Best Simmental or Angus bulls for the fescue belt

[True Grit Farms]

WinterSpringsFarm, the chances of you selling me what I'm looking for is slim to none if your still expanding your herd.
Good luck to you in your ventures. This is a really good Simmental sale, with plenty of quality animals that aren't babied.
http://shenandoahvalleysimmentals.com

 

[Bright Raven]

I have no experience with fescue, but there's very few Angus and even less Simmental that can make a living without a feed bucket. BFE you need to look for an operation that runs a lot of cows for starters. And secondly but just as important, has cows that look like cows. The majority of the small breeders feed everything and are just multipliers. Nobody wants to buy a skinny bull or heifer, but the bigger operations don't usually feed the females, they just creep feed the calves. You can feed an adverage calf into a really nice, sometimes outstanding calf, but that doesn't transfer to their offspring.

That may be the most ignorant post I've read on this site to date. I raise both breeds, and a mixture of the 2 and once they calve as 2yr olds they never see the feed bucket again. If they can't get it done on Timothy hay and fescue pastures and good mineral then they don't need to be here. Mine maintain weight, breed back, and raise nice calves without supplement.

You are wrong! He does it all the time.

 

[True Grit Farms]

Ignorant is to feed fat cattle, and then to worm them twice a year whether they need it or not.

 

[Bright Raven]

I have no experience with fescue, but there's very few Angus and even less Simmental that can make a living without a feed bucket. BFE you need to look for an operation that runs a lot of cows for starters. And secondly but just as important, has cows that look like cows. The majority of the small breeders feed everything and are just multipliers. Nobody wants to buy a skinny bull or heifer, but the bigger operations don't usually feed the females, they just creep feed the calves. You can feed an adverage calf into a really nice, sometimes outstanding calf, but that doesn't transfer to their offspring.

That may be the most ignorant post I've read on this site to date. I raise both breeds, and a mixture of the 2 and once they calve as 2yr olds they never see the feed bucket again. If they can't get it done on Timothy hay and fescue pastures and good mineral then they don't need to be here. Mine maintain weight, breed back, and raise nice calves without supplement.

While there are genetics that are better suited to fescue, I honestly think its also important for them to be raised on and adapted to fescue if you want them to perform.

I have made it a practice to annually visit the high profile Simmental producers in Kentucky.

I agree with the content of your post. Thank you.

 

[Bright Raven]

This is also a subject that I have been watching and working with for years. My best luck with Angus has been an elderly farmer in Arkansas. His cattle are mostly Emulous and linebred. I don't have any experience with Simmental that work here. I have tried a couple from Iowa, but with no luck. Other cattle that work here are Danny Miller's Herefords, the Mashonas and it seems like most of the more moderate Charolais cattle have worked here. I would like to purchase a few older Charolais cows that work on fescue as I am down to one older cow and one older bull and their sons.
Ron

Ron,

I am sure you know this. Southwest Missouri has the highest endophyte toxicity level tests recorded in the Nation. You have a challenge. Fire Sweep Simmental is in SW Missouri. They seem to weather the high toxicity fairly well.

 

[Hunter]

What would you all call good results for a cow/calf that is raised on fescue?
Would it be a calf that weighs 450-550 at 7 months? 8 months?

If raised on a combination of fescue, orchard and clover does that change things?

 

[Bright Raven]

What would you all call good results for a cow/calf that is raised on fescue?
Would it be a calf that weighs 450-550 at 7 months? 8 months?

If raised on a combination of fescue, orchard and clover does that change things?

There is more than one factor influencing the weight. If my Simmentals were the question, I would expect an average of 700 pounds at 7 months. At 8 months, 800 pounds. Mine are raised on hay, milk and feed. I calve in September and October. I am now weaning. Calves are about 6 months old and average right at 600 pounds. Sold 4 last week. One went 716 pounds. He was an early September

 

[Ebenezer]

What would you all call good results for a cow/calf that is raised on fescue?
Would it be a calf that weighs 450-550 at 7 months? 8 months?

If raised on a combination of fescue, orchard and clover does that change things?

#1 is calving interval +/- 365 days. Has a link to hair, skin, ability to utilize fescue. Scientist say that the largest concentration of endophytes is in the seed heads and our cows and sheep make a rotation grazing dry seed heads. I sometimes chuckle.

The bought solution and most promoted option is to replace durable fescue with high cost and less durable replacements with no guarantee that original K31 will not return as survival of the fittest. Selection for proper animals is much cheaper for the individual and easier to enjoy. Because seedstock operations spend 99% of efforts chasing terminal traits they see fescue resistance as useless. Thus back to the true comment that many feed as grains are great diluters of fescue. But expensive - passed on with high dollar sales to the buyer.

