Murray Grey Herd Pics

[Backbone Ranch]

We ended the spring calving season with 22 bull calves and only 7 heifers. And of the 7 heifers, four of them are crosses... not the best year for building herd numbers. However, our bull calves this year are, as a group, the best that we have ever raised. Although we have been extraordinarily dry, the calves are gaining very well and the cows are still in great shape.

801 Bull- AI sired by Ballee Thumbs Up and pictured here at 5 1/2 months.

803 Bull- AI sired by Spectrum Kenton and pictured at 5 months.

805 Bull- AI sired by MCC Trigger's Champion and pictured at 5 months. He is out of our oldest Tony daughter and is nearly as large as she is.

808 Heifer- 3 month old heifer sired by BB Uncle Tony. She is 75% Murray Grey x 25% Guernsey. She is definitely one of my favorite heifers.

These two bulls are 4 and 4 1/2 months of age. Both are sired by our present herd bull, BB Uncle Tony. The silver is 100% Murray Grey and the dark bull calf is 75% Murray Grey x 25% Angus.

812 Heifer- 75% Murray Grey x 25% Angus daughter of BB Uncle Tony. She is 3 1/2 months old here.

813 Bull- Another 4 1/2 month old son of BB Uncle Tony.

815 Bull- This calf is a son of MCC Trigger's Champion. He is 4 1/2 months old, but I am liking his half brother a lot more.

819 Bull- He is a 4 month old Tony son and a full brother to our highest selling bull from the 2017 calf crop.

821 Bull- This is my favorite purebred Tony son from this year. He is 4 1/2 months old here.

And this is a pair of 75% Murray Grey x 25% Angus calves that are both sired by Tony. They are 3 and 4 months old here.

Feel free to comment/ critique any of these calves. I appreciate any insight. We've got a few cows that are on the smaller side, so we are trying to increase frame and muscle a little bit, while still maintaining the other characteristics such as capacity, easy-keeping, longevity, good udders, and tenderness and marbling genes.

 

[Backbone Ranch]

And here are some pictures of individuals from the younger end of our herd. All but two of these were born on our place.
Ozark Sugar- A six year old cow that originally came from a farm up in Missouri. She is raising a nice Tony daughter this year and is bred back to Tony.

This is the three year old bull that we bought this past spring. He is pictured here with a cow that's just starting to come in to heat.

This is a 2 year old heifer that is sired by Tony and out of one of my favorite cows. Her mother is a 10 year old that has only had two heifer calves to date, so she might be the only female that we have from that particular family line in a few years. She is due to calve late next month.

BB Lady Rose- This is a 23 month old heifer that is a granddaughter of Tony. She was bred this past May to Cadella Park Golden Boy, a Murray Grey bull from the 1970s. Her mother is one of our best cows.

BB Holly- This is a 3 year old Tony daughter that just weaned her first calf. She is bred to the 3 year old bull pictured above.

BB Buttercup- Another 3 year old daughter of Tony. She too did a great job raising her first calf. Her heifer calf made our keeper pen this year. She too is bred to the dark bull above.

This bull is a 13 month old from our last year's calf crop. He is a son of BB Uncle Tony and had an 82 lb birth weight. We will likely be breeding him to a handful of heifers this fall and some cows next spring. He is also a half brother, on his mother's side, to the 3 year old that we bought this past year.

And this last photo shows our 3 year old Cadella Park Golden Boy daughter with a 4 month old Tony bull calf.

 

[TCRanch]

They are gorgeous! Too bad you didn't get more heifers but there's always next year.

 

[Workinonit Farm]

I just love those Murray Greys! Them and Herefords! You have a beautiful herd. Thanks for sharing the pictures.

 

[backhoeboogie]

Nice. Love seeing something like this. Sick of the brain washing. I like 808 too.

 

[NonTypicalCPA]

Gorgeous animals! Looks like Tony puts out some nice calves!

 

[RanchMan90]

Really like them :tiphat:

 

[frieghttrain]

Always did like that Cadella park goldenboy daughter 806

 

[WalnutCrest]

Nice. Love seeing something like this. Sick of the brain washing. I like 808 too.

