More cows vs. Big cows

[cow pollinater]

Their is more to it than just smaller cows. Yes they may eat less and you may be able to raise more pounds of beef per acre off a smaller cow. But the rest of the story isn't told in a smaller cow. We purchase for hire and feed quite a few calves out every year. Typically the smaller framed calves kill lighter and don't do as well in the feedlot. Their are more yield grade 4's in a smaller animal which is a huge discount as well. The smaller cattle need to be backgrounded longer because otherwise they get fat to early, they need to be grown out first. So with all of this, feeders will usually shy away from smaller framed cattle. I realize we can't raise cattle for the feeder only, but we need to keep them in consideration, otherwise you will not get paid like you could. The feeders will not buy the same calves next year if they don't do what the feeder needs them to do. Now I am not promoting big frame cattle here, but their is a happy medium we can fit in where it isn't to small or to big. In our environment, you can't keep one real small, as the grass is real powerful and it allows them to grow. Where is the South East US it seems to be just the opposite. The feeders like cattle that will kill around 1350 lbs, and if the genetics are right in the cattle, the feeder calves will get to that size, what ever size the cow is in her environment.

Also, when it comes to selling calves off the cow at weaning, yes a lighter weight calf usually brings more per pound than a heavy calf. But it is usually the second cut of a decent size frame group of calves that get the good premium. Not the ones that are to small framed. I have been told several times by buyers not to bid on so and so's calves as they are out of too small framed cows. Now if your entire goal is to produce more pounds of beef per acre, then the smaller cow is the way to go. But if you want to be profitable and if you want your customer, who is the feeder, to be profitable and to come back and leave a competitive bid on your calves year after year, then I think you should look at the bigger picture, not just from birth to weaning.

We have found that the 5 to 6 frame herd sire will produce the type cow and feeder calf that works for us and our customers the best and yet has a good demand from the feeders.

The voice of reason.

 

[cow pollinater]

Forgive me if it's been said and I missed it but feed efficiency is not as directly tied to size as you'd think. If you look at angus sires in a lot of the big studs there are some surprises in there on efficiency. Fame was an early one... Big cows that didn't eat much, Forsight is one, SAF Connection was a great one, In Focus, Destination928, epic, None of them are smaller cattle but they're proven to use less energy. The real efficiency standouts like Wave and Nebula do tend to be smaller but there are plenty of smaller framed bulls that don't match up in the efficiency category.
Limousins have been winning feed efficiency trials at a few places and they're not small cattle.

 

[Taurus]

Again, the heavy milkers you're referring to weren't fat 1000lb cows. The tye im proposing is a 3-4 frame Jersey/lowline,angus,hereford type cross. This animal is extremely easy fleshing. She is a heavy milker. She doesn't have a saggy slopy udder. She has an excellent tight udder- the difference being in the amount of forward volume she carries. It's imperative she is bred to a high growth terminal bull whose offspring have the growth potential to utilize her milking ability.

Then the cow you're talking about isn't heavy milker. Oh by the way Massey135, the heavy milkers I culled were angus and black baldy cows. Too much milk can't be good for both cow and calf and often they ended up on the cull list.

Now tell me why there isn't anyone runs a commercial herd of Jersey type cross cows?

 

[TexasBred]

Again, the heavy milkers you're referring to weren't fat 1000lb cows. The tye im proposing is a 3-4 frame Jersey/lowline,angus,hereford type cross. This animal is extremely easy fleshing. She is a heavy milker. She doesn't have a saggy slopy udder. She has an excellent tight udder- the difference being in the amount of forward volume she carries. It's imperative she is bred to a high growth terminal bull whose offspring have the growth potential to utilize her milking ability.

Then the cow you're talking about isn't heavy milker. Oh by the way Massey135, the heavy milkers I culled were angus and black baldy cows. Too much milk can't be good for both cow and calf and often they ended up on the cull list.

Now tell me why there isn't anyone runs a commercial herd of Jersey type cross cows?

We'll have to travel over to East Texas area but I can show you a beautiful herd of Jersey/Brahman cross cattle. Awesome cattle. Even knew one dairyman that milked about a hundred holstein/brahman crosses. They were good for about 3 lactations and udder would begin to breakdown some. He'd calve them out one more time, haul them to the sale barn and sell them as a pair and they would bring a small fortune. Milk production is determined by what's on the buffet and how long the table is. Just because a cow has the potential to make a lot of milk does not mean that she automatically does.

