Miles City calving sheets

[alexfarms]

I was fortunate to have accompanied a friend to Miles City to pick up some Line 1 Hereford cows he purchased earlier in the year. The Line 1 Hereford herd has been closed since 1934 and Miles City did a lot of the early performance testing. I looked through the 2013 bull calves and they are a good group. It is an interesting crop because they used some old bulls through AI. The calving sheets are posted below.

 

[3waycross]

Those weaning weights leave a lot to be desired. On the other hand I am impressed by the uniformity of a lot of the other characteristics. Especially their mature cow weights.

 

[alexfarms]

Those weaning weights leave a lot to be desired. On the other hand I am impressed by the uniformity of a lot of the other characteristics. Especially their mature cow weights.

They are around 30% inbred, that affects the growth traits mainly by slowing maturity or delaying the growth curve. The best use of the information is for comparison within the Miles City Line 1 herd only.

Here is a 205 day adjusted weaning weight calculator based on BIF adjustment factors. There is no adjustment for inbreeding coefficient. The AHA uses a different formula with its own adjustment factors, so this caluculator will give a different result from the AHA TPR system.

http://www.cattlecalculator.com/adjuste ... calculator

 

[KNERSIE]

Weaning weight is more a function of environment than anything else. What I find interesting is the very little (if any) progress that was made in YW, considering that incresing YW was the main goal from the onset of the program, the only bull that really stands out for YW (for the wrong reasons) is the one born in 1992.

 

[3waycross]

Maybe i am not reading the charts right but where does it show YW.

Knersie are you saying that they don't have enuf feed in that environment to make decent WW's.

 

[Aaron]

The weaning weights was the big shocker for me as well. Also the gain between the weaning and test weight leaves a lot to be desired.

 

[BLL CATTLE]

So, what has miles city really proved? Never improved the line 1s, never cleaned up their problems, never improved weaning, yearling weights. Never improved structure, or conformation,.... They kept them pure and they could line breed..... What else am i missing.... If a normal ranch that has bred any breed of cattle for the last 80 years never really improved there factory wouldnt they be out of business. 300 weaning weights, slug of opens every year sounds like a good government program. People will say they are foundation of hereford breed, more like achillies heal....

 

[Carlos F.]

As I understand the original idea was to emulate in cattle breeding the success of hybrid corn in the 30's by inbreeding and then outcrossing the inbred lines.

 

[alexfarms]

So, what has miles city really proved? Never improved the line 1s, never cleaned up their problems, never improved weaning, yearling weights. Never improved structure, or conformation,.... They kept them pure and they could line breed..... What else am i missing.... If a normal ranch that has bred any breed of cattle for the last 80 years never really improved there factory wouldnt they be out of business. 300 weaning weights, slug of opens every year sounds like a good government program. People will say they are foundation of hereford breed, more like achillies heal....

They are the foundations of a lot of Hereford programs. They make good outcrossing cattle, like Cooper and Hden have done for years. There aren't many horned Herefords that don't have some Line 1 in them and since the merger a lot of polled Herefords have line 1 in them now too. I don't think anyone should use Line 1 with blinders on, thinking there are no problems there, but I do think the Miles City cattle can be used successfully.

 

[Chris H]

Cow udder scores surprised me.

 

[alexfarms]

Weaning weight is more a function of environment than anything else. What I find interesting is the very little (if any) progress that was made in YW, considering that incresing YW was the main goal from the onset of the program, the only bull that really stands out for YW (for the wrong reasons) is the one born in 1992.

The 920448 bull was a lighter bw bull. His calves may improve in comparison to their contemporaries at the yearling stage.

Ironically, the reasons I was given for why they AI to the old bulls was to decrease the number of open cows and to select for traits other than growth.

 

[smnherf]

Maybe i am not reading the charts right but where does it show YW.

Knersie are you saying that they don't have enuf feed in that environment to make decent WW's.

I dont see YW weight either. There is a cow weight listed in order from oldest to youngest though and that is interesting but without a BCS with it, I would be carefull in makeing too many decisions from it.

 

[skeeter swatter]

Maybe i am not reading the charts right but where does it show YW.

Knersie are you saying that they don't have enuf feed in that environment to make decent WW's.

The worst thing about these calves environment is having to share it with a bunch of cows that don't milk.

 

[sim.-ang.king]

I'm wondering about those weights also. 13239 BW was 108, but at 6+ months only weighed in at 378, how slow of a growth curve do they want?
If someone is using these for crossing, and starting a new foundation herd wouldn't someone want something that wouldn't take another 70 years to get the results you want?