Dilution helps. Proper minerals help. Cheap minerals are a waste of money.

Once you get to the point of cows walking on tips of hooves, losing tails, hiding all day in the shade or panting in the sun and such you have let it go too far. They would not breed for love nor money. Who needs a woolly mammoth on the farm anyway?

Tell me what % mature weight of cow you want to wean? Hard to do the famed 50%+ on real world cows and minimal inputs on fescue unless you go to small frame cattle that will lose you more money in the barn than you can make. Many who "cure" the problem move cows to fall calving to get past most spring and summer fescue effects. What you want to find is herds doing spring calving in a short window with CI of 365+/- for a cumulative history on the cows. Split season calving is generally a byproduct of cows that cannot breed in the spring or are late calvers which shift to the fall and breed better. Watch out on that one.

This is a really good question getting some sorry replies. Don't be discouraged by those that specialize in pot shots. I know what works but probably not much help to you as we linebreed and use home raised animals and unpopular bulls. And I have no idea what you want or accept in cattle type and size. Very few folks know what to recommend from AI catalogs as the catalogs are not focused on helping with the problem. Even when a herd prefix is mentioned, you had better know which will and which will not work from their program.

 

[Fire Sweep Ranch]

What would you all call good results for a cow/calf that is raised on fescue?
Would it be a calf that weighs 450-550 at 7 months? 8 months?

If raised on a combination of fescue, orchard and clover does that change things?

A cow should wean off at least that at 7 months. Our pastures are mostly fescue, with about 20% red clover and maybe 10% Orchard grass. They get NO GRAIN! The University Research farm is not 5 miles from me, and they test the hottest fescue in the country! Ours is no different, so we dilute it with the orchard and clover. We rotate every 24 hours to a new section of grass, and are currently running 35 cows (most with calves) on about 37 grazing acres. We have a pen set up in the barn for the calves to creep, but when the cows went to grass the calves almost never come up to the barn anymore (a long distance from the grazing wedges- about 20 calves right now are eating about 25 pounds a day).
Three weeks ago I weaned a few of our September calves:
Heifer - 596 (Upperclass x Zsa Zsa), 197 days old
Bull -668 (Live Ammo x Pacesetter) 180 days old
Bull - 601 (Optimizer x Upgrade) 174 days old
Bull - 740 (Optimizer x Macho) 181 days old

Again, the cows get NO GRAIN, and must AI back in the same breeding season or they leave.
Here is an great example; I have a May 2015 5/8 female, she calved her first calf, AI sired (Uno Mas) in January 17 (sold as a bull calf at farm fest). Said cow calved in December, AI sired (Pays to Dream), and is bred back for a November 1st calf this year (2018), GLS Declaration (select sires bull). If you look on the ASA web site, her calving interval is 332 days (https://herdbook.org/simmapp/action/ani ... er=3027452).
Pretty dang good, and what I like to see our females do. Again, NO GRAIN.

Here is our first purchase, who is 11 years old and raised 10 calves. We rolled her one season because we flushed her, so she started as a spring calver and was moved to fall. We flushed here again last fall, and that set her back a few months. She is due to calve again in November to Optimizer, so we backed her up 45 days this year:
https://herdbook.org/simmapp/action/ani ... er=2374422

Some examples of our grass fat cows.

Yearlings, NO GRAIN since 9 months. The first is a Feb, the next is a December

Fall yearling, bred. NO GRAIN since 9 months old

10 year old cow... calved every year...

I have more examples, but will not bore you with them. I can assure you Simmental cattle can and do raise a calf every year on fescue. I have visited more farms than I can count, in many states, with hundreds of simmental influenced cows, and each and every one of them are saying the same thing and proving it. Pick up the SimmTalk magazine, they highlight big ranches every issue!
Fescue is such an issue, the university got a grant to study and come up with a EPD to measure tolerance. Our herd is enrolled in the study, all cows had DNA pulled and we have to do a shedding report on each cow in May. I suspect I have a few that are affected by it, in minute amounts, because they do not shed and tend to stand in the water when it gets warm. I will know more when the study is over and we get the results.

Again, NO GRAIN goes into our cows. Just grass when it is growing.

 

[Bright Raven]

What would you all call good results for a cow/calf that is raised on fescue?
Would it be a calf that weighs 450-550 at 7 months? 8 months?

If raised on a combination of fescue, orchard and clover does that change things?

