A little AI help!

[thirstyman]

Greetings!

I'm new to the boards, but have been a lurker for a month or two. A little background on me - I was raised on a large commerical ranch in middle Tennessee - at one time it was around 3600 acres, now it is around 600 usable acres. We have scaled back dramatically - approximately a dozen brood head left due to a family members declining health. Our hay has always been top quality. As you can imagine, we have lots of extra land and we cut it for hay now - one dairy farm that we sell to had it tested and told us that it came back at 11% protein. I have been asked to help get things running again and to help oversee the cattle operations. All of the remaining cows (except one and she is being sold shortly - having bag issues) are solid calfers that have not had any problems having a calf and all of the calves wean at 475lbs+ (by eye - we dont use tape or scales). They are mostly black angus or baldy looking things - but the genetics are american mongrel (over the years we have used angus bulls, beefmaster bulls, chi bulls, limosuin bulls, lots of polled hereford bulls, and most of the cows were either originally black angus or hereford). In the past, we generally sold as weaners and averaged over 500lbs a calf.

We sold over 200 brood head over a 16 month period two or three years ago because of health issues of a family member. These remaining cows are supposedly the best we had left. Honestly, they are good looking, pasture fed only - with hay during the winter, however, they will not win any shows. We will feed some treats to keep them coming into the bard, but rarely do we supplement with anything beyond minerals and salt. No implants, only vaccines and worming. They could use a little length for my eye, but I am happy eating their offspring as it now stands.

We have slaughtered plenty of beef over the years for our own freezers and have had good luck in the tenderness and quality of the meat. It is my goal to ramp up production (slowly and methodically) and at the same time to increase genetics. If we can get all the cows calfing close together and produce a more uniform product, we were thinking of selling on the grid and some freezer beef on the side. I know enough about these boards to not ask any questions about pricing on the freezer beef. :lol2:

Here is my thought process. I believe the best way to start quickly moving the genetics is to use AI with a cover bull (we have a nice black angus bull right now, but he is not as long as I would like and his tail bone is a little higher than the rest of his back). I have been researching through google and various breed associations and thought my best first run or two should be with an angus bull - high calving score, low birthweight that grows off quickly (since we will have 4 heifers in the first batch) with good marbling and REA and then look in another season or two into crossing back to a continental bull as terminal (maybe a limi? we have had good luck with them in past) for most of the cattle while still trying to produce some heifers for retaining out of select cows with an Angus bull or a polled hereford.

I will not be doing the AI - we have a friend who runs a dairy farm who has offered to come do the AI for us if we can synch them. I'll talk with the vet about those mechanics - if anyone has any specific suggestions, I'm like a brahman - all ears!

my question to you - any thoughts/flaws sitting out there? and does anyone have any favorite AI sires that they would recommend that are good for heifers and cows.... Thanks in advance

 

[wbvs58]

I think I would be inclined to just buy a good quality bull and work to a tight calving period. AI, I find tends to string it out a bit, those that you miss have lost 3 weeks.
Ken

 

[thirstyman]

well, we're trying to tighten the calving period by going to AI. Some of the cattle left were spring calvers and some were fall. Normally, we would leave the bulls in for 90 days. AI with a cover bull sounds quicker than what we currently have. I would also like to have better genetics than our current bull. My assumption is that over two or three generations that I can probably replace a few cows with better heifers and add a few heifers. I'll probably also be looking to purchase a few bred cows, under the right circumstances. Between those two actions, I assume that I can increase the overall genetic health of the herd.

 

[HOSS]

thirsty,

I am also from middle Tennessee. Coffee County to be exact.

I do my own A.I. work and it has really improved my herd. If you want to produce some good angus daughters you can't go wrong with Mitty In Focus. I have used him on my heifers and he has produced some really nice females and he is highly proven on calving ease.

I currently use Gelbvieh and Balancer bulls. If you are close by PM me and I will help you in any way I can.

HOSS

 

[TennesseeTuxedo]

I'm intrigued with what you're doing as well thirstyman. Where is your operation located?

 

[thirstyman]

There seems to be an approval process on my replies, so they are hanging up somewhere.

Hoss and TT - the farm is in west davidson county - west of bellevue. It used to run all the way into Cheatum county. Now we are solely located in Davidson. Hoss, expect a PM as I continue to digest and review everything. I think our current plan is to try and breed everything in the march time period. So I have some time to come to a decision.

