Cross breeding system

[Badlands]

BRG,

From your example of this ONE cow, I can't see that a crossbred bull would add anymore variation than the purebred already did. Doesn't sound like the purebred did too well either. You are talking about single genes now, and in your first example you were talking about quantitative traits. These genes are easy to control with a little knowledge of how the single genes work.





alacowman,

How many F1 bulls are you talking about? I've seen purebred bulls whose calves fizzled out too. But, I am talking about a few bulls, now and then, and I think you are too.




Badlands

 

[SoTX Cwby]

What needs to happen is that the order buyers and others buying up the cattle for feeding need to get better educated in what a good beef animal is. Seems to me that as the beef market has grown thru the years, buyers are getting a little lazy by buying off of hair coat and not on the actual quality of the animal. A good beef animal is a good beef animal no matter the color. Visual appearance is a soothing thing to see but just because you have a pen of animals the same color does not mean the quality is the same. I understand the scale of economy that they are working with but that does not excuse them for choosing based on single traits.

 

[BRG]

The majority of the times with a stright blood you will get the same color, but it does happen like I stated once in a while. But if you put a cross bred bull on cross bred cows it will happen way more often. If you have a Angus Hereford cross and breed it to a cross bull of Simmi/Angus you will get several different possiblities of color variation. White face, solid color, feathered neck, splashes on the side, and even socked cattle. By getting all of this you will have 2 or 3 different cuts of cattle when you sell instead of 1 good solid group.

How many ranchers know how the "gene trait works". I have been in it my whole life and I really don't understand it.

 

[BRG]

That maybe true, but it is what we are dealing with.

But on another note, when you buy a pen of straight English and their is a handful of Continental looking cattle in the group. Why would they want to buy the continental looking cattle? These cattle can not be fed with or the same as the rest of the load.

 

[Badlands]

Maybe we would all be better off if we didn't argue or make points with such conviction about the things we don't understand.

Badlands

 

[BRG]

I never said I don't understand the real world end of the cattle industry. I have a pretty good handle on that. What I and most other ranchers don't understand completely is how the genes work. We know from real world experience what will happen when breeding different breeds to each other, yes you will get extra pounds and heterosis, but their are negatives that happen as well as I already stated.

I am looking at it more than just a book standpoint. We are talking what the buyers are paying premiums for or discounting for. I know what happens because we go to the barns and sit there, bidding and buying, and watching the discounts and premiums happen from all kinds of different buyers, but the results are almost always the same, they just won't pay for the 4 way different crossed type cattle like they will for the more recognized breeds straight bred or F1 cross.

 

[Buckeye Angus]

thank you for all the advice. we have had this comercial herd for over 20 yrs and have tried just about every breed that is suited to Ohio and now it is basically a angus hererford cross group of cows. the reasone i asked about the different breeds to use in teh system is that we do have the farms to run several different breeds of bulls and rotate heifers from farm to farm based on there breeding. we do have a smaller herd less than 100 but it is growing and just trying to improve where. we can. As i do raise angus seedstock it would make sense to use only angus bulls but the cross bred just seem to do better and bring slightly more money at the sale barns. i would like to keep white faces on them if possible as these tend to sell better where im from.

 

[ALACOWMAN]

BRG,

From your example of this ONE cow, I can't see that a crossbred bull would add anymore variation than the purebred already did. Doesn't sound like the purebred did too well either. You are talking about single genes now, and in your first example you were talking about quantitative traits. These genes are easy to control with a little knowledge of how the single genes work.





alacowman,

How many F1 bulls are you talking about? I've seen purebred bulls whose calves fizzled out too. But, I am talking about a few bulls, now and then, and I think you are too.




