Panic?

[TheBullLady]

Pulled a 130+ lb heifer calf out of a first calf heifer on Saturday night. Lost the calf, luckily, very luckily, the heifer made it.

Here's my question. The heifer was bred to the bull I bought last year.. this is the first calf out of him. He's got good birthweight EPD's.. in fact, his are better than the last bulls. The heifer is a Simbrah / Maine cross.. so I know that will throw the EPD's off.. so I'm thinking it's one of those freaky deals. (I'm also considering it may have been the neighbors bull.. we've had trouble keeping him out)

The second cow bred to him calved this morning.. TWIN bull calves. All are doing well, the calves are probably 60 and 70 lbs. Would that consistute a large calf? Or can I even consider that in my worrying about having to pull a bunch of calves?

 

[shutskytj]

Well I wouldn't panic but do keep a good eye out the mother does have half the fault for a big calf too

 

[Muratic]

I think I'd hold off on putting that bull back in the field till I got a few more calves on the ground.

 

[Vinny5036]

Hey, if you're like me, I'm always on the lookout to pull calves when necessary. Sounds like you got some difficult times ahead. Did you ever wonder if it is really possible the EPD information isn't correct? I've bought semen from some distributors that have calving eases much lower than than what should have hit the ground. You always plan on things, but for some odd reason- you just never know what mother nature is going to bring. Good luck.

 

[VanC]

Just because a bull (or cow) has low BW EPD'S doesn't mean they won't throw a big calf once in awhile. Could be something a ways back in his pedigree that just happened to pop up. Also could have come from the heifer. Is he a young, unproven bull? Could be his BW EPD isn't as accurate as we would like. Time will tell.

Hopefully just a freak thing, but like Muratic said, I'd keep a close eye on things and hold him back from breeding till you get a few more calves from him.

 

[jnowack]

Did you have a breeding date? I had a bull we bred all our heifers to and averaged about 75 lbs with nothing over 85 lbs. There was one old cow with them that went way over on gestation and had a whopper. We used the bull for several more years and never had another problem. Just a fluke deal on that cow.

 

[dun]

The vet is chewing on people for calving heifers this time of year. They've been on good grass for a couple of months and the calves typically in late may through june are bigger then those born in march and april.
Hesays it hapens every year and this is his suiest time of year for pulling calves and c-sections.

dun

 

[Frankie]

Pulled a 130+ lb heifer calf out of a first calf heifer on Saturday night. Lost the calf, luckily, very luckily, the heifer made it.

Ouch.

Here's my question. The heifer was bred to the bull I bought last year.. this is the first calf out of him. He's got good birthweight EPD's.. in fact, his are better than the last bulls. The heifer is a Simbrah / Maine cross.. so I know that will throw the EPD's off.. so I'm thinking it's one of those freaky deals. (I'm also considering it may have been the neighbors bull.. we've had trouble keeping him out)

What are the accuracies on the bull's EPD? What breed? Did you look at the BW EPD on the sire and dam of the bull? If the sire had a 7 BW EPD and the dam had a 0, the bull would likely have a 3.5 with very low accuracy. But that's not accurate. He'll either take after his sire or dam, not split the difference. Am I making sense? Hopefully, it's just a freaky thing. I'm under the impression that Maines have large calves? And unless he's a Simbrah or a Maine, you'll get larger calves because of the heterosis. Our vet, too, says this is a bad time for calving. Some people run bred cows on wheat the last trimester of their pregnancy and that can really be a wreck, especially with heifers.

The second cow bred to him calved this morning.. TWIN bull calves. All are doing well, the calves are probably 60 and 70 lbs. Would that consistute a large calf? Or can I even consider that in my worrying about having to pull a bunch of calves?

I'd worry. Good luck and let us know.

 

[Beefy]

The vet is chewing on people for calving heifers this time of year. They've been on good grass for a couple of months and the calves typically in late may through june are bigger then those born in march and april.
Hesays it hapens every year and this is his suiest time of year for pulling calves and c-sections.

dun

totally agree. i notice about a 10lb increase in birthweight just between may and june. anybody else?

