devon cattle

[tja477t]

wondering about devon cattle. thinking about buying a shortbred heifer. i have a full angus bull right now, what color would the calf be? and does anybody have any experience with this breed, all i can find is the typical propaganda. i mostly just grass feed.

 

[Ebenezer]

The few I have seen had udder issues in most cases. Cornell just had a forage based bull test. The Devons had low WW and poor performance but most of the bulls did in spite of breed. I have to wonder if they are trying to starve a profit out of them.

 

[wbvs58]

Townfarmer, Andrew, that occaisionally posts on here has got into Devon cattle. I have seen the cattle he has bought and they look very impressive, they will be calving later in the year. I am sure Andrew has done a lot of research on them and if he sees this post I am sure he will chip in, I imagine he would be up at the farm this Easter weekend so probably won't get to see this until next week.
Ken

 

[Luca Brasi]

The ox guys love them for working animals. They are great at it in part because like most old fashioned heritage type breeds they just don't have a heavy beef conformation. If they did they wouldn't actually be the best working animals, but then they wouldn't have fallen into obscurity either. All of the grass fed crowd would be breeding them.

 

[Andybob2]

North Devon (Reds) are becoming increasingly popular again in the UK due to their ease of finishing to a high grade off grass, the North Devon society has also done some great marketing work, and herds in their program are paid a premium for pure bred grass finished North Devon beef, making it viable for the packers to process the smaller carcase.
http://www.redrubydevon.co.uk/

 

[townfarmer]

wondering about devon cattle. thinking about buying a shortbred heifer. i have a full angus bull right now, what color would the calf be? and does anybody have any experience with this breed, all i can find is the typical propaganda. i mostly just grass feed.

We have a small herd of Devons but I've visited a lot of big Devon herds. The breed's big strength is they are low input with the ability to fatten and finish on grass. The trade off is you're not going to get the growth and frame of high performance cattle. Most Devon cattle are smaller and compact (FS 3-4) although there are some breeding lines of big framed cattle (FS 5-7).

You should get a solid black calf from using your angus bull over a devon female.

The few I have seen had udder issues in most cases. Cornell just had a forage based bull test. The Devons had low WW and poor performance but most of the bulls did in spite of breed. I have to wonder if they are trying to starve a profit out of them.

Udders definitely can be problematic in the breed. Although there are a lot of Devon cows with exceptional udders as well.

Andrew