Badlands

from what ive seen alot of them. if someone is using a F1 bull in a breeding program to reach a certain goal or percentage thats different. but say a bra/herf F1 or simm/bra bulls on strait angus cows for instance calves won't out perform the simbrah or braford F1 momas bred to a angus bull. the heterosis in the moma makes the difference. the bulls seem to kinda get locked up or does not go any further. i know the f1 moma should be superior to the purebred in hybred vigor. but seems to work right the opposite with the bulls.

 

[Badlands]

So, you are talking about how F1 bulls used on straightbred cows don't outperform calves from purebred bulls used over F1 cows, alacowman?

That's a no-brainer, like you said, but it sounds like you are now changing your argument.

I am exactly talking about controlling breed percentage, why else would we optimize heterosis?

Have you talked yourself in a circle?


BRG, I think you are confusing premiums that come with source verifications vs discounts for non-descript cattle. If you are the buyer, then you are telling me that you discount your customers offcolored calves when sired by your bulls?

Badlands

 

[ALACOWMAN]

So, you are talking about how F1 bulls used on straightbred cows don't outperform calves from purebred bulls used over F1 cows, alacowman?

That's a no-brainer, like you said, but it sounds like you are now changing your argument.

I am exactly talking about controlling breed percentage, why else would we optimize heterosis?

Have you talked yourself in a circle?


BRG, I think you are confusing premiums that come with source verifications vs discounts for non-descript cattle. If you are the buyer, then you are telling me that you discount your customers offcolored calves when sired by your bulls?

Badlands

aint talking in circle's. tellin what ive seen no arguement from me just getting more input. from someone who knows more about this sort of thing than me. im from a small ala. town with a 8th grade education . and alway willing too learn more.so why does it need to become a argument?

 

[Northern Rancher]

If you retain ownership and sell grade and yield-uniformity of colour is pretty much redundant. I'm not a rich enough man to run a straightbred commercial herd.

 

[SoTX Cwby]

Exactly what I am saying. If more people would retain their quality animals thru the feeding process they would see the benefits from their program regaurdless of color. Why let the end user get the profit without the investment. I know this may not work for everyone but if you could comingle a load with some neighbors and use the results to improve each of your herds you would be amazed at the results.

 

[BRG]

You are too funny!!! I am not confusing anything. I know what sells good and what doesn't and several different breeds piled into one group of calves makes them sell in 3, 4, or even 5 groups instead of one nice load. Maybe you should get out and see it before you say I am confused. :lol:

Again you are confusing my words, I never said I discount, I said most buyers do. This is one of the many reasons why we are helping out our customers by bidding on them so they can get paid better if they don't have a full load or if they have a few color markings. Good cattle should sell good, but it doesn't always work that way.

I agree, everyone should feed some of their own cattle, but that is just not possible or affordable for everyone.

No one ever said you should run a straight bred herd, I said not to put a cross bred bull on a herd of cross bred cows. To much junk will come out of the woodwork that will give you all kinds of out cattle.

 

[Badlands]

alacowman,

When I say "argument", I don't mean in the sense of "fighting". I use the term in the sense of making points, counterpoints, and so on.

You seem like a pretty knowledgable fella, that's why I engaged you to pick it out some more.

Badlands

 

[Badlands]

BRG,

I never said to mix 4, 5 breeds of cattle, though I've seen it done successfully.

Even when I mentioned using 3 breeds, every bull was 50% Angus, and Black, so I don't have to worry about these "hidden" genes popping up.

The case I am making is about biological type, not breed characteristics.

So, in the instance of turning out Angus/Gelbvieh bulls over Angus/Simmental cows, I am using two crossbred populations of very similar biological type.

I am able to capture more uniformity than in a two breed rotation of Angus/Gelbvieh or Angus/Simmental. In that case, there are two very distinct biological types being rotated. In my scenario, there are 3 breeds used, but only one mixed biological type.

In the Angus/Gelbvieh or Angus/Simmental 2 breed system, half the calves are about 65% Angus and the other half are about 65% Simmental. These are two different biological types, in essence.

