EIEIO":1ctl12al said:
Caustic, I find your comment saying "unless it had ear" real interesting because my best cow has a bit of a stripe on her and her calves always bring lowest dollar for me but she never fails year after year to produce on time and is a great mama that even weans her own if I let her.
J
You said it right there J. "My BEST cow...."
From my persective, that is what I am looking for when I am buying cows. If those cows are out of favor with the popular buyers, it is all the better for me because it saves me nickels in overall cost to attain that cow.
Here's the problem. When you are building your herd and trying to develop some of those cows, you wind up with about 50% bull calves, which get steered and you take a hit on ear. But those calves are healthy and heavier because momma has the milk, heat resistance and disease resistance to put the weight on them. Overall $ input in the calf is less if they are healthy.
There is a whole lot to be said on calf mortality. Just read through the threads here and note folks over and over saying, "I had 10 purebred first time heifers and only wound up with 7 calves..." Those 3 losses are pocket busters. Even if those 3 babies would have had longer ears, they would have brought a few nickels had they lived and developed.
Once you get your herd of good mommas, you can put a popular bull behind them with less ear on the output and heavier calves based on mommas input.
When I look at calf mortality, the most popular breed out there is not faring very well in my pastures. Year before last I lost a heifer calf to an 8 year old angus momma. It was my only loss that year. Last year's crop I lost a heifer calf to a 4 year old angus momma and it was my only loss. All of the remaining cows in my pasture have never lost a calf. These are just facts as to what I have in my operation right now. Angus are cheap around here at the last couple of sales. It has been tempting to jump on them just because they are so cheap. If I were to buy any, I'd buy fall calvers because this breed fares well in the winters around here. Secondly angus steers have been fetching a lot of nickels.
My favorite breed by far is brangus. They do very well in this climate year round. Hence, what angus does the most for me personally is its input into the brangus breed.