Can using different breeds of bulls cause problems?

[highgrit]

Redbull got me thinking about bulls. My main herd consists of two breeds, Simmenthal and
Black Angus and their crosses. Last year I went with a Hereford bull and I'm hoping on keeping some of his heifers back. My question is, how much different blood can you infuse before you start getting mongrels and mutts?

 

[dun]

I think once you get past maybe 4 different breeds you're looking at a mess. We keep our crosses at 3 for the maximum. After that we go back to the original base of Red Angus

 

[fitz]

I think once you get past maybe 4 different breeds you're looking at a mess. We keep our crosses at 3 for the maximum. After that we go back to the original base of Red Angus

Do you retain heifers out of the third cross? Is that what you're speaking of going back to the Angus on?

fitz

 

[TennesseeTuxedo]

Redbull got me thinking about bulls. My main herd consists of two breeds, Simmenthal and
Black Angus and their crosses. Last year I went with a Hereford bull and I'm hoping on keeping some of his heifers back. My question is, how much different blood can you infuse before you start getting mongrels and mutts?

I think you'll have some nice heifers out of that 3-way cross.

I guess we should have the obigatory horned vs polled debate on the Hereford bull.

 

[dun]

I think once you get past maybe 4 different breeds you're looking at a mess. We keep our crosses at 3 for the maximum. After that we go back to the original base of Red Angus

Do you retain heifers out of the third cross? Is that what you're speaking of going back to the Angus on?

fitz

Yes, the typical cross is Red AngusXGelbviehX Hereford or substitue Fleckvieh for the Gelbvieh. The heifers do well and the steers usually ring the bell at the salebarn. Even the 3way cross steers sell well, but lately they've all been going to 4H/FFA kids for market steers at the local fairs.

 

[fitz]

Thanks dun. I was thinking at some point I may bring a third cross. Was thinking those calves would be terminal. I guess if it manifested some nice heifers I could go back to an Angus bull on them. Like highgrit stated, was just wondering.

fitz

 

[cow pollinater]

The whole point to a balancer or simangus is to make crossbreeding easy. Use one back and forth with hereford and you have a three way cross in a two way cross system. It's can't get much easier than that.

 

[Aaron]

I've seen guys screw up herds with one breed (Red Angus seems to be the common choice here, although seen a lot done with Black as well), so number of breeds doesn't matter. It's all about breeding 'functional' and 'predictable' cattle of a certain 'type'.

 

[highgrit]

TT, you left out one other breed of Hereford, the black. Is there such a thing as a black Hereford with horns?
I would think the black part of the Hereford probably took care of the horns myself. A Hereford bull over black cows sure makes for some good looking white faced calves, even if one of them has two black eyes.

 

[regolith]

TT, you left out one other breed of Hereford, the black. Is there such a thing as a black Hereford with horns?
I would think the black part of the Hereford probably took care of the horns myself. A Hereford bull over black cows sure makes for some good looking white faced calves, even if one of them has two black eyes.

Sure there is. When the black part of the Hereford came from Holstein :hide:

'bout the horned versus polled debate, I been wondering why horned breeders wouldn't make them polled by crossing in the polled type then selecting for the superior traits associated with horned Hereford till they've got a consistently polled Horned Hereford?
Or is it marketing the resulting polled animal as a horned Hereford that is the issue?
Seems that's what's being done with most of the dairy breeds now - crossing in the polled gene then breeding from the best of the progeny that carry that polled gene.

 

[regolith]

Oh yeah, not that I really know anything about long term outcomes but just in case my colourful cows got over-mongrelised... I stick with three breeds per individual.
I might have seven or eight breeds wandering about in the herd right now, but a three way cross would always be bred back to one of the original three breeds of her make-up. Exception is for terminal where the progeny won't be kept - I'll happily put an Angus straw into a 3-way crossed dairy cow and sell the resulting calf.
That's just what I do, can't say I've seen good/bad results in any direction as long as the parents are suited to my type of system.

 

[dun]

Or is it marketing the resulting polled animal as a horned Hereford that is the issue?

At a dispersell sale I bought a really beutiful registered Polled Hereford cow. There was a horned Hereford bull back about 5 generations. We bred her to a hetero Gelbvieh bull, sure enough, the calf had horns.

 

[Nesikep]

Well if we want to revive the Hereford breed purity thread....
My cattle are mutts... The most crossed up ones are 6 breeds, the least are about 3 breeds.

I'm going to refer you to any of DocHarris's posts about selection, I think he makes it pretty clear... He usually says something along the lines of "the breed is unimportant, as long as you are consistent in the multiple traits you're selecting for and they're balanced.

Our selection was a bit hodge-podge our first 10 or 15 years, but we did always get quality bulls.. So by hook or by crook, our herd still got better... I think we've improved it enough now that further improvements will need to be explicit and deliberate.

