TheBullLady
Well-known member
For those of you that have been doing this for awhile (raising cattle) and for those of you that didn't "inherit" a breed from family, what breeds did you go through to get to where you're at today? What things made you change?
Our first cows where Holstein/ Simmental crosses.. in Illinois, a beef cow was considered anything that was less than 1/2 Holstein! I got into raising bottle calves, so we had quite a few Holstein and Jersey's which we'd breed and sell as springers.
We had other cross breds, primarily Simmental based, and ran an Angus bull on them. The calves were small and we didn't particularly care for them, so we switched to a Limousin bull. Great bull, so we got a couple of Limousin cows. Good dispositions, but we had one get mastitis and lost her, but the calves out of the cross breds were really good. Very uniform from a bunch of different bred cows.
My husband always liked Brahmans (I had never seen cows except off the road) so he went to Tennessee and bought a group of grays, along with a gray bull. I liked the Simmentals, so did some shopping around over the years and picked up some registered Simmentals over the years.
We moved to Texas, took 100+ head with us, and got a few Herefords here. They were good cows, but very poor milkers. In the meantime we had run the Brahman bull on the Simmental cows, and loved the calves, which got us into Simbrahs. We had two places, and on the heifer place we ran a easy calving Angus bull, because everyone said the black hided cattle would sell better. Not a bad little bull, but the calves where much smaller than any of the percentage Simbrahs. We did take a "hit" for the "earred" calves, but the weight difference made up for it.
Funny how person always experiments with new things to see if they can improve on something!
Our first cows where Holstein/ Simmental crosses.. in Illinois, a beef cow was considered anything that was less than 1/2 Holstein! I got into raising bottle calves, so we had quite a few Holstein and Jersey's which we'd breed and sell as springers.
We had other cross breds, primarily Simmental based, and ran an Angus bull on them. The calves were small and we didn't particularly care for them, so we switched to a Limousin bull. Great bull, so we got a couple of Limousin cows. Good dispositions, but we had one get mastitis and lost her, but the calves out of the cross breds were really good. Very uniform from a bunch of different bred cows.
My husband always liked Brahmans (I had never seen cows except off the road) so he went to Tennessee and bought a group of grays, along with a gray bull. I liked the Simmentals, so did some shopping around over the years and picked up some registered Simmentals over the years.
We moved to Texas, took 100+ head with us, and got a few Herefords here. They were good cows, but very poor milkers. In the meantime we had run the Brahman bull on the Simmental cows, and loved the calves, which got us into Simbrahs. We had two places, and on the heifer place we ran a easy calving Angus bull, because everyone said the black hided cattle would sell better. Not a bad little bull, but the calves where much smaller than any of the percentage Simbrahs. We did take a "hit" for the "earred" calves, but the weight difference made up for it.
Funny how person always experiments with new things to see if they can improve on something!