True Grit Farms said:
Jeanne - Simme Valley said:
Simmental has a STAY EPD. If you are enrolled in Total Herd, you give a reason for each cow that leaves your herd. One of the "reasons" is Sold as a breeder WITHOUT papers. Everything goes into these calculations, including location, environment, past farm history, etc.
We only have TWO money indexes. Terminal and All Purpose (maternal). KISS
What part of the ASA is simple? Purebred, fullblood, SimAngus, Simbrah, breeding up, Fleckvieh. Weren't Fleckvieh cows and Simmental considered the same breed when ASA started? And now their splitting apart? I don't understand how the ASA works, because I'll never grasp how you can breed up to purebred starting with crossbred cattle. KISS for sure just keep sending money for membership and registrations and everything will work out.
In Germany, Austria, Czech, and handful of countries they are referred to as Fleckvieh. Likewise, Switzerland and some other countries they are referred to as Simmental.
When we started our registries 6 years ago, the diary animals in the US were referred to as Simmental, but yet when we looked up pedigree information in European databases they were referred to as Fleckvieh. There was no breed code being used for Fleckvieh. When we checked with DHIA in Canada we found our that the breed code they were using was FL so we worked with the NAAB and we were after a few months of communication they approved the FL breed code for here in the US.
In other countries we have seen different code used for the Fleckvieh, FV, FK and maybe one or two others. This is one breed that there is no standardized breed code for, but many have expressed that their should be.
As for breeding up to a purebred animal, International standards recognize and animal as being purebred at 87.5%, however there are some breeds associations that require much a much higher percentage (such as Charolais).
But, the ASA and other registries, once an animal reached the 87.5% are then counted as 100%. So if you breed say an Angus to an ASA bull that is 87.5% Simmental and 12.5% Angus, they will figure that the resulting animal is 50% Simmental and 50% Angus. If you keep doing this generation after generation, you can end up with an animal that is much less than the 87.5% purebred rule.
What has been surprising with some of these Continental breeds is we have discovered animals that were actually out of Holstein cows. But most of the time this Holstein cow was referred to as a crossbred beef animal.
Our members have been adamant about using actual breed percentages. Another thing is we use the registration numbers that were assigned to the animals from their Home country, so we can trace pedigrees back for many Fleckvieh and Montbeliarde animals for 10 plus generations. With the ASA they have given these same animals ASA numbers, making it almost impossible to trace their foreign ancestry.
The ASA was founded for registering Simmental cattle, the Fleckvieh and Montbeliarde are also supposed to be members of the Simmental breed. We had a Fleckvieh breeder that we were visiting with last week that found out that there are only about 1,200 Purebred/Fullblood Fleckvieh animals registered annually. So the majority of their registrations are black animals. This is an issue that is not just about the ASA, but ALL of the Continental breeds, Gelbvieh, Maine Anjou, Limousin and the Chianina. All of these breeds have turned black. Are there any breeders left of these breeds upon which the associations were founded? From what we have heard there are no fullblood or Purebred Chianina animals in the US and they allow as low as I think 6% Chianina blood in an animal to be eligible for registration.
You collect data. You send in data. Is it your data or their data? If you ever want to pull your data or ask that your data be removed will you be allowed to? To me it can answer the question of either members served by an association or members serving an association.
