Another breed debate. Beefalo VS Simmentals

[VtMapleGal]

I have 2 simmental heifers who i love. They are quiet, gentle and good to work around. I had a red angus, lol, she left. I have 2 beefalo steers who seem to be good cows, so i purchased a wealing heifer from the same place. These calfs were born in a field about a mile from people. The guy went once a week to give the cows a bag of grain to check on everyone. This is the only contact this lil girl has had. We went thier, penned her up, put her in the trailer and headed home. Got home, entered the trailer, got a halter on her, and let her in the pasture. In a week this calf knows her name, is halter trained, i can touch her all over, she comes in a horse stall for her grain, loves my pigs, and is so curious about everything. I am going to get another one from the same place. Are beefalo known to be so gentle as mine or am i getting lucky?

 

[KMacGinley]

Is there really such an animal or rather breed as beefalo. My beef professor at Purdue told us in the 80s when the breed got kinda hot that it was the biggest con going/ since the first cross is invariably sterile. Most supposedly beefalo were all cattle. Truth or not?

 

[jcarkie]

check out thier website www.abwr.org they are out there even one in arkansas not far from me

 

[TheBullLady]

Yep.. there were popular in the late 80's. The semen company even carried semen! We bred a couple of cows to a Beefalo.. they were decent calves, but not anything special necessarily. We kept a heifer that was out of a commercial Angus cow for a few years.

I would suggest that it's your handling practices that are making them gentle! It sounds like you spend a lot of time with them, and touch them a lot! Cows are like most other animals.. they usually like to be hanlded and scratched.

 

[redcowsrule33]

No offense to those who have them but beefalo go into my "why?" category. Right along with alpacas and designer dogs. :mrgreen:

My red angus make me lol but not because they suck. Sorry you had a bad experience.

I guess I feel like beefalo are mules doing a horse's job. I am certain they have their merits. I have great respect for many Bos taurus/Bos indicus breeds. Why add Bison bison to the mix? If you like buffalo meat raise buffalo.

That being said, if you have a great beefalo calf, enjoy her. When it comes down to it, the breed behind a great animal is less important than the animal herself.

Please, beefalo peeple, don't send me propaganda I won't convert. But I respect you as breeders nonetheless.

PS Good for you to have some Simmis!

 

[KMacGinley]

No offense to those who have them but beefalo go into my "why?" category. Right along with alpacas and designer dogs. :mrgreen:

My red angus make me lol but not because they suck. Sorry you had a bad experience.

I guess I feel like beefalo are mules doing a horse's job. I am certain they have their merits. I have great respect for many Bos taurus/Bos indicus breeds. Why add Bison bison to the mix? If you like buffalo meat raise buffalo.

That being said, if you have a great beefalo calf, enjoy her. When it comes down to it, the breed behind a great animal is less important than the animal herself.

Please, beefalo peeple, don't send me propaganda I won't convert. But I respect you as breeders nonetheless.

PS Good for you to have some Simmis!

That was what the professor said... They are like mules/ they are sterile at the first cross. If this is true/ I wonder how they get away claiming them as buffalo cross?

 

[dun]

No offense to those who have them but beefalo go into my "why?" category. Right along with alpacas and designer dogs. :mrgreen:

My red angus make me lol but not because they suck. Sorry you had a bad experience.

I guess I feel like beefalo are mules doing a horse's job. I am certain they have their merits. I have great respect for many Bos taurus/Bos indicus breeds. Why add Bison bison to the mix? If you like buffalo meat raise buffalo.

That being said, if you have a great beefalo calf, enjoy her. When it comes down to it, the breed behind a great animal is less important than the animal herself.

Please, beefalo peeple, don't send me propaganda I won't convert. But I respect you as breeders nonetheless.

PS Good for you to have some Simmis!

That was what the professor said... They are like mules/ they are sterile at the first cross. If this is true/ I wonder how they get away claiming them as buffalo cross?

Regardless of what the prof said, they are not all sterile. If they were there wouldn;t be a second cross. The Beefalo I've looked body wise more Holsteiny and not particularly beefy until the buffalo part was down below a 1/4.
Tere used to be 2 groups working on the hybridization. I don;t recall which was which. One group used buff cows and cattle bulls and the other used cattle cows and buff bulls. One hybred was called cattelo the other beefalo. Haven;t herd of cattelo in a long time.
From around the web:
According to the New York Times article, only 10,000 out of 300,000 bison are actually pure bison. So almost all bison are cattle-bison hybrids to some extent, except for the herds in Yellowstone, Wind Cave National Park, and a few others.

As far as evolution goes, the only offspring from a cattle-bison cross that can reproduce are those that are fertile. There may be some sterile offspring, but they won't contribute anything to future populations since they can't reproduce.

Both cattle and bison have 30 chromosomes, with about 25,000 or so genes, so I'm sure there are plenty of cattle genes that don't affect fertility, and vice versa.

The New York Times quoted James Derr, from the Texas A&M University, as saying that,

"They [cattle ranchers] purposely crossed bison with domestic cattle to make a better beef animal. Bison did better in harsh conditions and are more resistant to parasites and native viral diseases."

I suppose that helps explain, in part, why the hybrids are so prevalent.

