Embryos?

[bpwagner115]

I have been looking at finding a way to start adding a few purebred Simmental females into our commercial herd and have a percentage of our herd become registered. I know the breed does allow registering half bloods, and I may well do that as our Simmental a.i. calves start hitting the ground this spring. However, I stumbled on a guy who is sold his cattle and now is getting rid of old inventory. PB Embryos ranged in price quite a bit, but ones that caught my eye were sired by Dream On, Power Drive, and Leachman 600u which were priced from $50 to $250. Price seems affordable but he doesn't know grades of embryos (says they are written on the straws) and has no guarantees.

Good place to start? Or run away?

 

[shadyhollownj]

Well grade 1 and 2 are fine. Seems cheap for embryos if they are any good. An average embryo will run around 300 and skies the limit. Dont know about sims so I cant help you there. Figure you will spend 100 bucks per transfer with 50% conception roughly and need the recips.

 

[BryanM]

what breed or what do you look for in a recip? do you go too the sale barn and get a recip? I would like to get a couple recips myself and do a couple et's? Lookin for suggestions or info on best recip

 

[shortybreeder]

what breed or what do you look for in a recip? do you go too the sale barn and get a recip? I would like to get a couple recips myself and do a couple et's? Lookin for suggestions or info on best recip

Here's what I've picked up from reading similar posts:
hereford x holstein works well, brindled/eared works well, and basically if you have a cow that you would like to get more heifers out of because she is such a good cow, that's probably a good one to use as a recip too... But only if the embryos are going to produce a better calf than she is. This year I am using 3 recips; a 50% hereford/50% holstein cow who just had her 3rd calf last friday, a 25%hereford/25%holstein/50%angus heifer who just had her first calf on Feb. 15th (don't know how that will go, but I needed a third recip and she is what is available), and a mixed cow that has a baldy head, blaze orange spots, and tiger stripes (she was DHIA tested during her first lactation to have 4.7% butterfat and 3.3 protein). So if you are feeling courageous and have a few cows that you are considering using as recips, you could try and collect some milk from them and send it to the nearest lab for testing. It will only cost a couple bucks and will tell you which one has the best milk for raising a calf... They all need to be in roughly the same stage of lactation though otherwise it won't be an accurate comparison (kinda like comparing American Angus EPD's with Canadian Charolais EPD's).

 

[shadyhollownj]

Shorty that the first I have ever heard of doing a milk test on a recip. A big calf is a big calf regardless of milk quality or size udder. Even if the cows have the same quality milk they may not produce the same amount so that test would get you nothing. I just use my own cows that genetically arent as good as the embryo. If they raise a good calf and take AI then they get an embryo. I would rather use my own that may not raise the biggest calf than get an unknown cow from a breeder that may raise a little bigger calf. I wouldnt even get a cow from a salbarn to AI let alone ET. They are there for a reason.

 

[shortybreeder]

Shorty that the first I have ever heard of doing a milk test on a recip. A big calf is a big calf regardless of milk quality or size udder. Even if the cows have the same quality milk they may not produce the same amount so that test would get you nothing. I just use my own cows that genetically arent as good as the embryo. If they raise a good calf and take AI then they get an embryo. I would rather use my own that may not raise the biggest calf than get an unknown cow from a breeder that may raise a little bigger calf. I wouldnt even get a cow from a salbarn to AI let alone ET. They are there for a reason.

I wasn't suggesting buying something from the salebarn for using as a recip, I was just giving suggestions if someone is trying to crossbreed for making recips. The reason why my cow was milk tested was because my dad wasn't sure whether she was beef or dairy (came out of a purchased holstein heifer) so we tried putting her with the milking robot for the first few months and see how she milked, while we raised her calf in the nursery with the dairy babies. She wasn't milking enough for the dairy, but we did get some valuable information about her production and other numbers, so we confidently had her raising two calves last year and next year when we get an ET calf out of her, we are expecting it to be the best. Sometimes there are lots of variables involved in that "big calf" and a milk test would clarify some of the unknowns.

 

[shadyhollownj]

Shorty the sale barn comment was directed at wagner. He asked in the original post about sale barn cows.

 

[shortybreeder]

Shorty the sale barn comment was directed at wagner. He asked in the original post about sale barn cows.

okay, sorry

 

[Fire Sweep Ranch]

Wagner, if you want to PM me the matings on those embryos, I would be glad to look up the EPD's on the matings for you. Those genetics sound great from making some really good females, depending on the donor side and how she is bred. I am a bargain shopper when it comes to buying embryos, and the most I have ever paid was $350 an embryo. I have picked up some really great looking cattle from $100 embryos (Club King x Dream On dam). A bull I sold on our state sale last spring did really well, and he was an old embryo I bought for $75 (I got 4, and still have a few in the tank). We pay $85 to put them in, so with the expense of the purchase of the embryo we are always under $500. We usually get two conceptions from three embryos.
As far as recips, we use our BEST cows to put embryos in. I have had numerous people ask me why I do not AI our girls instead of putting embryos in, but how can you afford to put an embryo in a cow that is not great? Being great means she produces plenty of milk, takes care of her calf, and breeds back quickly. What she looks like does not matter!
Hope that helps just a bit! Feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

 

[bpwagner115]

I would probably use some of our commercial cows that have raised good calves in the past as recips, as opposed to buying sale barn cattle to use.

 

[gizmom]

Well I guess we do things a bit different, I pick cows that have early calves, I would never go to the sale barn to purchase a recip....NEVER. We use a few wet two year olds each year not because we really want to but that is what we have available. They wouldn't be in the herd if they weren't from strong cow families. We also use older cows but if we need additional cows we will sure use a wet two year old. We don't treat the recips any different than the rest of the herd. We want the calves to perform in real world conditions, this gives us a better grasp of how good or bad they really are.

Gizmom