+1

 

[frieghttrain]

Always did like that Cadella park goldenboy daughter 506

 

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

Your Tony offspring beats the pants off any of the AI sired calves. Hopefully, you are selling semen on him. Your breed needs a bigger gene pool. 808 hfr is super.
I am not crazy about the 803 & 805 bulls (AI sired). Not enough muscle or guts - 805 is a steer prospect IMO - but this is based on 1 picture. Seeing live makes a big difference.
I was bragging about your cattle this past few days. Been at Empire Farm Days here in NY. Your Exec Directory "John" was here with a lady named Sherry from Ohio displaying MG's. I let them know you have been posting pictures of GREAT cattle.

 

[Backbone Ranch]

Thank you for the feedback!

Dogs and Cows- That plant is Broadleaf Sumpweed. It is also known as Iva Annua and it is in the sunflower family. You definitely do not want it in your pastures. The flooding in 2015 brought a bunch of it into our pastures. We tried mowing it for two years, but the problem just got worse. We ended up losing 75% of our bottom land to this weed, so we sprayed it this past spring. We were very happy with the kill rate, but this was one of the pastures that we didn't spray this year.

Jeanne-Simme Valley- We are selling semen on Tony. We had him collected a little over two years ago. His impact on our program has been incredible over the past handful of years. I really want to get up to Empire Farm Days sometime. I've got some friends that live in the Finger Lakes region. I didn't realize John and Sherie were there; thank you for putting in a good word for us!

 

[Backbone Ranch]

These photos show a few of our 2015 and 2016 females. The three 2015 cows have all weaned their first calves and are bred back to calve in the spring of 2019. The cow on the right is our Golden Boy daughter that is bred back to Tony. The other two are Tony daughters that are bred back to our three year old Murray Grey bull, OK Boss II.

And these are two of our bred heifers. They will be calving in about a month.
BB Ruby- A 2 1/2 year old Tony daughter.

BB Sapphire- A 2 1/2 year old daughter of MCC Trigger's Champion, a dark Murray Grey bull from almost 40 years ago.

I am really excited to see how these females perform over the coming years. The Golden Boy daughter has already raised our best heifer calf out of any first-timer. This was her calf at 8 1/2 months.

 

[Lazy M]

Really like that heifer. She may be coming down with pinkeye though.

 

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

So, it appears you don't breed them to calve at 24 months of age? Are they late maturing as a breed or just your preference?

 

[Backbone Ranch]

So, it appears you don't breed them to calve at 24 months of age? Are they late maturing as a breed or just your preference?

That is correct. We breed our heifers to calve at 30 months. It is just our personal preference. Most breeders breed to calve at two, but we feel that our females benefit with the extra 6 months of maturity. As yearlings, we feel that they are a little on the small side, and they get too fat when you calve them at 3 years. We calve our heifers in the fall, leave their calves on them for at least 8 months, and then we breed them at the same time as our cow herd so that they are then in sync with the rest of the herd.

 

[waihou]

Just caught up with your herd update, some great animals there as usual! Nice to see you have an NZ sired bull calf there!
Good to see how the Tony females are maturing nicely.

 

[Backbone Ranch]

Just caught up with your herd update, some great animals there as usual! Nice to see you have an NZ sired bull calf there!
Good to see how the Tony females are maturing nicely.

Thank you! We are very happy with our Ballee Thumbs Up son, and we bred three more cows to him this past spring. The 801 bull is completely unrelated to Tony, but I am really eager to get some calves from Thumbs Up from our Tony daughters.

 

[TwoByrdsMG]

I was going through your pictures of your recent crop of bull calves. Trigger's Champion did not do you any favors unless that is what BB Sapphire looked like when she was a calf. If they are late bloomers then I hope you waited to castrate because Sapphire is stunning!

Very impressed with your crop from BB Tony.

 

[Backbone Ranch]

I was going through your pictures of your recent crop of bull calves. Trigger's Champion did not do you any favors unless that is what BB Sapphire looked like when she was a calf. If they are late bloomers then I hope you waited to castrate because Sapphire is stunning!

Very impressed with your crop from BB Tony.

Welcome to the boards TwoByrdsMG! Thank you for the kind words. We have been and continue to be pleased with the consistent quality of Tony's calves. With the current AI sires that we have used, we have found that they are much more consistent at producing quality daughters than they are exceptional bull calves. With that being said, we have only had a small sampling of calves from a handful of bulls in our tank. We really like the BB Sapphire female. She went through an awkward stage when she was a few months old, but she has continued to look really nice since then. This is a photo of her at 6 1/2 months. We castrated one of the Trigger's Champion sons and left the better of the two intact for now. If he doesn't fill out as well as we expect him to, he will be cut this coming spring and put into our beef program.