 

[wyograybull]

That is the ONE thing.......I love about the CattleToday forums.....the forums are always a great place for people to post their ignorance. Too bad that most......just repeat half truths and rumors.....rather than REAL facts.........keeps the ignorant, illinformed.....thanks again.

 

[3waycross]

That is the ONE thing.......I love about the CattleToday forums.....the forums are always a great place for people to post their ignorance. Too bad that most......just repeat half truths and rumors.....rather than REAL facts.........keeps the ignorant, illinformed.....thanks again.

If you have information that would be helpful in this discussion why not post it. Ignorance is a temporary stiuation, stupid is permanent.
I doubt that most people posting incorrect info here are doing it maliousily, they are just il-informed. Do you have info pertinent to this discussion. If so please submit it in a positive way. There is no need to demean others who most likely are acting in good faith.

 

[KMacGinley]

That is the ONE thing.......I love about the CattleToday forums.....the forums are always a great place for people to post their ignorance. Too bad that most......just repeat half truths and rumors.....rather than REAL facts.........keeps the ignorant, illinformed.....thanks again.

If you are referring to me. I think that I will stick with my professor over the New york Times The lecture was accompanied by a slide show presentation showing what the crosses looked like and I think that dun was right that there were two different results depending on which you way you went. I also dont believe that all or any for that matter 300000 bison in the US are crossed with cattle/ they would then be beefalos not bison. I do remember what the crosses looked like and it was not pretty But I could be ignorant about beefalo/ if so you have my profound apologies.

 

[Rustler9]

I'm not an expert nor do I pretend to be but Beefalo aren't sterile. If you care to read about how the breed was developed you'll see that yes the males from the first cross (Bison xBovine) are sterlie. However, the females are not and can be bred back to either a bison or a bovine bull. This first cross is considered to be a Bison hybrid not a true beefalo. We used to have a Beefalo bull, an excellent bull I might add. You black lovers would have liked him. He was 5/8 Brangus and 3/8 Bison. Dog gentle, weighed a little over 2100 pounds. Produced a ton of red and black heifers . We used him on Beefmaster cows. Still have some of those crosses. Some of the best cows we ever had. Just finishing up the last Beefalo x Longhorn cross steer that we butchered.

As far as that Heifer being gentle, part of that is probably how you handle her and have worked with her. But I will say that we never had any that were wild or hard to handle. i was just talking to someone last night about getting a couple Bison heifers. Wouldn't mind using a Longhorn bull on them and see what I get. The males could go into the freezer. I love Longhorn beef and the buffalo that I've eaten has been good so I wouldn't mind the meat for the freezer.

It doesn't seem that the Beefalo breed took the country by storm but my limited experience with them has been good and I wouldn't have a problem with them again. You can't tell by looking at a Beefalo that it has Bison in it once you get them bred down to the percentage that the breed standard calls for.

 

[VtMapleGal]

My calf is 3/8 buffalo, 5/8 cattle (sim angus mostly). The breeder i bought her from had over 30 cows with 1 bull, and all were bred this year and last year, so i guess they arent sterile. I also visited another local beefalo farm and they had plenty of calves on the ground. Personally i like the flavor of the beefalo, i WOULD have pure buffalo if allowed in vermont, but they are very expensive, require better fencing than i have. I am on the VT/NH boarder and there is a breeder in NH i have visited with them. I guess its the great why you have your breed and why debate. Beefalo in my area sell like crazy.

 

[dun]

i WOULD have pure buffalo if allowed in vermont, but they are very expensive, require better fencing than i have.

They require better fencing then just about anybody has!

 

[Nesikep]

such as a bull pen?

 

[dun]

such as a bull pen?

All fences especially pasture fences have to be built like tall bull pens. And heavy gauge.

 

[Nesikep]

That sounds like a lot of work... That being said I think our corrals will have to be rebuilt in the next year or two, and that is gping to get my arms all buff from the drawknife

 

[grand chaser09]

Your getting lucky. Not only that I hear alot are sterile.

i've heard the same thing. we had one and he was mean as fire. the last thing we saw of him was him jumping off the trailer and into the sale pens.

 

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

My husband heard the same thing (way back when) from K-State. there is no such thing as a Beefalo, because the offspring is sterile - therefore they couldn't rebreed a 2nd generation. From what he was told, they DNA tested lots of "so called" Beefalo and they did not have any Buffalo DNA in them.
Since then, I've always considered the "Beefalo" to be just crossbred cattle (any cross of unknown pedigree).
Now, if someone has been DNA testing any "modern" beefalo, it would be interesting to prove the professors back then to be wrong.

 

[Red Bull Breeder]

I saw a on the Today show the other mourning where they were rounding up buffalo out in OK. tall grass prarrie and were DNA testing them to make sure they were pure Bisonnot crossed with cattle. They said most Bison today were crossed with cattle only pure Bison were in OK and Yellowstone. I have saw the first cross bison x cattle breed and calve.
.

 

[dun]

I saw a on the Today show the other mourning where they were rounding up buffalo out in OK. tall grass prarrie and were DNA testing them to make sure they were pure Bisonnot crossed with cattle. They said most Bison today were crossed with cattle only pure Bison were in OK and Yellowstone. I have saw the first cross bison x cattle breed and calve.
.

Folks on here won;t believe the today show any more then they did the article I posted form the NY Times