Be the judge of German animals

[lithuanian farmer]

I never heard Blondes were later maturing, but the photo header says all these are 24 to 30 months old. Kind of disappointing they aren't in the cow/calf class by that age.

But based on that one picture, I would pick 30, then 31, then 29 dead last, too.

Many of the cattle in Europe don't calve until 30-36 months. I am sure some of them would calve earlier if they wanted them to, but they have a very different market than we do. They want big cows, especially the show herds, and calving them when they are young will slow the curve.

Yes, we try to bred heifers just when they're big enough or not younger than 24months. From this year bred heifers one will calve at 29 months age, all others -32-37months.

 

[P.A.L]

Limousin, Charolais and Blondes don't have much milk. That is why the poor udder. Also In France it's not suitable to breed heifer under 2 years old. They need to develop a year longer than normal good cattle. The most famous show breeders have cows BIG as two normal sized ranch type British breeds. They can be big because of EU subsidies. Blondes, Charolais and Simmental have also poorer eating quality. There was a big test done here this year and their beef was significantly poorer than Angus. I can't under stand why the premiums have paid only for big and round carcasses.

 

[Blonde d'Aquitaine]

I do not know about which subsidies is P.A.L. speaking about. There are none in the EU!
Replying your comments with statements: Average 240 d weaning weight of our Blonde d'Aquitaine calves is 602 pounds! I think that our cows make a good job. We breed our heifers when they reach 18 months. In feed efficiency Blondes are unbeatable: 5.3-6.5 pounds of feed per pound of gain. Our cows are hardy foragers. And they produce the best carcasses for the German market: 20 months old bull, 1340 pounds, warm carcass weight: 845 pounds, net beef: 667 pounds. I repeat that I am speaking about German marketing conditions that doesn't pay bonus for fatty carcasses. Moderate marbling is ever welcome. But not excessive cover fat that the consumer dismisses.
Speaking about size, we do not have that big pastures like in the USA. Although we think that less and more productive cows per acre means less management, less bulls, less calvings, less vaccinations, less cullings,. Consequently productions' conditions are not easy to compare. It would be also very wrong to make following statement based on P.A.L.'s way of thinking: It would be more productive to breed South African Boer goats than that small cows...
Nice Sunday to you all from Germany!

 

[P.A.L]

I do not know about which subsidies is P.A.L. speaking about. There are none in the EU!
Replying your comments with statements: Average 240 d weaning weight of our Blonde d'Aquitaine calves is 602 pounds! I think that our cows make a good job. We breed our heifers when they reach 18 months. In feed efficiency Blondes are unbeatable: 5.3-6.5 pounds of feed per pound of gain. Our cows are hardy foragers. And they produce the best carcasses for the German market: 20 months old bull, 1340 pounds, warm carcass weight: 845 pounds, net beef: 667 pounds. I repeat that I am speaking about German marketing conditions that doesn't pay bonus for fatty carcasses. Moderate marbling is ever welcome. But not excessive cover fat that the consumer dismisses.
Speaking about size, we do not have that big pastures like in the USA. Although we think that less and more productive cows per acre means less management, less bulls, less calvings, less vaccinations, less cullings,. Consequently productions' conditions are not easy to compare. It would be also very wrong to make following statement based on P.A.L.'s way of thinking: It would be more productive to breed South African Boer goats than that small cows...
Nice Sunday to you all from Germany!

In France they get 250€/cow beef cow subsidies. We get 40-60€. Ich Wissen nicht wie viele du hast im deutchland.

A good cow weans more than 50% of their body weight. 600kg cows 200 day old calve need to be about 300kg in my environment. Bull calves can be near 400kg when summer is warm and we have less snow. My herd is very small, Only 50 beef cows, Average weight of cow is about 600-700kg. If I had for example charolais (900kg) my fields could not support more than 30 cows. It's 20 calves less. We are grass-fed farm.

Don't get me wrong. Blonde is my first choice for terminal use.

 

[Willow Springs]

Average 240 d weaning weight of our Blonde d'Aquitaine calves is 602 pounds! I think that our cows make a good job.

Without knowing the weight of the cows, and how the cattle are fed this statement means nothing. However considering the size of most European cows and the more intensive feeding systems, this would probably equate to a loss in NA. I just brought home some PB Red Angus cows yesterday with 180-210 day old bull/hfr calves that averaged 781 lbs. To be fair they were on a lot of grass, but nothing additional; cows are probably 1450 lbs which would be a normal cow weight up here.

We have a very different market than Europe. In NA our main market is selling our calves and butcher cows are usually not worth much more than the calf they produce each year. We need relatively small cows that wean a high % of body weight as PAL has indicated they want in Finland. From what I understand a big Blonde cow or bull in France is worth a lot of money as a butcher animal. One of our French Students and his family ran their own Butcher shop and regularily butchered the more average quality Blonde cows at 5-6 years old.

Our cows are hardy foragers

It is these type of statemets that get breeds into trouble. Don't try to be what you are not. I run Blondes and Angus and there is no comparison in the ability to survive on lower quality forage and/or less feed; the Angus are far superior. However the reason for this is the same reason for the Blondes superior feed efficiency and cutability; less rumen, fat, and energy needed for maintenance.

To qualify what PAL said, Blondes are first and foremost TERMINAL sire cattle. They are even more so if we compare the type raised in Europe to what is functional over here. Our North American Blonde cattle are very different and you can't really compare them. Generally the European cattle have very big BW's, poor udder/test structure and HUGE mature body weight. However this can generally be said of the Charolais and Limousin in Europe as well. In Canada we have downsized the Blonde cattle, increased fertility, milk production, teat/udder quality, rate of gain, depth of body, etc. Most of this was just due to what would function and be profitable in our systems/environment. Big, extremely heavy muscled cows that require a lot of feed and calve every 14 months don't make money here. Those type of cows were culled long ago, and the types that I described were what flourished. We have retained the feed efficiency, high cutability, but possibly not to the same extent that it is in Europe, becasue again we have changed the type of cattle. We would most likely have more backfat and marbling than the cattle in Europe, again due to our different managment styles. However even with the changes that I have described the Blonde breed in NA is still a Terminal sire breed.

I do not know about which subsidies is P.A.L. speaking about. There are none in the EU!

In France they get 250€/cow beef cow subsidies. We get 40-60€. Ich Wissen nicht wie viele du hast im deutchland.

There are definitely subsidies on Europe. Not sure exactly what the program is called in France, but I have talked to beef cattle farmers there who have indicated that they cattle break even and they live of the subsidy that they get. They have also indicated that the subsidy almost works like a quota system; they don't have any more cows than they have been alloted subsidies for.

 

[Taurus]

I'm pretty much agree to everything what Willow Springs said. That is what happened to Blue Belgian Cattle in North America, they weren't so extremely like the "SuperCows" in Europe but the ones in North America have better calving ease and less C-sections.

 

[Blonde d'Aquitaine]

Thank you very much for the newest very objective postings that enrich the forum!
Indeed USA and Canada farmers "reinvent" the European continental breeds on a more practical way. I can see that when I observe Simmental and Blonde: Better udders, longer animals and securer calving easy. These aspects fit into our breeding plans. We also are working on a polled middle framed program. Consequently we imported some very well proven genetics from Canada.
Blonde in Germany are in the most of the cases is also a terminal breed.

 

[Blonde d'Aquitaine]

What about using this Fullblood Homozygous Polled Blonde d'Aquitainefor terminal breed? Here you can see a short video about a bull calf in Austria. http://bit.ly/Rainier-bull-calf