Amo
Well-known member
- Joined
- Oct 30, 2010
- Messages
- 485
- Reaction score
- 13
Interesting thread. Going to a bull sale tomorrow and calculating this.
Small live calf is always better than a big dead one. With that said, I also think its silly to use a heifer bull on a 5th calving cow, etc. I guess I don't think you just gain the 20#'s from 80-100 at birth and only add 20 to your ww. How many times have we heard don't do single trait selection? A person don't want to be stupid, but why over emphsise bw on a mature cow? Yes there are curve benders. I personally think that that a good curve bender is higher maintence genetics. Throw your feed costs into your profitability equazation.
I also agree that people don't realize what they weigh until they weigh them! This is my 3rd year of weighing every calf. Its not that time consuming. Ive had anywhere from 70-118. Do I like over 100, not really. I read somewhere that universtiy of missouri did a study. Said that a cows genetics will try to have a calf that is about 7% of its mature wt. Id guess the bulls bw would go into the equaztion.
Guess I watch bw, and proably going to pay a little more attention to it. If its for cows, I will look at other things like IMF, or WW etc and the bw won't be as big of a decesion factor as it is on heifers.
Small live calf is always better than a big dead one. With that said, I also think its silly to use a heifer bull on a 5th calving cow, etc. I guess I don't think you just gain the 20#'s from 80-100 at birth and only add 20 to your ww. How many times have we heard don't do single trait selection? A person don't want to be stupid, but why over emphsise bw on a mature cow? Yes there are curve benders. I personally think that that a good curve bender is higher maintence genetics. Throw your feed costs into your profitability equazation.
I also agree that people don't realize what they weigh until they weigh them! This is my 3rd year of weighing every calf. Its not that time consuming. Ive had anywhere from 70-118. Do I like over 100, not really. I read somewhere that universtiy of missouri did a study. Said that a cows genetics will try to have a calf that is about 7% of its mature wt. Id guess the bulls bw would go into the equaztion.
Guess I watch bw, and proably going to pay a little more attention to it. If its for cows, I will look at other things like IMF, or WW etc and the bw won't be as big of a decesion factor as it is on heifers.