A cow should wean off at least that at 7 months. Our pastures are mostly fescue, with about 20% red clover and maybe 10% Orchard grass. They get NO GRAIN! The University Research farm is not 5 miles from me, and they test the hottest fescue in the country! Ours is no different, so we dilute it with the orchard and clover. We rotate every 24 hours to a new section of grass, and are currently running 35 cows (most with calves) on about 37 grazing acres. We have a pen set up in the barn for the calves to creep, but when the cows went to grass the calves almost never come up to the barn anymore (a long distance from the grazing wedges- about 20 calves right now are eating about 25 pounds a day).
Three weeks ago I weaned a few of our September calves:
Heifer - 596 (Upperclass x Zsa Zsa), 197 days old
Bull -668 (Live Ammo x Pacesetter) 180 days old
Bull - 601 (Optimizer x Upgrade) 174 days old
Bull - 740 (Optimizer x Macho) 181 days old

Again, the cows get NO GRAIN, and must AI back in the same breeding season or they leave.
Here is an great example; I have a May 2015 5/8 female, she calved her first calf, AI sired (Uno Mas) in January 17 (sold as a bull calf at farm fest). Said cow calved in December, AI sired (Pays to Dream), and is bred back for a November 1st calf this year (2018), GLS Declaration (select sires bull). If you look on the ASA web site, her calving interval is 332 days (https://herdbook.org/simmapp/action/ani ... er=3027452).
Pretty dang good, and what I like to see our females do. Again, NO GRAIN.

Here is our first purchase, who is 11 years old and raised 10 calves. We rolled her one season because we flushed her, so she started as a spring calver and was moved to fall. We flushed here again last fall, and that set her back a few months. She is due to calve again in November to Optimizer, so we backed her up 45 days this year:
https://herdbook.org/simmapp/action/ani ... er=2374422

Some examples of our grass fat cows.

Yearlings, NO GRAIN since 9 months. The first is a Feb, the next is a December

Fall yearling, bred. NO GRAIN since 9 months old

10 year old cow... calved every year...

I have more examples, but will not bore you with them. I can assure you Simmental cattle can and do raise a calf every year on fescue. I have visited more farms than I can count, in many states, with hundreds of simmental influenced cows, and each and every one of them are saying the same thing and proving it. Pick up the SimmTalk magazine, they highlight big ranches every issue!
Fescue is such an issue, the university got a grant to study and come up with a EPD to measure tolerance. Our herd is enrolled in the study, all cows had DNA pulled and we have to do a shedding report on each cow in May. I suspect I have a few that are affected by it, in minute amounts, because they do not shed and tend to stand in the water when it gets warm. I will know more when the study is over and we get the results.

Again, NO GRAIN goes into our cows. Just grass when it is growing.

That is a nice response. It stands on its own but I happen to visit there and even have managed your farm during Nationals the last 3 years, so I offer my confirmation.

I am sure True Grit will fire a 'pot shot'.

 

[True Grit Farms]

Believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see is the way I live life. I'd imagine a pasture made up of 70% fescue, 20% clover and 10% orchard grass is some good pasture. If you can feed hay that is as good as that pasture, I'd see no reason to feed grain. Feeding 15% hay isn't any different than 15% feed in my way of thinking, and probably not much different in price per ton. I have no idea what y'all do, but I know what I do and what works for me, animal and feed wise.

 

[Bright Raven]

Believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see is the way I live life. I'd imagine a pasture made up of 70% fescue, 20% clover and 10% orchard grass is some good pasture. If you can feed hay that is as good as that pasture, I'd see no reason to feed grain. Feeding 15% hay isn't any different than 15% feed in my way of thinking, and probably not much different in price per ton. I have no idea what y'all do, but I know what I do and what works for me, animal and feed wise.

Some fancy footwork there. I thought you would say she made all that up. Didn't you say a Simmental cow has to pack a feed bucket to get from the barn to the pond? Or was you only trolling. Lol

 

[True Grit Farms]

Believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see is the way I live life. I'd imagine a pasture made up of 70% fescue, 20% clover and 10% orchard grass is some good pasture. If you can feed hay that is as good as that pasture, I'd see no reason to feed grain. Feeding 15% hay isn't any different than 15% feed in my way of thinking, and probably not much different in price per ton. I have no idea what y'all do, but I know what I do and what works for me, animal and feed wise.

Some fancy footwork there. I thought you would say she made all that up. Didn't you say a Simmental cow has to pack a feed bucket to get from the barn to the pond? Or was you only trolling. Lol

Didn't say anything about a barn or pond. Creep feeding calves isn't any different than feeding the cow, but I wasn't going to go there. Are the cows so sorry, or require so much feed themselves that they can't raise a good calf on their own? There's no secrets in the ASA or any other breed associations. We all have and use a lot of the same blood lines in our cows, no one has anything special except the real breeder's. And there's a few ways to become are real breeder IMO, it takes time, experience or a lot money. So your crap isn't any better than my crap, or anyone else's.

