We've had about everything under the sun on our place at one point or another. Grandpa started the beef herd in the 70's with F1 Hereford/Holstein cows. Bred those back hereford and built a herd with them. Used a few angus bulls, quite a few fleckvieh bulls and eventually got to having about half and half charolais and angus bulls around. The char cross cows were big nice cows and were profitable, but they required more management and feed than the simangus cross cows. Over the past 20 years we've gone to almost entirely angus bulls outside of a few amerifax. Has seemed that we've made far greater improvements to the herd and bottom line by focusing on the right angus genetics and concentrating on them. There's no such thing as a free lunch and I believe that's true with cross breeding as well. I'm going to give up something to gain the heterosis, quantifying that can be hard and it's incredibly hard to convince a die hard crossbreeder that there are other profitable ways to operate.