 

[Rowdy]

I had some brahma/Holstein cows I bottle fed as calves. Bred them char and angus. They were harder doing- but like I said- they were out of 2000lb Holstein cows: not 1000lb jerseys. They had perfect udders-though most brahma do. There's a dairy is Yantis by Lake Fork that runs prolly 300 jerseys on a grass based operation. They are beefier in type than you'd expect. Just look at how much more milk a cow can produce per point reduction in frame score to just break even maintenance intake wise.

 

[Taurus]

I just prefers that a cow that doesn't have a dairy in them so they can stay at their place longer before they starts to breakdown. My neighors has Angus x jersey cross cows, some of them are not small cows.

 

[TexasBred]

I had some brahma/Holstein cows I bottle fed as calves. Bred them char and angus. They were harder doing- but like I said- they were out of 2000lb Holstein cows: not 1000lb jerseys. They had perfect udders-though most brahma do. There's a dairy is Yantis by Lake Fork that runs prolly 300 jerseys on a grass based operation. They are beefier in type than you'd expect. Just look at how much more milk a cow can produce per point reduction in frame score to just break even maintenance intake wise.

Those jersey's probably have a lot of northern jersey bloodlines. Typical holstein in Texas will weigh 1300 lbs. and a jersey more like 800-850 tops and won't look beefy at all.

 

[Rowdy]

The Holsteins around our place in Pickton are much larger than 1300. IDE say 3-700lbs larger. A lot of canner 1700lb steins go through Sulphur Springs every Thursday. Big bags of bones draggin their udder through the ring.

Maybe it's only by selection that they've developed a beefier phenotype. That Jersey dairy is a grazing dairy. Supposedly no grain at all. Too angular of a cow couldnt cut it. Sure they give them some type of silage tho.

 

[Nesikep]

I have a couple words to say here too, and mostly it's in agreement with what I've heard others say... Not every size or type of cow is suited to every operation... I have a variety of sizes of cows... a couple 1/2 shorthorn cows who weigh in close to 1800 lbs, and they make about 700-750 lb steer calves... those two cows are just plain big cows, both have had twins... then I have some others who are just tall cows, without being so heavy.. Probably frame 7ish, 1500 lb, and they make the same size calves... Most of my newer Gelbvieh cross cows are in the 1200-1400 lb range, probably frame 5's, and they seem to be really promising.. easy keepers, tons of milk, and seem to all have first time bull calves in the mid 600's, the second calves (only 2 heifers calves so far) should end up at 625 and 675 lb respectively... What I can say is that the SH/GV crosses are something the buyers seem to like as my 600 lb bull calves usually take the high price (or close to it) for the weight class as the sale barn. My best bunch was 3 years ago when I had 5 steers in the low 700's that brought in $1050 a piece... We had a calf from a small cow (who ate like a pig) who weaned at about 450 lbs... He got $1.70 a lb, which is great... per pound, but it still is only $765. There's also the personal satisfaction of seeing a nice bunch of calves that make your mouth water when you look at them. One of my best cows isn't a small cow.. she's certainly a frame 6, probably around 1500 lbs, bot very heavy boned, and doesn't have the best topline either, but she raises an excellent animal every year, 650 lb heifer or 700 lb steer, breeds back well, and is always the first to leave the feed bunk and lay down to chew cud (her daughters as well), and comes from a line where mother and grandmother lived to have an average of 15 calves. I think she's a pretty efficient animal.

One thing I've been looking at is how many time a cow chews each mouthful of cud... I do seem to ind a bit of a correlation in efficiency there... I find the ones that do the best chew each mouthful about 60-70 times are thriftier animals than those that chew less... this isn't perhaps a purely genetic trait, but you could see how if the food was more thoroughly chewed, she'd get more nutrition out of less feed.


Another piece of logic I heard around here was that smaller cows aren't able to produce enough milk while on lush pastures to prevent them from getting fat, while big cows can't eat enough on lean pastures to keep condition, milk, and breed back, which should be something for people to consider while selecting their cattle.

 

[TexasBred]

The Holsteins around our place in Pickton are much larger than 1300. IDE say 3-700lbs larger. A lot of canner 1700lb steins go through Sulphur Springs every Thursday. Big bags of bones draggin their udder through the ring.

