Brangus have been around long enough to qualify as a distinct breed.
While Brangus is a breed, they are a composite, 5/8 Angus 3/8 Brahman. But you can still breed a new Brangus by breeding a 1/2 blood animal to a 3/4 blood animal. The resulting offspring would be the 5/8 x 3/8. But it would not be "stabilized"!
Simangus Blancer and a limflex are not stabilized.
For a Composite to be stabilized, whether they are 50/50 or 5/8 x 3/8 they need to be bred for a few generations. When breeding up to "purebred status" an animal is considered purebred when they are 7/8 or 87.5% of the breed, which is the 3rd cross. Shouldn't a stabilized Composite or Crossbred also need to have at least 3 generations to be considered a "Purebred Composite"?
But look at the sale catalogs with SimAngus, Balancer, LimFlex or MaineTainer and how many bulls are offered for sale that are the first 50/50 cross or even the 2nd cross. Their are plenty of producers using those bulls.
Many older beef producers are under the assumption that you can only use a purebred bull to breed with.
Composite breeding strategies have been researched and developed at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Meat Animal Research Centre (MARC) in Nebraska. MARC research has shown that populations of composite cows provide an efficient alternative to more complex systems of cross breeding while retaining high levels of hybrid-vigor. Their results have shown that composite breeding offers a solution that is more effective than the traditional rotational cross-breeding systems for utilizing genetic differences between breeds to achieve and maintain optimum performance levels for economic traits on a continuing basis.
Research done a couple decades ago by the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center (MARC) on composites clarified that they do have a role in the beef industry, and that they breed true. Phenotypic variation within composite populations was no different than phenotypic variation in the parent breeds. Three or four decades ago, there was a stigma among cattle producers that composites would have greater variation (less uniformity), but the MARC research did not bear this out.
Utilizing Composite or crossbred bulls is often more beneficial to the cow-calf producer than a terminal cross (breeding crossbred cows to a bull of a third breed that produces heavily muscled beef calves for market). The latter program creates super beef calves for market, but no replacement heifers. You have to buy your heifers; thus the genetic fate of your whole operation is in someone else's hands. Many producers prefer to retain some of their best heifers as cows, and by utilizing Composite blends enable them to do this.
