Double Muscled Charolais Bull

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gaurus

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Wanting some input on DM Charolais bulls, I've heard the Culard Charolais bulls are pretty good.
 
Don't know anything about Double Muscled Charolais and I will leave it at that. I have had enough Charolais bulls to know that I sure don't want a double muscled one.
 
Check the USDA grading system , they may not accept to sell on a grid type system. They are used in the European system which pays for lean muscle.
 
I didn't know if the double muscled Charolais are in United States. It seems Europe has more double muscled type cattle over there than here. I don't think we need double muscled Charolais.
 
Haven't used double muscled charolais myself, but know some people, who use AI, or run a bull. People like them over here(in some EU countries). They can be easier calved than traditional charolais, smaller bones, higher kill-out, producing quality calves. Very good choice to get heavily muscled weanlings. They're not for everyone's taste and needs thought.
 
lithuanian farmer said:
Haven't used double muscled charolais myself, but know some people, who use AI, or run a bull. People like them over here(in some EU countries). They can be easier calved than traditional charolais, smaller bones, higher kill-out, producing quality calves. Very good choice to get heavily muscled weanlings. They're not for everyone's taste and needs thought.

I was looking at some bulls online and saw the Belgian Blues and thought wow they looks like a hulk, but then thought Nah Charolais are much bigger, so what could be better than a Big Charolais? How about a Big DM Charolais? seems like most French Charolais now are Double Muscled so they are ought to be better right? RIGHT???
 
French Charolais and double muscled Charolais, aka Culard Charolais, are considered two separate branches. DM Charolais aren't suitable for pure breeding. They have their place in crossbreeding. Charolais naturally has double muscles gene, so it can occur once in a while, however, these were bred strictly for it's expression. Best to use on plain easy calving cows.
A video of dm charolais:
[media]https://youtu.be/KfMVuhK2icA[/media]
 
https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/Feeder_Cattle_Standard%5B1%5D.pdf
See page 2:
(2) The U.S. Inferior grade shall apply to all feeder cattle that have been determined to be
unthrifty. Additionally, "double-muscled" (muscular hypertrophy) cattle are graded Inferior because
they cannot be expected to deposit intramuscular fat (marbling) normally.
 
It just doesn't make sense to using a DM Charolais when most normal Charolais are bred as terminal sire..
 
The situation is pretty similar with almost all breeds in US going black and many breeds bred to have DM in EU... :hide:

DM Charolais mainly are used on Salers and Aubrac cows. A normal charolais works well on those types of cows, but with DM they get abit less bone and more muscles. Calves are mostly sold as weanlings for export.
From what I've heard from other farmers, DM charolais isn't very liked breed in France, where it actually was developed.
Also DM charolais used to have some problems with their legs. It might have been improved now, but have seen many xbred offspring with very bad legs.
 
lithuanian farmer said:
The situation is pretty similar with almost all breeds in US going black and many breeds bred to have DM in EU... :hide:

USA and Japan value Highly Marbled beef
European Union countries favor Lean Healthy beef, they also use these type of extreme bulls on dairy cows to produce feeder calves for the EU export market.
 
gaurus said:
lithuanian farmer said:
The situation is pretty similar with almost all breeds in US going black and many breeds bred to have DM in EU... :hide:

USA and Japan value Highly Marbled beef
European Union countries favor Lean Healthy beef, they also use these type of extreme bulls on dairy cows to produce feeder calves for the EU export market.

But breeding most breeds to be double muscled is very wrong. Many don't like it. Breeds are loosing calving ease and their unique traits.
The market requires good finished animals with a nice fat layer here too. Very extreme bulls will be too heavy at the time they'll have that needed fat grade.
 
lithuanian farmer said:
But breeding most breeds to be double muscled is very wrong.
True, but nobody is advocating that right? I would say that breeding for extreme terminal sires is what will happen as the world requirements for high protein beef increases.