Guess things have changed since the early '90's. Back then SS had very very few cattle over 1300 lbs. Stephenville had many more. People would buy the few large cows coming thru SS and haul them to Stephenville and make big money. Then buy the few smaller cattle at the Stephenvill sale and sell them in SS and do the same. East Texas always wanted the smaller cattle with a lot of jersey/holstein crosses too. Maybe the influx of "dutchmen" changed the way of thinking

Maybe it's only by selection that they've developed a beefier phenotype. That Jersey dairy is a grazing dairy. Supposedly no grain at all. Too angular of a cow couldnt cut it. Sure they give them some type of silage tho.

Only a few "grazing" dairies in ET. All they do is graze, change pastures and fertilize again. Low milk production but also extremely low overhead. They'll feed some silage but that usually is cost effective as well. Don't know about this year. I'm hearing $45 a ton for standing corn before it's cut. Will make it awfully expensive if you ahve to haul it very far.

 

[Chuckie]

I lean towards larger framed cattle. I feel if I keep my pastures up and the conditions are good, then I am not out any more money in the summer from March to October. If it were to get dry, I would put out some hay. A large cow or bull with the genetics to hold and gain weight is different from one that cannot maintain it's body weight and must graze continuously. I see it in small cattle as well.
My cows are Angus, and range from 1.1, 1.0, .9 and 8's. My smallest may be a 7. Then my bull is an .8. I need to measure him and send in the numbers as the heights are off on a couple. They show him as a .4. He passed that a while back as I can't see over his back now.

No one has complained about the size of the bulls and I have no trouble selling to commercial farmers looking to increase the size of their calf crop.

But I mainly sell bulls for breeding, and I am not getting sale barn prices. That makes a difference. But when I do take a bull to the sale barn, the owner will usually purchase it from me at the price the same age bulls are going. He then places it somewhere they will need a bull. He may be taking it home and feeding it a bit longer, I do not know. I consider these bulls to be, "Would have made a nicer heifer bull" They may have started developing a hump late in life, but the others came out looking like bulls.

I had a Belgian and a Quarter horse gelding here one time, and the Belgian was larger, and took less feed to keep fat. So genetics and size play a part in this as well. It depends on the management of the cattle and the up keep of the pasture. If you don't keep the free feed in great condition, you lose a lot of money. If you look down and see dirt and junk grass and weeds,then you are going to spend a lot of money feeding cattle And small cattle need feed too, and putting out feed in the summer time for either is expensive.

I figure it out that all 12 of the cows I keep here at the house were fed 1 1/2 qts each, of Distillers grain during the winter, and I kept 60 bales to get me through. Rule of thumb- 6 bales per cow. At the end of the season, I had 12 of the bales left; 3 that I fed were in the Spring when the clover was up, to keep them from bloating. Then my husband picked up 9 of them and fed them at the other farm.
So, I am not sure how much difference it would have taken to feed out smaller cows of the same size.

Chuckie

 

[dun]

Chuckie, cant figure out your frame score numbers: My cows are Angus, and range from 1.1, 1.0, .9 and 8's.

 

[TexasBred]

Chuckie I guestion the DDG amount. Is that 1 1/2 qts per day or for the whole winter? You didn't say.

 

[Chuckie]

TexasBred, If they could were getting by on 1 1/2 quarts for the whole winter, they would have to make lines, and start snorting it!!!

 

[Chuckie]

Dun, I can't figure out what you are saying.

 

[KNERSIE]

Dun, I can't figure out what you are saying.

Probably because you know just too much to keep quiet and not quite enough to make a contribution to the conversation.

Read up on framescores and you'll soon figure out what dun is saying.

 

[Chuckie]

Great to hear from you Tarzan!

 

[Chuckie]

Dun, I thought for a bit after I answered, and came back to see my little buddy Nerdsie wrote me. Haven't talked to him in sooooo long!
OK, I'm with you. My cows are the above frame scores which do not support the weights that we are talking about. I have a cow that weighed 2100 lbs when her feet were trimmed. I am going to say that mine range in the area of 1700 - 2000 lbs.

 

[dun]

Dun, I thought for a bit after I answered, and came back to see my little buddy Nerdsie wrote me. Haven't talked to him in sooooo long!
OK, I'm with you. My cows are the above frame scores which do not support the weights that we are talking about. I have a cow that weighed 2100 lbs when her feet were trimmed. I am going to say that mine range in the area of 1700 - 2000 lbs.

so your animals range in size from just over 3 foot at the hip to almost 5 foot at the hip

 

[Chuckie]

They are all closer to 4.5 to a bit over 5 at the hip. I don't have any calves that are that short, as that is pretty small for a three month old calf.