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Warren Allison said:
Anyone else out there with enough sense to carry on a conversation, without going all Democrat on some one.. resorting to personal attacks and insults, because they can't read and comprehend... please answer this question:
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Well at least I'll say it directly to you instead of behind your back... and what I say isn't me making things up to sensationalize the issue and make someone else appear something they aren't.

And I've heard you suggest what you think of people that talk behind other people's back and name call, and make stuff up on other threads. So we all know how that really goes, don't we?

I suspect you are a shill for CAB. I'm not saying nor implying anything else. I do question your advice and claims on Corriente cows and the weaning weights you claim which is the same as any other claim made here by anyone else that sounds questionable.
 
Lee VanRoss said:
That sounds like a recipe for rat tails. I would consider all options before using a chocolate anything.
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It most certainly does have a strong possibility. The original Granny is rat tailed. But such a nice cow. Her daughters are not. The bull has a tail switch I think. Something to look at. They're all tanks though.

Your point is very valid. It's a closed system for me, unless they're dinks, they're beefed.

Rat tail is hand in hand with the dilluted gene, correct? Diluted animals here grow on grass better than most oddly enough. I have small numbers to compare though. So could be about to do a No No. 😂. Dying to try though.

One bull is chocolate, the other option is a black one. Both same breeding. Dams are full sisters if I remember right.
 
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Warren Allison said:
Regrading bulls, especially the top most sought after in the breeds: Is it trophies, high dollar bids, and glossy pictures that got them in the semen catalogs to start with"? Or is it any kind of off-spring performance records considered?
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It's turn and burn, most aren't around long enough to see if their progeny are productive.
 
ClinchValley86 said:
It most certainly does have a strong possibility. The original Granny is rat tailed. But such a nice cow. Her daughters are not. The bull has a tail switch I think. Something to look at. They're all tanks though.

Your point is very valid. It's a closed system for me, unless they're dinks, they're beefed.

Rat tail is hand in hand with the dilluted gene, correct? Diluted animals here grow on grass better than most oddly enough. I have small numbers to compare though. So could be about to do a No No. 😂. Dying to try though.

One bull is chocolate, the other option is a black one. Both same breeding. Dams are full sisters if I remember right.
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I know that there is a famous Angus herd and their great sire for a number if years is a rattail. Seems that nobody notices it. You have to laugh sometimes or you will cry.
 
Ebenezer said:
I know that there is a famous Angus herd and their great sire for a number if years is a rattail. Seems that nobody notices it. You have to laugh sometimes or you will cry.
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It doesn't bother me one bit. This cow and her heifers have stood out every year since I got them. Been waiting 5 years for a bull. Had the perfect black specimen but he died at 450 pounds. I finally have two. I am determined to try one of them.

The chocolate bull has a bit more gut and wider, the black one is longer. When grazing is good and they're fat I will make up my mind.

It's just the tail hair anyways, yeah? Eats all the same.
 
Rat tail is genetic and is most obvious as less hair on the end of the tail. But rat tail cattle tend to have shorter, more sparse and curly body hair that may make the animal less tolerant to cold winter temperatures. To the point of having an effect on feedlot gain and performance/efficiency in more northern climates.
 
Lee VanRoss said:
That sounds like a recipe for rat tails. I would consider all options before using a chocolate anything.
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This is Granny's backside. She was 6 or 7 when I got her in 2016. Is this a rat tail? The rest of the chocolates here have tailswitches. Hadnt ever really paid attention.

I'm quite surprised to be honest.
 

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I'm interested to see what people say on that. The one calf I had, the tail was shorter and looked different. I got smoked on it at the ab. From what I saw online there were no performance deficiencies from it. It was an old wives tail that they were inferior.

The cow that threw it had Char blood and we had an Angus bull. The cow went shortly after the calf.
 
It is not a debate. I gave you my thought on the topic. It is your cow and your dime.
Hope it works out for you. Best wishes for a profitable year.
 
