Herford Sired Calves

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

Pretty much all measured traits sort of go hand in hand. The super calving ease bulls tended to give you SMALL calves, which grew into small heifers, which size for size, have smaller pelvic areas.
Now, with the use of EPD's, we have isolated "spread" bulls - easy calving bulls with great growth traits. So, if you use a CE bull with some decent growth, you shouldn't run into reducing pelvic size.

For a while, Universities were promoting measuring pelvics & keeping the largest pelvic measured heifers. They then realized that by doing that, producers were ending up increasing the frame size of their herd. "Normal" skelital (sp?) measurements go "hand in hand". Long spine, long leg bones, long pelvic bones. Trying to find the "outlyers" is the trick.
So, yes, if you keep stacking CE bulls (without great growth traits) you will end up with smaller heifers with smaller pelvic size.

 

[Northern Rancher]

We measured pelvic openings for years and who'd a thunk it but the heifers with the bigger pelvics had bigger calves and as much or more calving trouble than the smaller ones. All our cows and heifers calve out on pasture-I don't like to go over 80 pound bulls on the heifers or 90 on the cows-as far as EPD's try to keep breed average or lower-there's been a couple thousand calves born out there and were under .5% assist rate on both heifers and cows. I'd rather calve a herd with low BW stacked in it than the opposite. When setting up a heifer A"I program on a group of big BW heifers you have to be pretty cautious of the bulls you reccommend.

 

[Lon]

The title of the thread and the first post sounds a lot more like hereford bashing than angus bashing to me.

I agree that if the heifers can't have a small or normal calf on her own the fault is with the heifer and not the bull. Contrary to popular believe a long head causes a lot more problems than the shorter wider heads. I've never pulled a calf in my life where the sides of the pelvic opening was the restriction, but have pulled more than a few where the calf's forehead hits the top of the pelvic opening. Add long heavy bone to the equation and you're bound to loose some sleep. (BTW I had a neighbour who milked holsteins and later on he used simmental bulls of the holsteins so I got a lot of experience pulling calves)[/quote]

not hereford bashing. the hiefers themselves are angus bred to hereford bulls. just asking to see if what dicribed is normal with hereford sired calves since wasnt ever around them.

 

[Herefords.US]

Probably the result of stacking those ultra low BW bulls on top of ultra low BW bulls. Pretty soon you can get them bred down to where they couldn't have a jack rabbit.

Are you saying low BW bulls will reduce pelvis size of any retained replacement heifers?

I wouldn't know from personal experience, as all the bulls I've used have BW EPDS from +3.2 up to about +6. And I haven't pulled a Hereford calf since 2004, having 30+ on up to 50+ calves a year, now. That's also calving an average of 15 heifers a year among those.

But I've read the cattle boards for several years and I have seen the posts of more than a few Angus breeders who are convinced that is the case.

There's something to be said about "moderation" in all things.

George

 

[Stocker Steve]

"Normal" skeletal measurements go "hand in hand". Long spine, long leg bones, long pelvic bones. Trying to find the "outliers" is the trick.
So, yes, if you keep stacking CE bulls (without great growth traits) you will end up with smaller heifers with smaller pelvic size.

I purchased smaller cows to start with, and grow out heifers on 99% forage, so I do not have big cows in the herd. Most heifers calve at 925 to 1100#, and weigh about 1250# as heavy bred 3 year olds.

I ordered a pelivmeter. They are out of stock so someone is doing lots and lots of measuring. :cboy: What percentage of outliers should I expect when I start measuring?