Maturity/ Early/Late

[novatech]

The fertility topic sparked a question in my mind.
I raise Brahman which as a general rule are late maturing. I have been AI'ing most of my cattle. Because some of my cattle are hard to get settled wit AI I decided to raise a clean-up bull. At 14 months the bull got out with the cows. He has settled 4 of them. Basically this is very uncommon for Brahmans. They are usually not turned out until they are 2 years old.
So my questions are;
Will this hurt the bull? How and Why?
Is this a heritable trait and to what degree?
Secondly I have a heifer that Is cycling as a yearling and again the norm is 2 years old for breeding.
Same questions.

 

[Red Bull Breeder]

Sounds like you are raising some that are matureing quicker. Good work.

 

[KNERSIE]

The fertility topic sparked a question in my mind.
I raise Brahman which as a general rule are late maturing. I have been AI'ing most of my cattle. Because some of my cattle are hard to get settled wit AI I decided to raise a clean-up bull. At 14 months the bull got out with the cows. He has settled 4 of them. Basically this is very uncommon for Brahmans. They are usually not turned out until they are 2 years old.
So my questions are;

Early, medium and late maturing animals refers to carcass maturity more than sexual maturity although there is a correlation between the two. ( The higher hormone levels after the onset of puberty inhibits the long bone growth and effectively starts the process of the closing of the growth plates on the long bones. Doc can put this in better words and descibe the technicalities much better than I can)

Will this hurt the bull? How and Why?

Not at all, it would simply have wet his apetite. If you turned the young 14 month old bull out with 60 cows on marginal feed then he would rapidly lose condition and it would TEMPORARILY set his growth back, but they all will eventually get out of it again.

Is this a heritable trait and to what degree?

Yes, very low as most fertility traits, but as I said in MM's thread if you need to hit a target where would you aim?

Secondly I have a heifer that Is cycling as a yearling and again the norm is 2 years old for breeding.
Same questions.

Same answers.

Most brahman influenced or brahman derived breeds are very capable to cycle and conceive to calf at two and most herds here are bred to calf at two. They can expect a higher % of open heifers and those can always be sold as replacements to those breeding to calve at 3 or held over for next year.

Straightbred brahmans is pretty much the same deal, but you can expect fewer heifers to reach sexual maturity by breeding season than those who had another influence. Depending on your management and feeding conditions those heifers bred to calve at 2 will be smaller for a year or two compared to those who calved at 3, but again by the time they are 4 you won't be able to see the difference.

 

[novatech]

Thanks Knersie
So much for doing what everyone else does. :roll:
The big breeders hold back until the heifers are pretty well grown out. This now sounds more like a marketing issue. The small breeders usually follow their lead and as with me don,t really know why.Your information will allow me to gain as much as a year on my breeding plan.

 

[dun]

Back in the mid 70s the area we were in had no Brahman influenced cattle to speak of. We started using a Gert bull and I AIed a bunch of my cusotmers cows to the same bull. We must have been just plain lucky because the Gert bulls daughters were some of the earliest ones to reach puberty and settle. They must not have read the book so they didn;t know they shouldn;t calve as 2 year olds.

 

[novatech]

Sounds like you are raising some that are matureing quicker. Good work.

I wish I could take credit for this but sometimes you just get lucky. I would like to take advantage of this. So that is where the real work begins. I will now have to start going through pedigrees trying to find the common denominator.

 

[dun]

Sounds like you are raising some that are matureing quicker. Good work.

I wish I could take credit for this but sometimes you just get lucky. I would like to take advantage of this. So that is where the real work begins. I will now have to start going through pedigrees trying to find the common denominator.

Are the Brahmans straight bred or crosses? If crosses you might want to look into that part of tyhe pedigree also.

 

[novatech]

Sounds like you are raising some that are matureing quicker. Good work.

I wish I could take credit for this but sometimes you just get lucky. I would like to take advantage of this. So that is where the real work begins. I will now have to start going through pedigrees trying to find the common denominator.

Are the Brahmans straight bred or crosses? If crosses you might want to look into that part of the pedigree also.

They are straight bred. Unless something really stands out and given the low heritability this may be a shot in the dark.
On the plus side the American Brahman (in reality a composite) is not a very old breed so the pedigrees do not go all that far back.

 

[dun]

I wish I could take credit for this but sometimes you just get lucky. I would like to take advantage of this. So that is where the real work begins. I will now have to start going through pedigrees trying to find the common denominator.

Are the Brahmans straight bred or crosses? If crosses you might want to look into that part of the pedigree also.

They are straight bred. Unless something really stands out and given the low heritability this may be a shot in the dark.
On the plus side the American Brahman (in reality a composite) is not a very old breed so the pedigrees do not go all that far back.

Maybe our early puberty success had to do with heterosis. We used that bull on everything from straightbred Shorthorns, to Ankina with a few pure dairy breeds thrown in the mix. Most were just mongrel corssbreds. A lot of AngusxHolsten or Jersey and HerefordxHolsten. The only pure ones other then the few dairy breeds were our Shorthorns. Those should have had the least heterosis being bred to a Gert, but there wasn;t any difference.

 

[ALACOWMAN]

my guess would be that as astute as you seem, that you keep your heifer's in top condition. that help's. and you have grays, the grays i dealt with aways seem too mature earlier then the others, they carried more flesh