hereford breed purity

[WalnutCrest]

Another reason to cull older cows is that the heifer is gaining value two ways ... weight gain and carrying a calf ... once she's full size, she can only add value one way ... giving you a calf. I've heard/read many I respect use this as a key driver of how they manage their cattle (when they're not trying to grow numbers).

... HOWEVER ...

It appears (to me) to be disingenuous to think that even the best cattleman/woman will make 100% spot-on cull decisions if they're culling for anything other than temperament and fertility ... which is why we tell people, "These cows are our employees. Their job is to give us a healthy calf every year and have a good attitude about doing it. Otherwise, we'll remove them from that job and enter them in our joint venture program -- it involves our freezer, the butcher, our beef buyers, and their stomachs."

So, with the cull metric we currently use, the cows that are most functional will, over time, have the most genetic influence on the herd ... and ... the best of those resulting offspring will, subsequently, have greater influence still.

 

[ANAZAZI]

If you are using the right bulls you should expect that a cow's daughter to eventually be better than her else you are not making good breeding decisions. It doesn't always work that way obviously but your younger cows should be pushing you to make tough cull decisions on older cows if you are breeding to improve the genetics of your herd or at the very least providing you with some good replacement female prospects to sell.

If I make the right breeding decisions my cow will have a group of daughters with a general genetic level above their mother's level (some below, some above her level, but more of them above). This higher level may not show up as long as I have not culled the ones below her level.
The old cow is a survivor of all previous cullings, so she is above the general genetic level of her year's heifers, is she not?
if my breed is progeressing genetically, the new years heifers have a higher level than last years heifers, and so on. The older cows are not representative for their entire heifer group, they are the best of their year. Make the same culling decisions for all age classes; if the older cattle are worse than the younger they are culled, if not they stay.
if older cattle survives the culling, they are not worse than the new cattle. :2cents:

 

[WalnutCrest]

If you are using the right bulls you should expect that a cow's daughter to eventually be better than her else you are not making good breeding decisions. It doesn't always work that way obviously but your younger cows should be pushing you to make tough cull decisions on older cows if you are breeding to improve the genetics of your herd or at the very least providing you with some good replacement female prospects to sell.

If I make the right breeding decisions my cow will have a group of daughters with a general genetic level above their mother's level (some below, some above her level, but more of them above). This higher level may not show up as long as I have not culled the ones below her level.
The old cow is a survivor of all previous cullings, so she is above the general genetic level of her year's heifers, is she not?
if my breed is progeressing genetically, the new years heifers have a higher level than last years heifers, and so on. The older cows are not representative for their entire heifer group, they are the best of their year. Make the same culling decisions for all age classes; if the older cattle are worse than the younger they are culled, if not they stay.
if older cattle survives the culling, they are not worse than the new cattle. :2cents:

+bajillion

 

[SPH]

If you are using the right bulls you should expect that a cow's daughter to eventually be better than her else you are not making good breeding decisions. It doesn't always work that way obviously but your younger cows should be pushing you to make tough cull decisions on older cows if you are breeding to improve the genetics of your herd or at the very least providing you with some good replacement female prospects to sell.

If I make the right breeding decisions my cow will have a group of daughters with a general genetic level above their mother's level (some below, some above her level, but more of them above). This higher level may not show up as long as I have not culled the ones below her level.
The old cow is a survivor of all previous cullings, so she is above the general genetic level of her year's heifers, is she not?
if my breed is progeressing genetically, the new years heifers have a higher level than last years heifers, and so on. The older cows are not representative for their entire heifer group, they are the best of their year. Make the same culling decisions for all age classes; if the older cattle are worse than the younger they are culled, if not they stay.
if older cattle survives the culling, they are not worse than the new cattle. :2cents:

Agreed. There are cows that will stand the test of time and it does take a few years for some of those young females to come into their own before you can fully judge their level of production. Our oldest cow is 12 and she's been fertile and weighs in as one of the 2 heaviest cows in the herd and has maintained her condition well but if I had to rank her where she is in our herd today for production she is probably in the lower 1/3 now. She still produces a nice calf that usually winds up in the middle of the pack at weaning but the top cows in our herd right now are 7 year olds and we have a real strong group of 3 and 4 year olds that have been starting to out-produce those cows as well so some of these older cows eventually could get pushed by the newer genetics we are using. It's not a bad thing if you are producing females that eventually force you to cull older cows, we're at a point the past few years we are maxed out for herd size that we've been open to selling any of our heifers even the top ones if the price is right because we don't have the capacity even after culling. We have daughters by some of these cows that aren't as good as their mothers but still have turned into good cows and some that have been better too, it's not an exact science but we should still make it a goal to make breeding decisions with the intent that the daughter will be a better cow than her mother else where is the evidence in your herd of improvement if you are not accomplishing this in some way or another?