CV said "I've got a gray/chocolate simangus bull I'm keeping intact. Hope to breed with him this Fall. Gonna be asking a lot of a young bull. He's good blood. Sire was short legged and slab sided."
I wouldn't be worried about the color of the bull or the "rattail" people are talking about. I would worry about the "SIRE was short legged and SLAB SIDED".
Whatever your calf looks like - he WILL throw some of his calves to look like his sire.
I guess I fall into the category of "purebred breeder that shows". I sell my calves for a LOT of money. Just sold a 7 month old heifer calf for $5000 and a nursing 2 month old heifer calf for $4500 (pick of my heifer calves) - BOTH to separate families - both sight unseen. This is not something"I" would do - but, it says a lot about my reputation.
There are producers out there that truly care about producing QUALITY, WORKING cows/bulls/calves. I have seen people buy high dollar calves/bred yearlings and they fall apart because they are managed a lot differently at the new home. You cannot buy from a farm that feeds grain to their cows and creeps the calves from the day they are born. You cannot convince me ANYONE raises 1000# weanlings on grass and milk. Not very many farms have good milking momma's and great grazing like I do. And I am hard pressed to get 750#-800# weaned bull calves.
I know I shouldn't brag about what I get for my cattle, but I want to make a point. My cattle go to herds and IMPROVE them. I have LOTS of repeat customers. To the point of taking orders for bull calves before they are born.
Guaranteed I am not the only breeder out there making my cows make me a good living. My cows are my most important equation on this farm. I have cows that I can breed a billie goat to and they will give me a good calf.
If you are looking to improve your genetics, there are breeders out there. You have to do your homework and find a real working farm in the same environment as your farm. Although, I have to say, I have sold all over the US - without complaints of their performance at their new home.
changing the subject - I have never had a "rattail" calf and I have had tons of diluted calves over a span of maybe 20-30 some years when I started.
 
Lee VanRoss said:
It is not a debate. I gave you my thought on the topic. It is your cow and your dime.
Hope it works out for you. Best wishes for a profitable year.
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Wasn't looking for a debate, my friend. Was looking for yalls opinion. Rat tail or not. This was the shortest tail of the chocolates. I figure it's sort of a rat tail. Not near the size of most tail switches here.

Appreciate that. Same to you.
 
Jeanne - Simme Valley said:
CV said "I've got a gray/chocolate simangus bull I'm keeping intact. Hope to breed with him this Fall. Gonna be asking a lot of a young bull. He's good blood. Sire was short legged and slab sided."
I wouldn't be worried about the color of the bull or the "rattail" people are talking about. I would worry about the "SIRE was short legged and SLAB SIDED".
Whatever your calf looks like - he WILL throw some of his calves to look like his sire.
I guess I fall into the category of "purebred breeder that shows". I sell my calves for a LOT of money. Just sold a 7 month old heifer calf for $5000 and a nursing 2 month old heifer calf for $4500 (pick of my heifer calves) - BOTH to separate families - both sight unseen. This is not something"I" would do - but, it says a lot about my reputation.
There are producers out there that truly care about producing QUALITY, WORKING cows/bulls/calves. I have seen people buy high dollar calves/bred yearlings and they fall apart because they are managed a lot differently at the new home. You cannot buy from a farm that feeds grain to their cows and creeps the calves from the day they are born. You cannot convince me ANYONE raises 1000# weanlings on grass and milk. Not very many farms have good milking momma's and great grazing like I do. And I am hard pressed to get 750#-800# weaned bull calves.
I know I shouldn't brag about what I get for my cattle, but I want to make a point. My cattle go to herds and IMPROVE them. I have LOTS of repeat customers. To the point of taking orders for bull calves before they are born.
Guaranteed I am not the only breeder out there making my cows make me a good living. My cows are my most important equation on this farm. I have cows that I can breed a billie goat to and they will give me a good calf.
If you are looking to improve your genetics, there are breeders out there. You have to do your homework and find a real working farm in the same environment as your farm. Although, I have to say, I have sold all over the US - without complaints of their performance at their new home.
changing the subject - I have never had a "rattail" calf and I have had tons of diluted calves over a span of maybe 20-30 some years when I started.
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I like short legs and a big thick body, I figure most do though. A big air gap underneath is a turn off for me. Maybe slab sided was a bad descriptor.

You should be proud, Jeanne!

Back to the rat tails, is it more so a Charolais dillutor gene thing?
 
I am no expert, but I have seen many true rat tail cattle. Almost all were the result of breeding gray Angus-Charolais cows back to black Angus bulls.
I first heard of them back in the early 1980s. It seems they are not discriminated against as much now as they were back then.
The Charolais cross cow is the backbone of many herds here. The desire to turn their calves black to bring the high dollar results in some rat tails.
Breeding gray Charolais cross cows to a homo black bull results in 50 per cent shiny black calves and 50 per cent gray calves, a small percentage of which may be rat tails. At least in my experience.
 