 

[alexfarms]

I'm wondering about those weights also. 13239 BW was 108, but at 6+ months only weighed in at 378, how slow of a growth curve do they want?
If someone is using these for crossing, and starting a new foundation herd wouldn't someone want something that wouldn't take another 70 years to get the results you want?

If you wanted to pick one out to use as a foundation, you would want to pick one that was a top performer in the group. There are some bulls there that are around 80 bw and 600 adjusted weaning along with a dam with a 6 or 7 udder score and an annual calving interval.

The variation from the top performers to the bottom performers is humbling, but that is line breeding.

 

[Taurus]

I'm wondering about those weights also. 13239 BW was 108, but at 6+ months only weighed in at 378, how slow of a growth curve do they want?
If someone is using these for crossing, and starting a new foundation herd wouldn't someone want something that wouldn't take another 70 years to get the results you want?

I noticed some calves doesn't grain that much like 13260 BW was 102, born in 4/4/2013 and weaned on 10/2/2013 and his WW was only 278lbs :shock:

But why didn't they cull some poor performers to just improve the lines?

 

[alexfarms]

I'm wondering about those weights also. 13239 BW was 108, but at 6+ months only weighed in at 378, how slow of a growth curve do they want?
If someone is using these for crossing, and starting a new foundation herd wouldn't someone want something that wouldn't take another 70 years to get the results you want?

I noticed some calves doesn't grain that much like 13260 BW was 102, born in 4/4/2013 and weaned on 10/2/2013 and his WW was only 278lbs :shock:

But why didn't they cull some poor performers to just improve the lines?

They do cull. Mostly for poor performance and fertility problems. Everything that isn't retained or sold as breeding stock is finished out and sent direct to slaughter.

 

[sim.-ang.king]

I'm wondering about those weights also. 13239 BW was 108, but at 6+ months only weighed in at 378, how slow of a growth curve do they want?
If someone is using these for crossing, and starting a new foundation herd wouldn't someone want something that wouldn't take another 70 years to get the results you want?

If you wanted to pick one out to use as a foundation, you would want to pick one that was a top performer in the group. There are some bulls there that are around 80 bw and 600 adjusted weaning along with a dam with a 6 or 7 udder score and an annual calving interval.

The variation from the top performers to the bottom performers is humbling, but that is line breeding.

But if his brothers which are very closely related through this "line breeding" aren't performers then why would anyone expect his offspring to fall far from the tree?

 

[Beef Man]

In my lifetime the Miles City cattle went from a joke to unblievable interest and demand. I think that they were so intensly line bred that they were just like a total outcross in the hereford breed. We had a lot of quite little cattle and the size thing was catching on and somebody bought a line one and boom the fuse was lit.I'll always remember Sam Moores bull " HATCHET".When asked why he called him that Sam laughed and said cause his rear end looked like a hatchet . Some way if you select hard enough they can be improved a lot.But as most of you who have mentioned ww are worse than bad, as a lot of other things thaat should have been used in the culling process. My dad who ofcoarse was a very old school cowman used to call them chicken footed.Yes the breed just about all has some Miles City influence and it makes me wonder if that will be good as we continue to try improveing economecly? What if we all had bred only Zato Heirs, King promises, Major Dhu's,Colorado Domino's, and so many more. We might breed ourselves in a corner and this breed cannot stand anymore mistakes!!

 

[alexfarms]

I'm wondering about those weights also. 13239 BW was 108, but at 6+ months only weighed in at 378, how slow of a growth curve do they want?
If someone is using these for crossing, and starting a new foundation herd wouldn't someone want something that wouldn't take another 70 years to get the results you want?

If you wanted to pick one out to use as a foundation, you would want to pick one that was a top performer in the group. There are some bulls there that are around 80 bw and 600 adjusted weaning along with a dam with a 6 or 7 udder score and an annual calving interval.

The variation from the top performers to the bottom performers is humbling, but that is line breeding.

But if his brothers which are very closely related through this "line breeding" aren't performers then why would anyone expect his offspring to fall far from the tree?

In theory, linebreeding increases homozygosity of gene pairs. If you increase homozygosity your gonna make one animal homozygous for positive genes and another homozygous for negative genes. So you will get superior animals and inferior animals. You keep the superiors and cull the inferiors and hope you can maintain enough numbers to keep the line going.