Prioritizing ET matings

[Colorado greenhorn]

I have twelve embyos I would like to put in in two weeks but only have set up nine cows to be recips because the others in the set of 25 I CIDR'd are good enough to have natural calves. The nine that are slated to be recips are certainly good cows, but have older pedigrees that are not as marketable now as they were when the cows were younger i.e Danny Boy, Bismark, Mitty In Focus. Anyway I have four each of these three matings: Payweight 1682 x Stucky Eisa Erica 1671. Cowboy Up x EXAR Blackcap 4767 and Sitz Top Game x Wilks Blackbird 4049. My thoughts are to put them in just as I have listed, with the 1682 embryos forst and the Top game ones last, but I wanted to get thoughts from others as well.

 

[MLFuller]

My personal opinion would be to put in the ones you think give you the best chance to move your herd forward and give you marketable animals (can't really help decide on what specific mating, as such a big part of my appraisal is seeing the cow, her calves and the production record).

There is something to be said about having fresher/more popular pedigrees for your customers; however, the end result still needs to be good animal regardless of pedigree or how popular the bull is. Wish you the best of luck with your decision. We are doing a fresh transfer here in a couple of weeks and hopefully if the flush goes good, we will have extra embryos that we will use next spring since we only have six recips setup.

 

[SA Angus]

Greenhorn, I like your approach. Get as many flushmates as you can - much better to market flushmates.