I've debated this many times, there is nothing wrong with a good old cow that keeps on producing good calves every year but for people that have been in the business a long time would you say the quality of your cattle 20 years ago was better than the quality you have today? If your herd is better today than what it was even 10 years ago there is only 2 ways that happened, either you are producing better offspring than the cows they came from or you went out and bought better cattle from someone else.

 

[kdpihf]

Thank god I found this thread. I now see the light. The best way to advance the breed (any breed) is to breed young, unproven heifers to young unproven bulls and discard anything that is not new. Can't see where anything can go wrong there. Just out of curiosity, as I begin to implement this wondrous new non-fad breeding plan, how do I determine which animals/genetics are superior if I am turning them over so quickly that no cows or bulls have a chance to prove themselves through their performance and, most importantly, the performance of their progeny?

 

[RoanDurham]

quantify "so quickly."

 

[regolith]

quantify "so quickly."

Collect a yearling bull & use him for flushing and ET of 9-month old heifers. Repeat with the best (by genomic evaluation) bulls and heifers of the progeny at the same age. The bull is culled before two years old, the heifer is flushed several times then becomes a recipient for the rest of her life.

The technology is probably available to go even faster than that, but I have good report that this is being practised by some breeding companies, and that even here (in NZ) we have semen being sold with no daughter-proven genetics within the last three generations.
You can go slower than that and still be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Progeny proving is a glacial process compared to this... but in my opinion well worth it.

 

[ANAZAZI]

Progeny proving is a glacial process compared to this... but in my opinion well worth it.

:nod: :nod:

 

[regolith]

Just out of curiosity, as I begin to implement this wondrous new non-fad breeding plan, how do I determine which animals/genetics are superior

That's the answer kdpihf, DNA sample as a newborn for genomic profiling. Which presumes of course that the science of genomics is robust enough to be used in this manner. Because genomics is progressing at least as fast as the next generation of bovines, we're not allowed to criticise it based on what happened yesterday, okay 8)

 

[smnherf]

Rapid generation turnover in the beef business only needs to be done for 2 reasons that I can think of. One is to chase the current fad. I got to get a bunch of calves on the ground out of this popular bull to promote and sell at my next sale. Number two is to move your genetic base quickly away from genetic problems that have shown up.

The truth is that the factors determining commercial profitability are changing very very slowly so your either trying to catch up to the needs of the commercial cattlemen or your quickly overshooting many traits and going to go beyond a point of diminishing returns real fast. Those that are flushing yearlings and young cows are inadvertantly selecting against two of the most important components of profitability and that is fertility and longevity. There is still a lot to be learned about a cow after her first birthday.

As far as the title of this thread , I don't think anyone can absolutely guarantee that their cattle are pure. Very very few commercial cattlemen care about what is in a pedigree 5, 6 or 7 generations back. Cattle should be judged by whether they work or if they don't.

 

[Caustic Burno]

Rapid generation turnover in the beef business only needs to be done for 2 reasons that I can think of. One is to chase the current fad. I got to get a bunch of calves on the ground out of this popular bull to promote and sell at my next sale. Number two is to move your genetic base quickly away from genetic problems that have shown up.

The truth is that the factors determining commercial profitability are changing very very slowly so your either trying to catch up to the needs of the commercial cattlemen or your quickly overshooting many traits and going to go beyond a point of diminishing returns real fast. Those that are flushing yearlings and young cows are inadvertantly selecting against two of the most important components of profitability and that is fertility and longevity. There is still a lot to be learned about a cow after her first birthday.

As far as the title of this thread , I don't think anyone can absolutely guarantee that their cattle are pure. Very very few commercial cattlemen care about what is in a pedigree 5, 6 or 7 generations back. Cattle should be judged by whether they work or if they don't.

You hit the nail on the head the commercial cattleman sets the standards not the other way around.
It doesn't take long don't buy from this breeder or that line to make the rounds.

 

[cbcr]

I just found an article that had this in about the Hereford.

"By 1900, livestock breeders of the Mid-West had imported enough British stock to become breeders and provide ranchers and stockmen with Shorthorn and later Hereford sires. Grading up from a Longhorn or Shorthorn base to Herefords was accomplished in a short 20 or so years."

 

[alexfarms]

I just found an article that had this in about the Hereford.

"By 1900, livestock breeders of the Mid-West had imported enough British stock to become breeders and provide ranchers and stockmen with Shorthorn and later Hereford sires. Grading up from a Longhorn or Shorthorn base to Herefords was accomplished in a short 20 or so years."

That is pretty much the way the history of beef production has gone in the US. Longhorn to Shorthorn to Hereford. My father was born in 1915 and he used to say that most of the grade cattle in his youth were Shorthorn or Shorthorn cross.