 

[TheBullLady]

I was afraid that was going to come up.. yes, everything is in good condition this time of year, although we didn't have any oats or wheat for winter pasture this year, just rye grass and hay. My bull from the year before is the one that had a back problem and wasn't getting the cows bred, so when I replaced him, I had cows that had been open for 4-5 months, and just put the new bull out.

The bull I have is a Simmental, and his individual EPD's are good. All his grandsires are AI bulls, and there is one out of the four that doesn't have very good Calving Ease EPD's... but now I'm confused. How many generations do you look back on EPD's??

 

[dun]

I was afraid that was going to come up.. yes, everything is in good condition this time of year, although we didn't have any oats or wheat for winter pasture this year, just rye grass and hay. My bull from the year before is the one that had a back problem and wasn't getting the cows bred, so when I replaced him, I had cows that had been open for 4-5 months, and just put the new bull out.

The bull I have is a Simmental, and his individual EPD's are good. All his grandsires are AI bulls, and there is one out of the four that doesn't have very good Calving Ease EPD's... but now I'm confused. How many generations do you look back on EPD's??

Concerning EPDs I look back as far as I can go but only really am concerned about the previous 3 generations, both sire and dam

dun

 

[Beef11]

He'll either take after his sire or dam, not split the difference. Am I making sense?

Not exactly, Birth weight isn't a simply inherited trait and therefore a calf isn't bound to one dominant side or another. If the trait was mendellian i would say "yes it will display the phenotype of one of the parents" but being quantative the calf can very well be "in the middle". Right?

 

[Frankie]

He'll either take after his sire or dam, not split the difference. Am I making sense?

Not exactly, Birth weight isn't a simply inherited trait and therefore a calf isn't bound to one dominant side or another. If the trait was mendellian i would say "yes it will display the phenotype of one of the parents" but being quantative the calf can very well be "in the middle". Right?

You're 'way above my head with this question. I just know that I won't use a son of a high BW bull on heifers, even though his own BW EPD and actual BW might seem ok. After another generation (third), I'll look at him. Of course, our cattle are all registered and have EPDs, so I know pretty much the influence of the cow on the BW, too.

 

[Beef11]

You're 'way above my head with this question. I just know that I won't use a son of a high BW bull on heifers, even though his own BW EPD and actual BW might seem ok. After another generation (third), I'll look at him. Of course, our cattle are all registered and have EPDs, so I know pretty much the influence of the cow on the BW, too.[/quote

I wouldn't do anything differently if i was you frankie. Let me take some of the jargon out of my previous statement. The point i was making was that most economic traits (YW,BW, WW, M, IMF, Ribeye) are affected by several genes and most are unknown to us. Let me use a human example, my brother is 5'8" I am 6' my mom is 5'2" and my Dad is 6'4". The height of humans is affected by hundreds of genes when the Dna split i ended up with more than my brother say out of a hundred i got 60 and he got 40. This seems pretty simple but when we jump over to the cattle world what we are trying to do is strategically isolate animals that have an abundance of the genes we want so that the gene frequency in the herd goes up. Linebreeding's finest role comes out here, if you take the animals who demonstrate the desired trait the best out of their group and linebreed them we are taking an animal with say 70 out of a 100 genes (made up number) and breeding it to an animal with say 75 out of a 100 thus shifting the standard deviation and if they are closely related the resulting calf will be homozygous for several of those traits and breed very true, with the possibility of jumping up to 80 genes or dropping back down to 60 it really depends on how the DNA splits. After a few generations cattle will become much more predictable and steady improvements can be made.

EPDs play off of this same principle, they are hoping to project the where the calves will hit given the data they have. I'm a believer in EPDs because they are an indicator of performance and they give you a statistical advantage over the "old" method. The problem is that people don't understand that there will be enviromental factors play a role as well as outliers who over/under perform what is expected of them. Commercial cattleman can't be near as picky due to the fact that they have no epds on their females. What would you expect from a cow with a +18 BW epd bred to a bull with a +4? if it comes out huge most people blame the bull and his EPDs. Simply because most people have no idea what kind of genes are brought from the female side.

If we could just use a punnet square for everything, What fun would that be?