Thought this might go along with your questions.
by LFF on Fri Aug 31, 2007 3:24 pm
Within the Hereford breed there aare two prominent directions persued by seed stock producers. Both focus on maternal qualities but have different visions for the breed. I'm going to refer to the groups as traditional and contemporary.
Traditionalist produce cattle that look and perform well. They focus on volume, depth, width, disposition, milk, udders, muscle, and performance in their environment. The eye appeal of these cattle is certainly what producers like to see. Star Lake is one top producer of cattle in this category. If the future of Herefords is to continue in this direction I expect to see Herefords becoming more similar to continental cattle.
Contemporary breeders also focus on the same qualities as
traditionalist but places higher emphasis on marbling and IMF
epd's. They are willing to give up some amount of the other
qualities, mainly rib eye size to achieve marbling. It was asked
in another post "why such empasis on IMF". I will try to answer
it from a contemporary Hereford breeders view.
In past years Herefords were the preferred breed for cattle
producers in the US. Currently Angus has far surpassed
Herefords for obvious reasons which caused breeders to ask
what they needed to do to regain shares of the market.
The Association suggested "lower your birth weight and increase calving ease, improve milking ability and udder quality, increase muscling and marbling". Today the Association is still saying the same with the exception of muscling. Muscling is now
acceptable at current average levels but marbling on the average has not improved near enough.
Profit indexes were created using economic data available
from many sources to help producers maximize production.
Accountants were hired to analyze prices paid for carcasses
of Hereford and Angus and to place a value on quality of cuts.
It became obvious why feed lots wanted Angus influenced
calves instead of Hereford. Pound for pound Angus carcass
had more marbling and consumers paid more for their meat.
There is more information on marbling however what I've
covered should help explain why so much emphasis is placed
on the IMF EDP's by contemporary breeders.
In closing Star Lake seems to recently join the contemporary
breeders by purchasing Doug Gerber's herd. Doug uses high
marbling sires and I expect to see Star Lake use many of them in their program. It is my belief that the Hereford breed will
improve marbling and continue marketing cattle that are
maternal. If so marbling must be increased or Angus will be
the only logical choice for breeders wanting to maximize
profit while maintaining a British breed.
