture with his mother the last 6 weeks. That was because we had excess wheat last year. Since he has been on grass and then starting June 1st was turned in with the cows just a week after his y/o birthdate and been breeding cows since. He is around 1,500 now. Was over 1,250 at a y/o. He won't receive any extra feed.His first calves will arrive in March. If they don't perform he will be culled just like one we buy. We've had too many issues with those high powered overfed bulls that we have decided to keep and develop some of our own that we know what the mothers are and that have proven they can handle our conditions. We are saving one this year also. He will run on wheat as long as we have it and then around June 1st go to the breeding pasture but no extra feed otherwise.

 

[True Grit Farms]

We don't baby our bulls. They never see a bag of feed, they get moderate hay and if the winter is bad and manure stacking, we put a protein tub in there with them. We've bought enough reg bulls to know that if your bull works, hes not going to look like edited pictures in a bull magazine. In person this bull is short and compact, holds his weight and is very gentle that passes onto his calves..

I see the short, compact and noassatall bull in the picture. He sired some nice calves no doubt. But why would anyone keep a short, compact bull a bull? Try as I might I just don't get it.
Most bulls only work 2 months a year and before turnout every good bull will be over conditioned. My way of thinking is if the bull can't put on condition, his calves won't either.

 

[kenny thomas]

We hauled off all the steers off this herd yesterday. There were 19, born between March to May. Weight average 651... All sold excellent...When I saw my husband walking out the door with the check with a big smile, priceless. After the 30 cent debacle a few weeks ago, I needed this. Most were grouped and bought by just a few buyers. Colors were from lite red, brindle and black....all grouped in mixed colors. So, doesn't matter the color, just matters if its a good meaty calf...FYI, big calves are hot right now.....

I am usually disappointed in what calves here in the east brings compared to the west. I sold a few this week off the cow which I rarely do. They were Charolais cross steers weighing 630 and brought 1.52. What are they worth there? Bigger calves are selling good compared to the smaller ones here also.

 

[elkwc]

We hauled off all the steers off this herd yesterday. There were 19, born between March to May. Weight average 651... All sold excellent...When I saw my husband walking out the door with the check with a big smile, priceless. After the 30 cent debacle a few weeks ago, I needed this. Most were grouped and bought by just a few buyers. Colors were from lite red, brindle and black....all grouped in mixed colors. So, doesn't matter the color, just matters if its a good meaty calf...FYI, big calves are hot right now.....

I am usually disappointed in what calves here in the east brings compared to the west. I sold a few this week off the cow which I rarely do. They were Charolais cross steers weighing 630 and brought 1.52. What are they worth there? Bigger calves are selling good compared to the smaller ones here also.

Kenny had a conversation with a coworker today about Char cross calves. He helped work a set last evening and said overall they were the nicest bunch of the 200 calves they worked. But said they were talking about how everytime they take them to the local sale barn the buyers ask to have all the char crosses cut off and they sell 10-20 dollars a hundred less. This is what keeps many of us from using Char bulls. He also said that they were the hardest to handle of the whole bunch. I know one long time feeder that used to feed a lot of char crosses said that they don't grade as well and unless he can buy them cheap he isn't buying them anymore to feed. I know some on here say they sell good in their area. It is amazing how much things differ from one region to another.

 

[cowgirl8]

We don't baby our bulls. They never see a bag of feed, they get moderate hay and if the winter is bad and manure stacking, we put a protein tub in there with them. We've bought enough reg bulls to know that if your bull works, hes not going to look like edited pictures in a bull magazine. In person this bull is short and compact, holds his weight and is very gentle that passes onto his calves..

I see the short, compact and noassatall bull in the picture. He sired some nice calves no doubt. But why would anyone keep a short, compact bull a bull? Try as I might I just don't get it.
Most bulls only work 2 months a year and before turnout every good bull will be over conditioned. My way of thinking is if the bull can't put on condition, his calves won't either.