I think a lot of the fuss about too many breeds in an animal are a little exaggerated.. If you use purebred bulls consistently, the relevance of a breed 5 generations back is going to be pretty small.. If you've selected for quality animals, I don't see a big deal with it in a commercial environment... If you're using mongrel bulls on mongrel cows, you can have 8 breeds in only 2 generations, each one contributing 12.5%, as opposed to a decreasing scale of 50%, 25%, 12.5%, 6.25%, and finally the fifth breed would only be 3% if you used PB bulls... Not much to be concerned about there.

 

[dun]

Well if we want to revive the Hereford breed purity thread....
My cattle are mutts... The most crossed up ones are 6 breeds, the least are about 3 breeds.

I'm going to refer you to any of DocHarris's posts about selection, I think he makes it pretty clear... He usually says something along the lines of "the breed is unimportant, as long as you are consistent in the multiple traits you're selecting for and they're balanced.

Our selection was a bit hodge-podge our first 10 or 15 years, but we did always get quality bulls.. So by hook or by crook, our herd still got better... I think we've improved it enough now that further improvements will need to be explicit and deliberate.

I think a lot of the fuss about too many breeds in an animal are a little exaggerated.. If you use purebred bulls consistently, the relevance of a breed 5 generations back is going to be pretty small.. If you've selected for quality animals, I don't see a big deal with it in a commercial environment... If you're using mongrel bulls on mongrel cows, you can have 8 breeds in only 2 generations, each one contributing 12.5%, as opposed to a decreasing scale of 50%, 25%, 12.5%, 6.25%, and finally the fifth breed would only be 3% if you used PB bulls... Not much to be concerned about there.

For retaingin females as long as breeds complimenting the toehrs there probably isn;t much problem other then trying to find enough good bulls in enough breeds that they compliment to traits of the cow herd. For terminal the only concern is max scale weight when you sell. That's the easy part, it's finding those breeds that go well with the other parts of the mix for the females is where it gets tricky. Getting uniform calves from those multimix cows can be hard when going all terminal.
Of course, these are just my opinions. You gotta remember I'm not educated, I just go by my experiences.

 

[Nesikep]

Dun, you're definitely *educated*,.. just perhaps not schooled too much

I think you're totally right when you say it's getting uniformity out of a mixed group of cows that's the problem.. I think if you had a herd of similar looking and performing cows with 5 breeds in each one, and a good bull on them, you could still have decent uniformity.. at least good enough to keep nice groups to sell... For us we still have a couple cows with strong SH influence, and though it's getting rarer, we still have a calf once in a while that'll be separated out just because of some chrome. For that reason my replacement heifers now usually are solid red/gold, as much as I like a nice brockle or baldy.

 

[TexasBred]

Sort of like letting your dog run loose and just breed with whatever shows up first, retaining pups and doing it all over again, and again, and.....

 

[Stocker Steve]

The whole point to a balancer or simangus is to make crossbreeding easy. Use one back and forth with hereford and you have a three way cross in a two way cross system. It's can't get much easier than that.

- It depends on what is important to you. I like uniform moderate maternal F1 cows.
- You can go AI so you can use multiple bull breeds to get a more uniform calf heritage. Been there. Didn't work well but I learned :bang: several things. In my mix - - the best feeder calves came out of AI Herf bulls, who added a lot of bone, but the heifers ran a bit large for my taste.
- Then ran a single balancer bull for a while. Calves more uniform even though the breed composition was more variable. :shock:
- Simiangus bulls are currently popular here, but with all the funnel butt cows in this country, you usually end up with 1/4 simi 3/4 angus calves. Buyers seem to like that, but some low input operations then have more trouble with cow stayability.
- I think you need to cull replacement heifers and cows harder if you are even somewhat serious about uniformity in a cross breeding system. Bulls only cause half of the variably problems.

 

[LazyARanch]

Or is it marketing the resulting polled animal as a horned Hereford that is the issue?

At a dispersell sale I bought a really beutiful registered Polled Hereford cow. There was a horned Hereford bull back about 5 generations. We bred her to a hetero Gelbvieh bull, sure enough, the calf had horns.

Had the same thing happen here.... :roll: but she sure is a NICE little heifer

 

[DOC HARRIS]

Or is it marketing the resulting polled animal as a horned Hereford that is the issue?

At a dispersell sale I bought a really beutiful registered Polled Hereford cow. There was a horned Hereford bull back about 5 generations. We bred her to a hetero Gelbvieh bull, sure enough, the calf had horns.

Had the same thing happen here.... :roll: but she sure is a NICE little heifer

I hesitate to put my oar into this tide of "misunderstanding genetic dominance" posts, but I will with this one question:

Please explain to all of us the explanation of ". . . but she sure is a NICE little heifer"

What do you really mean by the term "NICE"?

DOC HARRIS

 

[Stocker Steve]

At a dispersell sale I bought a really beutiful registered Polled Hereford cow. There was a horned Hereford bull back about 5 generations. We bred her to a hetero Gelbvieh bull, sure enough, the calf had horns.

Had the same thing happen here.... :roll: but she sure is a NICE little heifer[/quote]

So are you switching to horned herefords now?