 

[Bright Raven]

Believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see is the way I live life. I'd imagine a pasture made up of 70% fescue, 20% clover and 10% orchard grass is some good pasture. If you can feed hay that is as good as that pasture, I'd see no reason to feed grain. Feeding 15% hay isn't any different than 15% feed in my way of thinking, and probably not much different in price per ton. I have no idea what y'all do, but I know what I do and what works for me, animal and feed wise.

Some fancy footwork there. I thought you would say she made all that up. Didn't you say a Simmental cow has to pack a feed bucket to get from the barn to the pond? Or was you only trolling. Lol

Didn't say anything about a barn or pond. Creep feeding calves isn't any different than feeding the cow, but I wasn't going to go there. Are the cows so sorry, or require so much feed themselves that they can't raise a good calf on their own? There's no secrets in the ASA or any other breed associations. We all have and use a lot of the same blood lines in our cows, no one has anything special except the real breeder's. And there's a few ways to become are real breeder IMO, it takes time, experience or a lot money. So your crap isn't any better than my crap, or anyone else's.

You are chasing out in the weeds. Be careful, you might catch chiggers.

 

[Bright Raven]

This is The True Grit proclamation of what a real breeder is, in his own words and in his own opinion.

And there's a few ways to become are real breeder IMO, it takes time, experience or a lot money. So your crap isn't any better than my crap, or anyone else's.

 

[True Grit Farms]

I stand by that 100% Raven, using a "baldie bull of the month" on decent cows doesn't make anyone a breeder, it just makes them a multiplier. It's just the way I see things, I might not be right all the time, but I'm good till proven otherwise.

 

[Bright Raven]

I stand by that 100% Raven, using a "baldie bull of the month" on decent cows doesn't make anyone a breeder, it just makes them a multiplier. It's just the way I see things, I might not be right all the time, but I'm good till proven otherwise.

Explain the difference you believe between a multiplier and a breeder. Is there a disgrace or dishonor in being a multiplier? Which one makes the most money?

 

[R V]

This is also a subject that I have been watching and working with for years. My best luck with Angus has been an elderly farmer in Arkansas. His cattle are mostly Emulous and linebred. I don't have any experience with Simmental that work here. I have tried a couple from Iowa, but with no luck. Other cattle that work here are Danny Miller's Herefords, the Mashonas and it seems like most of the more moderate Charolais cattle have worked here. I would like to purchase a few older Charolais cows that work on fescue as I am down to one older cow and one older bull and their sons.
Ron

Ron,

I am sure you know this. Southwest Missouri has the highest endophyte toxicity level tests recorded in the Nation. You have a challenge. Fire Sweep Simmental is in SW Missouri. They seem to weather the high toxicity fairly well.

Ron,
I know it feels that tough, especially on part of the farm, but didn't realize it was the highest toxicity in the nation. The Simmentals that I had tried were definitely not adapted for our fescue. Our county used to have a lot of the yellow and white spotted Simmentals that lived to be very old cows and worked for a living - I just don't know their breeding.
Ron

 

[Bright Raven]

This is also a subject that I have been watching and working with for years. My best luck with Angus has been an elderly farmer in Arkansas. His cattle are mostly Emulous and linebred. I don't have any experience with Simmental that work here. I have tried a couple from Iowa, but with no luck. Other cattle that work here are Danny Miller's Herefords, the Mashonas and it seems like most of the more moderate Charolais cattle have worked here. I would like to purchase a few older Charolais cows that work on fescue as I am down to one older cow and one older bull and their sons.
Ron

Ron,

I am sure you know this. Southwest Missouri has the highest endophyte toxicity level tests recorded in the Nation. You have a challenge. Fire Sweep Simmental is in SW Missouri. They seem to weather the high toxicity fairly well.

Ron,
I know it feels that tough, especially on part of the farm, but didn't realize it was the highest toxicity in the nation. The Simmentals that I had tried were definitely not adapted for our fescue. Our county used to have a lot of the yellow and white spotted Simmentals that lived to be very old cows and worked for a living - I just don't know their breeding.
Ron

Fire Sweep can provide more information. They are participating in a study on endophyte toxicity. I know their fescue seedheads are covered with the ergot pods.

 

[Hunter]

Those are some nice cows and calves.
Maybe I need some new cows and/or bulls as our calves are weighing anywhere from 430 to 625 pounds at 7-8 months old.
Those calf weights are from first calf heifers, if that matters, and we do not feed any grain to speak of.
Grass, hay in the winter and medicated salt is about all they get. Might look into creep feeding the calves this summer.
The cows all look healthy and by no means are skinny.
Our calves were from Commercial x Limi bred to BA bull.