In the system I recommended 100% of the calves are 50% Angus, and then the rest would be either 33% Gelbvieh and 17% Simmental or 17% Simmental and 33% Gelbvieh. The essence of this system is that every calf is 50/50 British/Continental, so there is less variation in biological type vs a 2 breed rotation, but I capture a touch more heterosis by swapping the Continental component.

The genes you are worried about are easily controlled, we have simple genetic tests or phenotypic expression for all of them.

If a person doesn't know what will come out of the mix, then that person hasn't done his homework, either that or his seedstock supplier hasn't. Either way, is a losing scenario. I really place the burden on the seedstock supplier. Recommending a straightbreeding system for commercial men is the easy way out and leaves money on the table in terms of lifetime production.

If you buy homozygous black, homozygous polled, solid black bulls, or solid red for that matter, how much variation for color will you get? Not much. It will come from the cow, and she will produce the same variation whether she was bred to a pure Angus bull or a crossbred bull with the same homozygous single-gene traits. That is cured by turning those cows over as quickly as you can.

Badlands

 

[smnherf]

If you are retaining your own females, you will get more hetereosis by puting an Angus bull on the baldies and then put a Hereford bull on the Angus cows. The baldy heifers will top the market and the baldy steers have more options for earning branded beef carcass premiums than any other steer out there.

Otherwise if you don't mind buying females, breed the baldies to a breed that is not in the makeup of Angus or Herford, ie Charolais, and then breed the black females Hereford to produce the baldy females.

A crossbred bull program will not get you as much heterosis as a two breed rotation unless you are willing to introduce a new breed to the rotation on a regular basis and then maintain enough records to sort the cows based upon breed makeup for your breeding pastures. It becomes more and more complex as you go along. I think there is something to be said for keeping it simple.

Brian

 

[Badlands]

With my concept, you only need one pasture.

With yours, you need two pastures or trade bulls every few years.

You concept results in having a bunch of cattle that are 1/2Angus/1/2Hereford, then some others that are 1/4Angus/3/4Hereford, then some that are 3/4Angus/1/4Hereford, then some old cows that would be 1/8Angus/7/8Hereford, and some old cows that are 7/8Angus/1/8Hereford.

This is where the thought comes in that crossbreeding procuduces more variation than purebreeding-look at all the different types of cattle you have.

This is because you don't change the cows everytime you change the bulls, so the cow herd composition changes over time.


With my system, you will always have 50%Angus in every animal.

Badlands

 

[BRG]

Here is an example of cross bred bulls to straight blood bulls.

About 8 years ago, we bought 4 pot loads and a guy about 40 miles east bought another 5 potloads of cows that were a cross of 25% Hereford, 50% Red Angus, & 25% Shorthorn. These cows were bred back to the same composite bulls. That first years we had about 150 head and the other guy had about 190 head of DINKS. They were weaned off at around 200 days and they were the sorriest set of calves I had seen. They weighed on average 350 lbs at this age and ranged from 225 to 600 lbs, and they sold in 5 small packages. The next year we bred them to our own Red Angus bulls and it was like night and day. The weighed on averaged 560 lbs and the steers fit right in with our other cattle we were selling. They sold in 2 groups. That is 210 lbs of extra weight and made our groups more even, all because we used good straight blood bulls. I'd like to say it was all because of our bulls, part of it probably was, but I think it was mainly due to straight blood bulls putting some consistancy back into the cattle.

Oh I forgot to mention, that the buyer who bought these calves the second year, is now one of the feedlots that we work with when placing our customers calves into lots.

 

[Badlands]

BRG,

I'm not buying it for a minute.

Something else was going on.

Quantitative genetics do not work that way.



Badlands

 

[BRG]

You don't believe it, I don't care, but it is the hard truth. Again this is the real world happening, not just what books and numbers say should happen while you are at a desk.

We bought the cows from Padlock Ranch in WY, and the info I told you was how it happened. Nothing exagerated or stretched.