Our bulls work 3 months and cover a lot of land. We got busy this year and left the bulls out a couple weeks longer and they've been in this pasture for about 2 months. The first month they spent fighting, by spring they will be in good shape. Red bull is the fattest of the group here, fatter than the high dollar angus bull we bought this spring who is the same age...He's basically a angus and is taller than our reg angus bulls. I'm glad hes short and compact because of the simbra that is in him. He's short compact compared to simbra mixed that sometimes get too tall....If you've raised enough bulls, and i'll say that we're probably on the higher end of that here, is you learn how they grow without throwing the feed to them.. Right now we have 15...Half reg, half ours. I know exactly how a fat reg bull looks at 24 mos when you go look at all those shiny fat overfed animals. YOu take them home and throw them out with the cows...2 months later, he's down to what he really looks like if not worse (depends on how much he was overfed to make him look more impressive). They all get put into this bull pasture of ours around august, and everyone looks the same. By spring, no one is overly fat, but everyone is ready to work. Our reg bulls do not gain extra because they have a piece of paper, or nor do they go right back to looking like they did when we bought them.....They look like bulls, and on every bull you have to wait a year to see if you'll use him again..... We kept heifers, 2, out of him his first year and let me tell you, the guys who bought his steers and paid over 1000 for them, is not going to be disappointed. I can only imagine what his meat wagons are going to look like with feed...
BTW, this red bull I call SS (secret sauce) bred one of our daughters old cows and she produced a carbon copy of him. She was so impressed at how he grew, she left him a bull. He's a carbon copy of him and I think we're going to work out a trade to get him. She's into black Herefords, otherwise she'd use him as a bull...
https://scontent-dft4-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/ ... e=5A6A797C

 

[cowgirl8]

We hauled off all the steers off this herd yesterday. There were 19, born between March to May. Weight average 651... All sold excellent...When I saw my husband walking out the door with the check with a big smile, priceless. After the 30 cent debacle a few weeks ago, I needed this. Most were grouped and bought by just a few buyers. Colors were from lite red, brindle and black....all grouped in mixed colors. So, doesn't matter the color, just matters if its a good meaty calf...FYI, big calves are hot right now.....

I am usually disappointed in what calves here in the east brings compared to the west. I sold a few this week off the cow which I rarely do. They were Charolais cross steers weighing 630 and brought 1.52. What are they worth there? Bigger calves are selling good compared to the smaller ones here also.

We do have a few steers with more leg on them. They brought a lower price than the shorter ones. Since we do have some wild hair simbra in our older cows, we'll get a few overly tall steers...but just a few. Seems the buyers are looking for shorter ones this year...

 

[cowgirl8]

I guess when you have enough land and cows you can run a pos like him for a bull. You must of had him covering some really nice looking cows.

I didn't see this comment earlier since it was on the other page.....
Just want to note that we do have really nice looking cows, at least most of them are. Next question might be, were are we buying our cows? Well, if you pay attention you just might learn something, we specially select our cows out of our own herds. I've mentioned before, we had one bull we kept every heifer out of(you would rip that bull apart if I posted a picture of him, he was UGLY)We had commercial show heifers, out of our stock, that we kept their heifers. We kept every heifer out of BB, BBJ, SS, and BBJJ, our bulls. Every nice looking cow is our own recipe. Our reg bulls are LBW angus or just reg angus and we don't keep anything out of them because our home grown bulls outperform. We use the angus on the younger cows since we don't weigh the bulls we keep, just to be safe.
And since we were sim and simbra at the turn of the century, our cows were huge and tall. We brought them down in size (short is relative) to a shorter stockier animal. ANd, this might blow your mind, but we also wanted a smaller udder (small is relative) than what the sims and simbras had.....not just a smaller udder, but a productive small udder. This red bull possessed a trait that a lot of simbras carry. Anyone who dealt with simbras in the 90s knows just how big these animals can get.. We had them so tall they couldn't walk through the chute without scraping their back on the head gate top.. Now that we've gotten our cows with just a small % of simbra, every now and again one hits the ground and shows that growth without the leg.....This, this is what we're aiming for, that size without the leg...
Just a picture of the POS bull's small ass passed on to his calves.. Had 2 trailer loads of these POS calves...lol This was taken 2 months ago...And, if I had my own way i'd turn our herds into brindle now. We have a good start, just love the brindle. SS throws dark maroon brindles, almost black....They are beautiful to look at. Wished I left this one a bull...

 

[kenny thomas]

We hauled off all the steers off this herd yesterday. There were 19, born between March to May. Weight average 651... All sold excellent...When I saw my husband walking out the door with the check with a big smile, priceless. After the 30 cent debacle a few weeks ago, I needed this. Most were grouped and bought by just a few buyers. Colors were from lite red, brindle and black....all grouped in mixed colors. So, doesn't matter the color, just matters if its a good meaty calf...FYI, big calves are hot right now.....

I am usually disappointed in what calves here in the east brings compared to the west. I sold a few this week off the cow which I rarely do. They were Charolais cross steers weighing 630 and brought 1.52. What are they worth there? Bigger calves are selling good compared to the smaller ones here also.