It may not be that way ever where but here if an animal is very short legged it it's docked something awful at any market around.
I think that is one of the disconnects between the registered folks and the commercial folks. The show ring might want those short thick animals, but around here the order buyers do not. Thick made is fine as long as they don't look too fat, which is extremely subjective. One of the fastest ways to get them docked is to have short legged calves. It doesn't matter how thick or how much they weigh, the buyers will say they don't have much grow in them.
Seems like all the breeds are trying to make them short and thick and it's hard to find bulls that have some frame.
The frame of the 80's is too much, but I'm afraid a lot of registered folks are going to take us back to the 50's with the short cattle in the name of moderating the already moderate.
When we did the bred heifer program, the state graders would inspect each heifer and usually we'd have 1 or 2 didn't make the cut due to being too short. I kept back several of those and they made good cows, calves would weigh as much as the others usually but some would still look shorter. Those heifers were mostly commercial black and BWF, a lot of which the sales people called SimAngus
We also used to sell Hereford calves at a graded Hereford influence feeder calf sale. A friend that has registered Herefords loaded a steer calf back up and took it home after they graded it as short. He said no way that calf was a short as it weaned off of a first calf heifer at 700#.
Sorry for the long post and not meaning to knock anybody's cattle, just wanted to talk about how short legged is very subjective depending in what market you're in.
 
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I've always heard about rat tails mainly interns of special graded sales saying no rat tails, but never to my knowledge ever saw one.
Sold Charolais bulls to commercial breeders for several years and knew lots of folks that used Charolais bulls and never heard anybody ever mention having any.
 
Very interesting, Ky Hills, and I understand where you are coming from.
But, I do not see how you deny the fact that a small number of the gray calves resulting from breeding Angus to Charolais cross females will have the short hair and sparse tail switch associated with being a rat tail. I have seen it in calves I have raised myself. I do not think I am imagining this. I have never noticed a drop in performance in these calves I raised.
Now whether this is an actual detrimental condition is very open to debate.
Yes I have heard the graders at graded sales and stockyards personnel discuss this. In general it seems it to be less of a concern than it once was.
I have also seen cattle lose their tail switch when on high endophyte fescue. Could this be a part of the problem?
I only retain the black heifers from the Charolais cross cows, in part because I did not want rat tails.
I look at this as a chance to learn and hope my worries were misguided.
Could it be the true rat tail is real but very rare, and the occasional short coated calf with a sparse tail switch should really be of no concern?
 
By the way, I agree on the short legged cattle. In 2019 I bought a good looking yearling black bull at the stockyards and took him home. He did not have a lot of air under him but was not extremely short.
A number of the calves he sired were graded short when they sold and I took a beating on them in price. I made sure my next bull was higher off the ground and the resulting calves have sold more like they always have before.
 
Logan52 said:
Very interesting, Ky Hills, and I understand where you are coming from.
But, I do not see how you deny the fact that a small number of the gray calves resulting from breeding Angus to Charolais cross females will have the short hair and sparse tail switch associated with being a rat tail. I have seen it in calves I have raised myself. I do not think I am imagining this. I have never noticed a drop in performance in these calves I raised.
Now whether this is an actual detrimental condition is very open to debate.
Yes I have heard the graders at graded sales and stockyards personnel discuss this. In general it seems it to be less of a concern than it once was.
I have also seen cattle lose their tail switch when on high endophyte fescue. Could this be a part of the problem?
I only retain the black heifers from the Charolais cross cows, in part because I did not want rat tails.
I look at this as a chance to learn and hope my worries were misguided.
Could it be the true rat tail is real but very rare, and the occasional short coated calf with a sparse tail switch should really be of no concern?
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I'm not denying the existence of rat tails at all, I do believe they are out there. Im just saying that it isn't something that I have seen or if I have seen it I didn't recognize it. It's not something that my fellow Charolais breeders or customers mentioned.
I have not personally retained very many Angus Charolais cross females snd it's been 25 years since I had Charolais influenced cows in my herd so I don't have a lot to compare to.
I have bought a few Char cross feeders over the years and same story didn't see anything that I would say was a rat tail.
Only one that comes to mind is a mouse colored ( that's what we used to call Smokey's) heifer I bought as a small calf to put on a cow. her hair coat was typical as far as I know, but did have a fairly short tail without much switch. It had hair on it and wasn't missing any. For what it's worth I've seen several angus with short tails and odd looking switches but I realize that's not the same thing, I just figured that heifer calf took after the Angus and had a shorter tail. She grew great and made a real nice cow.
I would like to see some examples of rat tail cattle.
 

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