Lucky_P
Well-known member
Quite a few BWF cows in our herd. Absolutely no Hereford anywhere behind any of them - at least not in the past 30 years. Simmental.
Is there a difference between a BWF and a Black Baldy?
- Thread starter Alan
- Start date
Lucky_P":2znr23kj said:
Correct, those are properly called BWF because without the Angus X Hereford (horned for purists) you don't have Baldies.
Lucky_P
Well-known member
I know; of course, I know what's behind most of my cows, and to me, the Simmental influenced 'baldies' have a different pattern than traditional Hereford-sired 'baldies' - but some of mine - with multiple crosses of Angus on top of that long-ago Simmental infusion, would pass for a 'traditional' Black Baldy.
And, look in the sire & sale catalogs... not many Simmentals available anymore that aren't solid black, but if they've got a white face, they call 'em 'baldies'.
It gets down to semantics, and one's own personal viewpoint, to some degree. So... An AngusXHereford (we made ours 50 years ago running Angus bulls on Hereford cows) is a Black Baldie. But, then, that begs the question, if she's 7/8-15/16 Angus, and looks just like her 50/50 contemporaries, is she a Black Baldie or a BWF? And, does anyone really care?
Unless you're buying them from a place where you know they're producing HerefordXAngus crosses, you really don't know what you're getting, other than a BWF.
And, look in the sire & sale catalogs... not many Simmentals available anymore that aren't solid black, but if they've got a white face, they call 'em 'baldies'.
It gets down to semantics, and one's own personal viewpoint, to some degree. So... An AngusXHereford (we made ours 50 years ago running Angus bulls on Hereford cows) is a Black Baldie. But, then, that begs the question, if she's 7/8-15/16 Angus, and looks just like her 50/50 contemporaries, is she a Black Baldie or a BWF? And, does anyone really care?
Unless you're buying them from a place where you know they're producing HerefordXAngus crosses, you really don't know what you're getting, other than a BWF.
Reported for resurrecting an 11-year-old thread just to push a website from a member that, checks notes, has made one post.
100% right on that. All of my life a Hereford x Angus are known as black baldies. There are people that call all black cattle with a white face( bwf's) black baldies. Just as there are people that call all resonating guitars dobros. Or all refrigerators Frigidaires. Or an angus X brahma ( or any black cattle x Brahma) a Brangus.
It's all the same. Call it what you want.
People just like to make it complicated to make them sound special when they are selling cattle or if they want to sound like they bought some thing special.
Black Hereford = Black Baldie = BWF
Potato... Potato
Brangus is any cross of Brahman and Angus just like Braford. People will say like F1 Brangus or 5/8 3/8 Brangus to let you know the cut on commercial stuff. If they say registered Brangus, it's likely a 5/8 3/8.
People just like to make it complicated to make them sound special when they are selling cattle or if they want to sound like they bought some thing special.
Black Hereford = Black Baldie = BWF
Potato... Potato
Brangus is any cross of Brahman and Angus just like Braford. People will say like F1 Brangus or 5/8 3/8 Brangus to let you know the cut on commercial stuff. If they say registered Brangus, it's likely a 5/8 3/8.
Dave
Well-known member
Depends on who you are talking to. Heck I can refer to the same cows as both a Baldie and a BWF in the same sentence.
Ky hills
Well-known member
Here in KY in the mid 70's-early 80's when I was a child, most of the cattle here Angus or Herefords with quite a few Black White Face(BWF).
My parents ran feeder calves, that's the same as stocker calves in other areas.
We would frequently go to graded feeder calf sales when they were buying. The sale sheets that listed the cattle to sell would use BWF to refer to those white face calves.
As time went on there was some Simmental calves no doubt around but I don't remember any distinction as far as calling any black cross calves any different than BWF.
Red calves like red Angus Hereford crosses were called Rednecks back then.
There started to be quite a few Charolais around too and instead of calling the Charolais Angus cross calves Smokies as they do now they were called mouse colored or some called them mousey.
Baldy and Smoke are relatively newer terms in my experience.
Now a days I'd say roughly half of BWF calves are Simmental cross instead of Hereford cross around here.
The way my mind works it's hard for me to call them baldies or smokies because grew up using the other terms, even though it's referring to the same thing.
My parents ran feeder calves, that's the same as stocker calves in other areas.
We would frequently go to graded feeder calf sales when they were buying. The sale sheets that listed the cattle to sell would use BWF to refer to those white face calves.
As time went on there was some Simmental calves no doubt around but I don't remember any distinction as far as calling any black cross calves any different than BWF.
