Anyone raising Shorthorns?

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We've had a handful of shorthorn cows over the years. Some were some of our best cows, and some were some of the worst. The bad ones were more of the showy type stuff. They didn't milk very well and they just fall apart when they get turned out to pasture. The good ones though were really good. Raised massive calves every year, and bred back good too. Probably 80-90% of the calves were solid colored. I think if you buy from the right breeders, shorthorns are great addition to any herd.
 
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This cow I bought as a bred heifer several years ago for dirt cheap. She was in the singles pen, not pregged, and I took a gamble on her. She ended up being a great cow, and I've kept a few of her heifers and they've been good too. I'm assuming she is a hereford x shorthorn. She raised a really nice heifer this year that I'll be keeping, and I'm hoping to get a couple more heifers before she gets too old.
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Both of these cows were really good cows that lasted a long time. They've both been sold, but they definitely paid their way. Each had one look alike heifer and the rest of their calves were solid colored. I regret not retaining any of their heifers.
 
Is she a true 50/50 shorthorn hereford? I really like how she looks.
Thanks, she was bought on the spur of the moment at a stockyards. No way to know for sure how much of anything is in her but i figure her to be probably pretty much a 50/50 Hereford x shorthorn. She looks consistent with those crosses I used to see more often back in my childhood. Here is her first calf that will be 2 years come February by a registered Angus bull. She shows a few white hairs on her face and a little white in front of and down her tail and belly.F3B0815E-6347-4056-8AA5-FDBF23B7C73C.jpeg
 
Neat picture of that old barn. I love how it has been patched together over the years. The heifer looks like she will be a big animal in a couple years.
Barn was originally built as a tobacco barn, and has been used for livestock too. A few years ago metal was put on the sides that get the most weather.
 
Great to see some people on this forum raising Shorthorns.

We are raising Shorthorns here in Australia. We are doing 2 breed rotational cross breeding with Shorthorn and Maine-Anjou.

Shorthorns are quite popular here. They don't have as much of the market share as Angus but they are very common. We don't really get docked for Shorthorns here if they have roan on them. And I'm in Angus country here. Back in the day Blue roan Shorthorn Angus crosses were the highest value cattle in the sale yards here. Now Speckle Park are taking some market share from Angus.
Speckle Park will be 10c/kg more then Angus Shorthorns will be about 5c/kg less then Angus.

We recently purchased a new Shorthorn bull. I am very happy with him he is 1150kg.

We sell our beef on farm so sale yard prices don't affect us.
 
We raise purebred and commercial Shorthorns here in Saskatchewan. We sure like the hybrid vigour we get from breeding Charolais to the Shorthorn cow. Also seems to be good demand for blue roan heifers.
That is a beautiful brood cow. I wish we were closer I would be interested in some open heifers that grow up to look like that.
 
Muridale Robert 35U, right, Coyote?
Really liked what I saw of the Muridale and Saskvalley cattle, when we were using Shorthorns... always wanted to use Saskvalley Bonanza... but couldn't risk the roan... Black Hide Derangement Syndrome is bad enough down here on reds going through the sale ring... roans or RWMs really get trashed.
 
We have decided to breed more shorthorns. But unlike most of you, see want the flashier. We do best selling halter broke pet cows. People who want a pet cow want flashy. This year we also started selling beef by the half.we are eating my daughter's show steer. He was a shorthorn beefmaster. Great meat. We will market a few to lower level 4h kids but mostly raising to sell as pets and meat. We bought a white bull calf we are raising. Hoping to get some blue roan from out black cattle. I'm also going to look into tanning the hides of the flashy meat makers. We had started going towards red Angus but found they are harder to well here in Oklahoma. I have a great reg. Red Angus heifer bull for sale and haven't gotten much interest
I might keep him until late summer to breed heifers. Calving heifers would be the downside to shorthorns
I had a bull 4 years ago that was a 68 pound calf. My jerseys had 77 and 81 pound calves easily. I have 2 of those heifers. They don't look half dairy and neither do their calves
 
We have decided to breed more shorthorns. But unlike most of you, see want the flashier. We do best selling halter broke pet cows. People who want a pet cow want flashy. This year we also started selling beef by the half.we are eating my daughter's show steer. He was a shorthorn beefmaster. Great meat. We will market a few to lower level 4h kids but mostly raising to sell as pets and meat. We bought a white bull calf we are raising. Hoping to get some blue roan from out black cattle. I'm also going to look into tanning the hides of the flashy meat makers. We had started going towards red Angus but found they are harder to well here in Oklahoma. I have a great reg. Red Angus heifer bull for sale and haven't gotten much interest
I might keep him until late summer to breed heifers. Calving heifers would be the downside to shorthorns
I had a bull 4 years ago that was a 68 pound calf. My jerseys had 77 and 81 pound calves easily. I have 2 of those heifers. They don't look half dairy and neither do their calves
I'm sure there are easy calving short horns out there but have heard they are hard to find. I prefer Angus for use with heifers.
 
There are proven calving ease Shorthorn sires out there, and not all that hard to find. EPDs in the breed are kinda... I don't really want to say 'iffy', but it's so much smaller, anymore, than, say, Angus, Simmental, etc., that even 'popular' bulls are not going to have a lot of progeny out there to yield high accuracies on some of the EPDs.
That said, in my experience, CED is probably one of the most believable of the Shorthorn EPDs.

I've used Waukaru GoldMine 2109 (CED 11/Acc .71) and Rob Sneed's '034' (CED 15/Acc .62) bull enough that I'd be comfortable using them on a well-grown heifer of virtually any breed.
Plenty of others out there - CattleVisions has about 20 in their lineup with CE above 10 - and, if you look, there are quite a few of those with forum-member Coyote's breeding behind them.
 
We raise purebred and commercial Shorthorns here in Saskatchewan. We sure like the hybrid vigour we get from breeding Charolais to the Shorthorn cow. Also seems to be good demand for blue roan heifers.
I was going to post a pic of that cow and credit you with it, didn't realize you were on the forums! Probably one of my favourite roan shorthorn cows

We had shorthorn bulls for about 10 years, first one made lots of good cows, but they had roan and they did get docked for it, second shorthorn bull we had threw solid calves, but he was a screwball and his heifers just never worked out for some reason or another.. he looked great though

This is now my oldest remaining SHxSalers cow, I think she's about 6 years old here, she's 16 now
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This one is from the same sire, Hereford momma, much more commercially acceptable coloring


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This was the solid red SH bull that just didn't have good heifers, but looked good
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Sire of the two cows above, He came from Milt Stein in Langley
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I would love to find some good beef type Shorthorns. Not these clubby hair balls that you see everywhere, but good solid soggy wide hipped calf raising machines.
If you take a Shorthorn cow and cross her to a good carcass traited angus bull the resulting F1 Shorthorn Plus steers will be some of the best feeding cattle you can raise.
Lots of good shorthorn breeders around the US. We are celebrating 150 years as an association. Just had our annual meeting in Kansas City this weekend. Depending on what you are looking for I can point you to breeders.
 
An old man next to my grandpa's farm raised nothing but shorthorn.
My dad bought had some years ago and they were really good cows.
They milked good, handled good and raised really nice calve. I always liked them but I have never owned any.
I really don't know how they finished in the feed yards, but I figured they would do good?
It's too bad the campaign against skin color drives the market.
 

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