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Best functional Simmental bull
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<blockquote data-quote="Travlr" data-source="post: 1775010" data-attributes="member: 42463"><p>I begin by weeding out the popular bulls completely. Sorry to say it but registered stock tends to have very low genetic diversity compared to any kind of natural population or pre-artificial insemination. It can't be helped when there are only so many "top bulls" and they are fathering most of the bulls used as clean-up bulls... and further down the line as commercial bulls.</p><p></p><p>I've had very good luck with outliers. Especially to produce commercial replacement heifers. Since all my heifers offered for sale as replacements were from well proven cows, I stay away from "heifer bulls" too. There are a lot of bulls that have combined traits that will compliment any herd if you know what you want. The whole package, rather than a couple of high percentile traits at the expense of others.</p><p></p><p>I used to work with a vet involved with embryo transfers and flushing top cows to generate high numbers of siblings. And then some of the genetic anomalies cropped up as daughters were bred to related males. Top bulls are easy and popular, but they aren't as safe or even any <em>better</em> than bulls with less popular pedigrees. Registered herds are stuck with cultivating popularity for the big bucks... but commercial producers need fertile animals that last, and put pounds on the scale.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Travlr, post: 1775010, member: 42463"] I begin by weeding out the popular bulls completely. Sorry to say it but registered stock tends to have very low genetic diversity compared to any kind of natural population or pre-artificial insemination. It can't be helped when there are only so many "top bulls" and they are fathering most of the bulls used as clean-up bulls... and further down the line as commercial bulls. I've had very good luck with outliers. Especially to produce commercial replacement heifers. Since all my heifers offered for sale as replacements were from well proven cows, I stay away from "heifer bulls" too. There are a lot of bulls that have combined traits that will compliment any herd if you know what you want. The whole package, rather than a couple of high percentile traits at the expense of others. I used to work with a vet involved with embryo transfers and flushing top cows to generate high numbers of siblings. And then some of the genetic anomalies cropped up as daughters were bred to related males. Top bulls are easy and popular, but they aren't as safe or even any [I]better[/I] than bulls with less popular pedigrees. Registered herds are stuck with cultivating popularity for the big bucks... but commercial producers need fertile animals that last, and put pounds on the scale. [/QUOTE]
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