Herford/Holstien Cross of all things....

[Fallfish]

Greetings,

I was at the livestock sale recently and saw some young stuff (bull calves) brought in that were Hereford/Holstien crosses.....assuming that the 'ole red bull didn't make a night raid on the neighboring dairy farm, why on earth would such a cross ever be purposefully sought?

Just wondering...

Fallfish

 

[greenwillowherefords]

A couple ideas.... could have been a Holstein doing the wandering, but most dairies are AI..... could have been someone trying to raise recipients to place embryos in; they would pad the growth EPDs with all that milk..... could have been some ole' poor boy trying to get a start with some worn-out dairy cows and a beef bull, or maybe they were cull dairy cows. I've got a friend who used some dairy cows in his base to get started. He AIed to Angus and Simmental bulls until he saw the 092 bull I used to have; then he borrowed him.

 

[Arnold Ziffle]

Quite some time ago there was a member here, named Roy Mosely, Jr. if my memory serves me correctly, that seemed to be a proponent of that cross, the so called Herfsteins. You may want to PM him and find out about his experiences. And I think our member named "dun" also has seen a bit of this cross in Missouri, or perhaps in his earlier days when he was more involed with dairy animals.

 

[Oldtimer]

When I was a kid 50 years ago, my dad and his brothers ran a dairy besides the range cattle-- Milked about 70 head, which was a quite large operation back then-- This was before AI became predominant- They bred their top milking cows to a Holstein bull for replacements-- but the rest they bred to a beef bull, either angus or hereford.-- The holstein bull and crossbred calves were raised and fed out in the feedlot- made some pretty good beef, although they were larger framed and took longer to finish than the cattle of the day-- But now in the day of all the continentals they'd almost fit right in-- Some of the crossbred heifers that we threw in with the range cattle raised some great 1/4 blood holstein calves-- Always bigger because of the increased milk production--Gave us a lot higher milking hereford and angus cows long before the angus and hereford seedstock people bred up to ( or interbred up to ) for that.

Remember - some of the continentals that are so popular were milk cows in their native land...................

 

[dun]

It's still not uncommon for dairys to use an Angus or Hereford bull for their heifers. With most of the Holsteins tracing back to just a couple of bulls, calving problems are starting to rear it's ugly head once again for dairymen.
Although AI has made giant strides in dairys, there are still a lot of dairys that use natural service. In this area, over half of the dairys that I work with use exclusively natural service, a couple use 100% AI, the rest will use AI and natural service.

dun

 

[Rustler9]

We used Hereford and Angus bulls on dairy cows when I was growing up. We had some Holstein, Jersey and Swiss cows that sure did produce some hum dinger calves. The heifers made great momma cows, good milkers and could really raise a calf. Some of them would raise two calves each year. The Hereford/Holstein cross is the other black baldy. I remember reading something about them on one of these boards last week.
The steers really grew well but they did take a while longer to finish out. All in all I think this is a pretty good cross.

 

[hillbilly]

About twenty years ago there was a holstine Dairy in Buffalo Mo. that AI'd all their heffiers to a limosine bull.
They sold all their calves at the local salebarn as babies.
My daughters raised the heifer calves on a bottle. That was their start in the beef business.
That old blood has washed down over the generations but they were fine beef cows and the base of my two oldest daughters herds.

Hillbilly

 

[txag]

they would pad the growth EPDs with all that milk.....

please don't say things like this. yes, the weights could be higher, but it would also be noted that the calf was an embryo calf. they're not padding growth epd's w/embryo calves.

 

[greenwillowherefords]

they would pad the growth EPDs with all that milk.....

please don't say things like this. yes, the weights could be higher, but it would also be noted that the calf was an embryo calf. they're not padding growth epd's w/embryo calves.

Please accept my apology. However, surely the performance is evaluated into the equation?

 

[greenwillowherefords]

What is the official adjustment for a recip-raised calf?

 

[txag]

What is the official adjustment for a recip-raised calf?

you'll have to call AHA on that one.

 

[txag]

i wasn't sure, but after checking the AHA site, it looks like embryo calves aren't figured into the equation at all so it definitely isn't padding the growth epd's to use embryo calves' data:

"Registry is accomplished in the normal fashion including a required ET certificate. ET calves are excused from all mandatory performance reporting since they are never entered into the performance indexes or EPD calculations"