Red calves like red Angus Hereford crosses were called Rednecks back then.
There started to be quite a few Charolais around too and instead of calling the Charolais Angus cross calves Smokies as they do now they were called mouse colored or some called them mousey.
Baldy and Smoke are relatively newer terms in my experience.
Now a days I'd say roughly half of BWF calves are Simmental cross instead of Hereford cross around here.
The way my mind works it's hard for me to call them baldies or smokies because grew up using the other terms, even though it's referring to the same thing.
WFfarm
Well-known member
My dad years ago had some pretty decent BWF brood cows that were Hereford-Holstein cross.
Travlr
Well-known member
I was wondering if someone would bring that up. Lots of Holstein crosses because they were very popular back in the day.
BWF, black baldie, black brockle face calves are all the same thing as far as I'm concerned. You can make distinctions if you know their genetic heritage and care, but they are still just cross bred baldies.
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Ky hills
Well-known member
Yeah I call Holstein Hereford crosses are called Black White Faces too, I'll sometimes further describe them as Holstein crosses. Good cows whatever anybody calls them.
When I was growing up, there were a lot of dairies around here. Anything that wasn't a cotton field was a dairy back then ( Last dairy in our county closed in 1999 and converted to beef cow and calf). About half of these dairies bred their heifers to a Jersey bull (meanest bovine there is. I'd rather fool with a Mexican Fighting bull or a Cape Buffalo bull) , but the rest used Angus or Hereford bulls. Both steers and heifers were more valuable than a jersey steer calf ( though a lot of people wouldn't eat anything but a Jeresy steer. They called it "sweet meat" ). Those half holstein beef steers were the bottle calves most sought after. Steers fed out well, and the half Holstein heifers would grow up would to make a good family milk cow and/or a nurse cow. They'd breed them back to an Angus or Hereford bull, and the resulting 1/4 Holstein was as good a cow as you could ask for. around here back then. Raised a lot bigger calf than our 800 lb , belt- buckle-tall Angus and Herefords of the 60's and 70's did. One of our nurse cows is half Hereford and half Guernsey. She makes enough milk to raise another calf, but may have done ok with just hers on grass only. Don't think she could raise 3 or 4 like our full dairy ones could though, unless you really fed her good.
in this area a good black baldie sired by a horned Hereford bull and an Angus cow tops the market. We sold a group 3 months ago that topped the sale. Had a cop commercial breeder who has a top commercial Angus herd contact me about the calves and the bull they were sired by. He said they were the best calves at the sale. He said was he horned or polled? I said horned. He stated he has been looking for a top polled bull for a few years. He has bought a few but they didn't last. He stated that everytime he sees a good set of baldies they were sired by a horned bull. And that has been the experience of many in this area. We have bought 2 polled bulls and the one we bought last spring will likely be sold soon. I was told that any good polled bull will have horned genetics but that you can find top horned bulls that are straight horned breeding. I have found that statement to be true.
Dave
Well-known member
The first one is what we would call a BWF or baldie. The second one is blaze face and more of what I think as a Simmie cross. I have a better example of a blaze face but she wouldn't cooperate for a picture. The third picture is a cow and calf which we call a brockle face.
Dave
Well-known member
We have a nationally know Hereford breeder near here. He has a commercial herd of Angus cows that he uses to test the genetics has is using. He knows his market is selling bulls that are going to be used to breed Angus cows. His bull sale average well over $8,000 a head. I don't think I saw anything sell for under $7,000 last year. They are horned Herefords.
BWF as a notation description while Baldy is a conversational description
My notebook usually says
for calf descriptions:
BWF__=Black White Face..............sometime called a baldy in general conversation
BMF__=Black Mottled Face....No not Big Mother....
B__=Black
........all followed by B(bull) or H (heifer)
There is an occasional red (R) thrown.
We use Mottled/Mottley face vs. Brockle
My notebook usually says
for calf descriptions:
BWF__=Black White Face..............sometime called a baldy in general conversation
BMF__=Black Mottled Face....No not Big Mother....
B__=Black
........all followed by B(bull) or H (heifer)
There is an occasional red (R) thrown.
We use Mottled/Mottley face vs. Brockle
It is the same here. Pays to raise what your market desires.
Dave
Well-known member
Kind of interesting when I hear about him having a herd of commercial black cows. How many breeders run a herd of 200 commercial cows to test what they are breeding? At the tail end of his bull sale there was a pen of 20 or so BWF bred heifers. I didn't stick around to watch them sell but I heard they sold real well.