Kenny had a conversation with a coworker today about Char cross calves. He helped work a set last evening and said overall they were the nicest bunch of the 200 calves they worked. But said they were talking about how everytime they take them to the local sale barn the buyers ask to have all the char crosses cut off and they sell 10-20 dollars a hundred less. This is what keeps many of us from using Char bulls. He also said that they were the hardest to handle of the whole bunch. I know one long time feeder that used to feed a lot of char crosses said that they don't grade as well and unless he can buy them cheap he isn't buying them anymore to feed. I know some on here say they sell good in their area. It is amazing how much things differ from one region to another.[/
elkwc, what would my,steers have brought this week in your area?

 

[cowgirl8]

I really dislike chars...My husband had one in the 70s he showed and we had that cow for a while. Got a few replacements out of her way back in the 80s. SHe and her daughters are pretty much washed out now. I believe the last white/grey char mix I can remember was over 10 years ago and she was over 15, I called her Tokenwhite.. She was more sim/simbra than char, but did get the light solid color.

 

[elkwc]

I am usually disappointed in what calves here in the east brings compared to the west. I sold a few this week off the cow which I rarely do. They were Charolais cross steers weighing 630 and brought 1.52. What are they worth there? Bigger calves are selling good compared to the smaller ones here also.

Kenny had a conversation with a coworker today about Char cross calves. He helped work a set last evening and said overall they were the nicest bunch of the 200 calves they worked. But said they were talking about how everytime they take them to the local sale barn the buyers ask to have all the char crosses cut off and they sell 10-20 dollars a hundred less. This is what keeps many of us from using Char bulls. He also said that they were the hardest to handle of the whole bunch. I know one long time feeder that used to feed a lot of char crosses said that they don't grade as well and unless he can buy them cheap he isn't buying them anymore to feed. I know some on here say they sell good in their area. It is amazing how much things differ from one region to another.[/
elkwc, what would my,steers have brought this week in your area?

Kenny hard to say. I haven't been to an auction recently and just started really looking at the reports the last week as we plan on selling some the 17th. Also without seeing your cattle and the cattle in the reports it is hard to say. But from what I've read I would say very similar to what yours brought at the most 1.55. If they had been straight black over 1.60 and black baldies 1.65 and over. Again that is just a ball park.

 

[True Grit Farms]

I really dislike chars...My husband had one in the 70s he showed and we had that cow for a while. Got a few replacements out of her way back in the 80s. SHe and her daughters are pretty much washed out now. I believe the last white/grey char mix I can remember was over 10 years ago and she was over 15, I called her Tokenwhite.. She was more sim/simbra than char, but did get the light solid color.

A Charolais is a poor choice for making females in a commercial herd. But an excellent choice for a bull as a terminal cross in a commercial herd. This is common knowledge around here and the buyer's really like smokey calves.

 

[Workinonit Farm]

We hauled off all the steers off this herd yesterday. There were 19, born between March to May. Weight average 651... All sold excellent...When I saw my husband walking out the door with the check with a big smile, priceless. After the 30 cent debacle a few weeks ago, I needed this. Most were grouped and bought by just a few buyers. Colors were from lite red, brindle and black....all grouped in mixed colors. So, doesn't matter the color, just matters if its a good meaty calf...FYI, big calves are hot right now.....

I am usually disappointed in what calves here in the east brings compared to the west. I sold a few this week off the cow which I rarely do. They were Charolais cross steers weighing 630 and brought 1.52. What are they worth there? Bigger calves are selling good compared to the smaller ones here also.

I too would love to hear the answer to this question.

 

[Silver]

Good Charolais and Char cross calves sell very well here. There is no sale barn advantage to black cattle here the last number of years, good cattle sell as good cattle. The best dollars per head go to the heaviest calves, and those are seldom BA.

 

[True Grit Farms]

Good Charolais and Char cross calves sell very well here. There is no sale barn advantage to black cattle here the last number of years, good cattle sell as good cattle. The best dollars per head go to the heaviest calves, and those are seldom BA.

You guy's don't have CAB, or a retained ownership program? And do you sell through a stock yard or off the ranch in pot loads?

 

[Silver]

Good Charolais and Char cross calves sell very well here. There is no sale barn advantage to black cattle here the last number of years, good cattle sell as good cattle. The best dollars per head go to the heaviest calves, and those are seldom BA.

You guy's don't have CAB, or a retained ownership program? And do you sell through a stock yard or off the ranch in pot loads?

There is CAB here, and some guys retain ownership. We usually sell through the auction barn, occasionally direct off the place. I'm just stating what I see at the sale barn over the last number of years.