do u recommend simm- angus cross bulls???????

[farmerD44]

Hey everyone, just found the site here and this is my first post. I was wondering if any of u had ever used a simm- angus cross bull in their herd whatthe results were. We have a mixed herd of mostly simm, hereford, and angus crossbreeds. The last 3 years we have had a black simmental bull and it has been awsome- great disposition and awsome calves. before that we did all AI breeding but we didnt have many beef back then when we were milking cows yet. now we are expanding to about 50 or 60 cows by 2 years from now. We have 10 purebred angus cows in the herd as well.

Anyways we castrated all but 2 purebred angus bulls that we are going to keep over the winter this year- probably keep one for my uncle and us to use and sell the other one. And next year we are thinking of keeping 2 more for bulls and was thinking about keeping either a simm or simm-angus cross to sell to my uncle as this simm bull has been awsome( and only paid $1000 for him!!!!). And we were also thinking about breeding one with AI out of our purebred angus cows for us to use.

So do any of u think this is a good idea or should we just stick with purebred bulls????

Dan.

 

[Cattle Rack Rancher]

I had a Simm-Angus bull. Nice calves but pretty inconsistent in growth rate and coloring. I actually bought another one to breed my heifers but overall if I was looking for consistent calves, I'd go with a purebred bull.

 

[mtnman]

Go with the Simm/Angus bulls.

If you want to AI, there are a couple very good ones available through some of the AI studs.

I have only heard of folks having inconsistent results with the half-blood bulls when they knew they were half-bloods. In other words, most of the time, they just THINK they are inconsistent. When I have seen places that guys actually weighed them the half-bloods were nearly always just as consistent as the purebred sires, and in a good number of cases the half-bloods were more consistent than the purebree sires.

Certainly for simply inherited traits like color, then the half-blood can be more inconsistent, but for the performance traits, in my experience, they are not, but in nearly every case the commercial guy insisted they were. Then when we ran them across the scale and proved that they weren't some of them still think they are and some dont.

We all believe just what we want to, is the bottom line.

mtnman

 

[Larry Sansom]

Hey everyone, just found the site here and this is my first post. I was wondering if any of u had ever used a simm- angus cross bull in their herd whatthe results were. We have a mixed herd of mostly simm, hereford, and angus crossbreeds. The last 3 years we have had a black simmental bull and it has been awsome- great disposition and awsome calves. before that we did all AI breeding but we didnt have many beef back then when we were milking cows yet. now we are expanding to about 50 or 60 cows by 2 years from now. We have 10 purebred angus cows in the herd as well.

Anyways we castrated all but 2 purebred angus bulls that we are going to keep over the winter this year- probably keep one for my uncle and us to use and sell the other one. And next year we are thinking of keeping 2 more for bulls and was thinking about keeping either a simm or simm-angus cross to sell to my uncle as this simm bull has been awsome( and only paid $1000 for him!!!!). And we were also thinking about breeding one with AI out of our purebred angus cows for us to use.

So do any of u think this is a good idea or should we just stick with purebred bulls????

Dan.

watch for rat tails - esp a problem with Sim & angus

 

[farmerD44]

what do u mean by rat tails?????? have never heard that term used on cattle around here.

well we have simm-angus cross calves now and they have been great- just wondering how a cross bull would perform.

 

[mtnman]

Stay with BLACK bulls and you'll have no problem with Rat tails.

Just stay away from Grey colored cattle.

mtnman

 

[MikeC]

A form of congenital hypotrichosis, commonly know as the "rat-tail syndrome," occurs in a small percentage of calves produced by crossing some Continental cattle breeds with cattle that are black in color. These calves are characterized by short, curly, malformed, sometimes sparse hair and a lack of normal tail switch development. In our first study, performance of 43 rat-tail calves was compared with that of 570 non-rat-tail calves of the same breeding and contemporary groups. All rat-tail calves were sired by Simmental bulls and were from cows with various percentages of Angus breeding. The rat-tail condition had no effect on birth weight, weaning weight, or gain from birth to weaning. However, rat-tail calves had significantly lower rates of gain during the winter months from weaning to yearling than non-rat-tail calves, resulting in a 19 kg lighter yearling weight. Gains of steers from yearling to slaughter were not significantly different, but rat-tail steers were 36 kg lighter (P = .01) and 13 d older (P = .15) at slaughter than the non-rat-tail steers. In a second study, Angus-Simmental F1 males and females with the rat-tail condition were mated to produce 64 F2 offspring that were used to determine the mode of inheritance of this syndrome. Analysis showed that the rat-tail syndrome is controlled by interacting genes at two loci. Cattle that express the syndrome must have at least one dominant gene for black color and be heterozygous at the other locus involved.

 

[SimmAngus]

We've used Double Polled Simm-Angus Cross Bulls for several years now on both older cows and first calf angus heifers. I have nothing but positive things to say about the mix and would recommend it to almost anyone.