Tomorrow I am going to pick up a heifer that we had slaughtered. She came out of a black baldy by a full black angus bull.... and looked like a limi ?!? Our best guess was that the cow had a little limi left in her from the last time we had a limi bull - sometime around 2000. When I worked on the farm - high school through college summers - we had a good records. At some point during the 2003-2006 time period records became a little shoddy and are (in my mind) no longer reliable. The butcher (a menonite in KY who is honest as the day is long and does an excellent job) said that the meat looks great, very little loss to trimming and very tender. She was live weight 797 and dressed at 484. She was around 10 or 11 months. We had her hauled off because she was the most high strung calf we have dealt with in 5 years. One thing we have learned over 40 years is that high strung cattle are not worth a damn - regardless of how good they look.

To try and simply the plan, I want to try and improve herd genetics through proven AI sires. The hope is that after a few generations, the cows will be a little more reliable in expectations of calves - without losing the mongrel vigor. Also, I plan to use a few select cows for a freezer beef project and want to make certain that the beef is excellent in all respects. The ultimate goal is to have a high enough quality product to be able to sell on grid without significant deductions and come out ahead of just selling weaners. So anyone with experience, suggestions or ideas - I'm still all ears....

 

[Nesikep]

thirstyman, first off, welcome to the boards... secondly, about the pricing of freezer beef.. As much as you can!, especially if you can provide a better, healthier product.

I'm out of the freezer beef biz, unless I can sell an entire animal, and I need to get the order a fall in advance. I also don't handle the butchering at all. I'm just starting this, and I have kept 1 steer from this fall, presold for $2000 next fall. I told the customers I expected him to be at least 1200 lbs live weight which they were OK with, but as a couple months have passed, he's been exceeding expectations and should be in the 15-1600 lb range depending on if he goes down the road in early or late fall

the way I look at it is I'm not doing myself or anyone else in my business a favour by selling cheap... Is anyone selling us anything cheap? 60K for a dually truck? $5 a gallon diesel?

Good luck!

 

[novatech]

The way I look at AI is that you should select AI bulls with the specific goal in mind. You have a list of traits listed as to their importance. If you are selecting for herd improvement then there will be certain traits that will be demanded, such as fertility, longevity and milk. On the other hand if you are selecting for terminal calves there may be other traits that will play a more important role. There are outliers that can do both, or so the bull owners claim, but they are harder to come buy and strength of their genetics will play a role.
The only thing that I question is the use of to many crosses. It seems that the benefits of heterosis may be diminished as compared to pure breds.

 

[thirstyman]

Nesikep - I agree, but did not want to open the can of worms. Obviously, close friends and family will get a better deal, but I don't plan on losing money for anyone.....

Novatech - thanks. I have been thinking about it that way, but I guess I was hoping for the golden goose that could do everything. Currently, we do not have fertility or longevity problems. We sold some 10-15 year old cows that were providing one calf a year that weaned well. The only reason we sold was that we did not want to hang on to such an old cow. Milk seems to be fine, but every now and then we will have a cow's bag turn bad around the 4th calf or so. We generally sell that cow with the next load and toss in any heifers/younger cows that we kept from her.

From my persepctive, we haven't pulled a calf since the late 90s. I would really like to keep that streak going. Ultimately, I would like to increase length and muscling without sacrificing IMF, ease of calving or disposition. Is there anything on the EPDs that predicts length? I haven't seen it and have been having to look at pictures to try and determine....

 

[novatech]

I beleive one can make tremendous improvements with AI. When selections are made it is fairly easy to find all the great qualities as they advertise them, if you can beleive them. What I like to look for is what they don't tell you. Like the fertilitity mentioned. Sometimes the only way to find out is locating people that have used them. One reason to stay from the bull of the month club. I go as far as to locate progeny a couple of generations down the road.

 

[gizmom]

A golden goose for carcass genetics calving ease and maternal if you want to retain heifers would be Morgan's Direction. The problem with him is he is an NH carrier, but if you are using him on a commercial herd with no purebred animals he would probably work. I used him last year on some of my commercial cows just because he does such a good job with all of those traits. He was at ABS and they may still have semen available. We are purebred breeders, I used him before the genetic defects were found and love the calves I actually have a cow out of him that tested clean that we flush. Just my two cents worth, good luck with your herd.

Gizmom