The world is not getting any bigger but the human population is growing rather fast so more efficient beef production will be required, this means smaller more efficient cows mated to extreme sires to produce feeder calves, this is how the chicken broiler industry has been for the last 40 years. Sure there are backyard chickens that are dual purpose, but you can't raise them for meat only and expect to earn any money as their feed will actually be more expensive than what they put on(they take longer to mature so feed efficiency is very poor) so the inexpensive chicken meat you get at the groceries is due to BroilerX hybrids(the dame lines are dwarfs, the sire are Huge turkey sized), to ramble more on the subject I was thinking that chickens/turkeys get away with that because the dame just lay eggs but in cattle they give birth so one can't use Dwarf dexters cows with Huge Charolais(AI), but then I just remembered that Zebu cows are supposed to control the birth weight of their calf. so perhaps a small size zebu cows(thinking about African zebu are really small and thrifty) and extreme double muscled Chianina terminal sire is the way of the future? Who knows just rambling here. :compute:


Edit.

Now that I think of it, Wulf cattle(perhaps others too, but can't recall at this time) is basically doing that right now, using a Terminal sire(Limousin) on small efficient cows(Jersey) to produce CAB grade beef. They do the entire process, collecting day old calves and finish them also.
 
lithuanian farmer said:
gaurus said:
lithuanian farmer said:
The situation is pretty similar with almost all breeds in US going black and many breeds bred to have DM in EU... :hide:

USA and Japan value Highly Marbled beef
European Union countries favor Lean Healthy beef, they also use these type of extreme bulls on dairy cows to produce feeder calves for the EU export market.

But breeding most breeds to be double muscled is very wrong. Many don't like it. Breeds are loosing calving ease and their unique traits.
The market requires good finished animals with a nice fat layer here too. Very extreme bulls will be too heavy at the time they'll have that needed fat grade.
Couldn't have said it any better! That's not saying much though :dunce: . I like muscling but taking anything to an extreme is really never a good idea there will always be con's in this case longer than avg time to finish feeding out and increased calving difficulty and like you said loss of breed character.
 
lithuanian farmer said:
The situation is pretty similar with almost all breeds in US going black and many breeds bred to have DM in EU... :hide:

DM Charolais mainly are used on Salers and Aubrac cows. A normal charolais works well on those types of cows, but with DM they get abit less bone and more muscles. Calves are mostly sold as weanlings for export.
From what I've heard from other farmers, DM charolais isn't very liked breed in France, where it actually was developed.
Also DM charolais used to have some problems with their legs. It might have been improved now, but have seen many xbred offspring with very bad legs.

Per my French friends, the bottom third (ish) if a registered Aubrac herd is bred to DM Charolais bulls for a branded beef product called Fleur d'Aubrac (the rest if the herds are covered by Aubrac bulls). It's a seasonal product; animals are harvested between 19-24 months of age. The beef sells out very quickly.

And, even with that headwind, Aubracs still lead all French breeds in calving ease ...
 
WalnutCrest said:
Per my French friends, the bottom third (ish) if a registered Aubrac herd is bred to DM Charolais bulls for a branded beef product called Fleur d'Aubrac (the rest if the herds are covered by Aubrac bulls). It's a seasonal product; animals are harvested between 19-24 months of age. The beef sells out very quickly.

And, even with that headwind, Aubracs still lead all French breeds in calving ease ...

I wonder which is easier calved- Aubracs or Salers... Both are leading in it...
DM Charolais are being introduced slowly to other EU countries, but many are very sceptical. Mainly, because that there are many traditional Charolais having similar muscularity to the DM ones and bringing more growth. But there are some, who like DM Charolais. At the moment have seen at least two people using DM char bulls in their commercial herds, with pretty good results. Calves look great and there were very few cows, which needed c-section. They have kept some xbred heifers as replacements and have good results from them too.
I'd personally would try out DM Charolais, but just on a couple cows, not more.
But I don't think that it was that necessary to create DM Charolais. There are plenty of DM breeds already and some traditional Charolais can look like DM.
In Ireland at least, beef bulls are required to be finished under 16months age, under 450kg (995lbs) deadweight and the 3rd fat grade. Have seen that more muscled animals are harder to fit into these requirements.
 

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