What did the calves weigh. If they were 65 to 70 lbs then the shoulders are not a huge problem. The problems start when the calves get to a marginal size for birth weight and have structural issues to go along with the weight.
What has been a problem for us may not be a problem for you. Remember also 1/2 of every calf is the mother also.
I am a big believer that calving ease along with a lot of other issues is kinda like Baseball, it's not the extrodinary events that you need to breed for it's the averages. That's why people will tell you that a coarse shouldered bull is not great for calving ease. Because the average or the odds say that it will be a problem.
The other thing is like I said if your cows compliment his weaknesses then it mitigates some of the problem. Keep in mind that what he brings to the table is not just there for one generation. If at some point you go to another bull with the same issues it adds to what is already there, in Genotype and phenotype.
We had a lot of pulls out of a Gelbvieh bull that was throwing 80 lb calves and had coarse shoulders. Which is one of the main reasons his dtrs are being bred to a Red Angus bull with very good shoulders and it will be for sure an issue when looking at bulls in the future. For the record his first crop of dtrs were bred to a blk angus bull that was not necessarily a calving ease bull but the calves were structurally like the angus bull and they did what your heifers did laid down and spit them out. A heifer from another ranch bred to the same bull had to be pulled.
I don't know if any of this matters it's just what we have learned and dealt with.
