ga.prime
Well-known member
Great first post, duck! I wouldn't know a piedmont from a saler and don't want to, but I can tell you know what you're talking about.quackingduck":1ojohunn said:
SALER CATTLE
- Thread starter piedmontese
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SusanT
Member
All of our cattle are Salers (except for my milk cow!). Here is what I can say about them. Salers cattle were first brought into the U.S. in the mid 1970's. The foundation cattle from France were not culls. They were very good cattle. At that time Salers were worth a lot of money in America. A lot of the breeders did not know how to castrate a mean bull or butcher a mean heifer since they were worth so much, but they did know how to A.I. and embryo transplant to spread those nasty genetics around and basically turned a docile breed from France into a critter that gets well deserved comments such as flighty, wild, etc. We never had those nasty ones and are always hearing about how nice our cattle are from people in our area. Nowadays I think that most of the people raising Salers keep only the most docile cattle because the breed has such a bad disposition reputation.
Some different characteristics of Salers: They have a good memory. If they ever get mistreated they remember it. If they get well treated they remember it. They also remember where the gates are located even if they only went through it once. They are excellent swimmers. A river generally can't be used as a barrier for them. They cover the range better than any other breed we have tried thus far. Idaman mentioned that they have a very long tail switch and that is right. That is the first thing that gets noticed about our cattle. Another thing is that their tailhead is farther forward than other breeds and their pelvis is tipped forward, making them very calving ease. This makes their hind legs look crooked. Some breeders selected for straight legged Salers and now have calving problems. I can always guess the weight of a Salers and be spot on, but with other breeds I will guess about 100 lbs too heavy. In 4-H my steers always looked liked the smallest steers at the fair. When you actually got them on the scale, my steers would be in the middle or on the bigger end by weight. Salers live a long time. Our first Salers lived to be 23 years old. We have several cows that are 15 years old and older that are sound and raising good calves out in range conditions. Salers cattle are very herd oriented. If you lock a Salers cow up by herself she will be much more unhappy than, say, my Holstein milk cow. If you give her a friend (be it a pig, llama, horse, Holstein milk cow) then she will be just fine.
I love quackingduck's assessment of Salers in his first paragraph. Excellent assessment, except for the flighty part (when it comes to our cattle at least).
Our Salers work really well for us.
:compute: Sorry that I was so wordy! I'll work on that in the future! :compute:
Some different characteristics of Salers: They have a good memory. If they ever get mistreated they remember it. If they get well treated they remember it. They also remember where the gates are located even if they only went through it once. They are excellent swimmers. A river generally can't be used as a barrier for them. They cover the range better than any other breed we have tried thus far. Idaman mentioned that they have a very long tail switch and that is right. That is the first thing that gets noticed about our cattle. Another thing is that their tailhead is farther forward than other breeds and their pelvis is tipped forward, making them very calving ease. This makes their hind legs look crooked. Some breeders selected for straight legged Salers and now have calving problems. I can always guess the weight of a Salers and be spot on, but with other breeds I will guess about 100 lbs too heavy. In 4-H my steers always looked liked the smallest steers at the fair. When you actually got them on the scale, my steers would be in the middle or on the bigger end by weight. Salers live a long time. Our first Salers lived to be 23 years old. We have several cows that are 15 years old and older that are sound and raising good calves out in range conditions. Salers cattle are very herd oriented. If you lock a Salers cow up by herself she will be much more unhappy than, say, my Holstein milk cow. If you give her a friend (be it a pig, llama, horse, Holstein milk cow) then she will be just fine.
I love quackingduck's assessment of Salers in his first paragraph. Excellent assessment, except for the flighty part (when it comes to our cattle at least).
Our Salers work really well for us.
:compute: Sorry that I was so wordy! I'll work on that in the future! :compute:
SusanT
Member
3waycross I managed to figure out how to post pictures so here are four pictures of average cattle in our herd. The first picture is a five year old bull taken two weeks ago.
This second picture is the same bull, only it was taken in May. It isn't a very good picture, but it shows how their hair coat varies through the year. In this picture notice that he is just starting to lose patches of hair along his back.
This picture was taken two weeks ago and is a fifteen year old cow who is about one month away from calving. She had her second or third (I can't remember!) set of twins last year.
This is a five year old cow with her late March calf taken a week and a half ago. Judging by her hair coat this early in the fall she thinks that we are going to have a cold winter.
Half of our herd is black Salers, but it is so much easier to take pictures of red cattle!
This second picture is the same bull, only it was taken in May. It isn't a very good picture, but it shows how their hair coat varies through the year. In this picture notice that he is just starting to lose patches of hair along his back.
This picture was taken two weeks ago and is a fifteen year old cow who is about one month away from calving. She had her second or third (I can't remember!) set of twins last year.
This is a five year old cow with her late March calf taken a week and a half ago. Judging by her hair coat this early in the fall she thinks that we are going to have a cold winter.
Half of our herd is black Salers, but it is so much easier to take pictures of red cattle!
ALACOWMAN
Well-known member
from what ive seen and heard,, yall are in for a cold one so shes getting prepared
quackingduck
Active member
Nice cattle Susan. You just took me back 20 years. What bloodlines have you used?
cattleman99
Well-known member
Guy just down the road has a small herd of purebreds. They are very functional cattle. There is no wildness there as his 7 grandkids have all showed them either currently or at different times over the past few years. NIce uniform group of cattle. From what he says no calving difficulties and as they are right along the highway you can see they have as much growth as anything.
quackingduck
Active member
Salers cattle have always made me wonder about the theory of scrotal size being an indicator of fertility. It seems that the scrotal size of Salers is small while their fertility is high. Have you observed this as well Susan?
The wrap that the Salers took early on about the lack of calving ease came from the fact that since there were very few purebreds available when they first got popular that a lot of 1/2s and 3/4s were used on heifers and a lot of these seemed like they were out of Simmental cows. That lost their reputation for calving ease.
We also showed a tremondous black Saler cross steer around 1990 and although we never doped him for showing he sure was on the borderline. When we picked him out of a herd the owner said whatever you do don't get in front of these cattle when they are moving.
We also showed a tremondous black Saler cross steer around 1990 and although we never doped him for showing he sure was on the borderline. When we picked him out of a herd the owner said whatever you do don't get in front of these cattle when they are moving.
Northern Rancher
Well-known member
The last time I was at the Midland Bull test one of the workers said the Saler bulls were the best cattle there-when I asked why he said 'You can't sell a poor one'. I think the breed got a bit too popular too quick up here in Canada before the bloodlines got sorted for temperament I think any breeder left has done his homework. They'd be an interesting cross on Galloway-I think you'd add a bit more go and not lose any wintering ability. We branded a set of BWF calves in Montana once out of Saler/Hfd cows were pretty shiny calves. When ever I bought Saler bulls on order I's sort them off by themselves and see how they acted-some could of cared less-some cared alot.
Santas and Duhram Reds
Well-known member
we have a saler breeder near me and I don't anything about his cattle other than seeing them as I go down the road. I do know that all of them that he has are black and none of them get that hairy, or at least they don't seem that hairy from the road.
SusanT
Member
ALACOWMAN Our cows think that we are going to have a nasty winter. It has been several years since I last saw them with this much hair in September. We are building up our woodpile and haypile and expecting a bad winter.
quackingduck Our herd was closed in 1986 and we haven't brought in any new genetics since then. My dad's main donor cow was named Penelope 700; her dam was Lettre 130 and her sire was James 166. We also have cattle that go back to Lambine 140, Jumbo Jet 75, Liberte Bell 941. Those are the names that seem to show up most on our early registration papers before dad closed the herd. I wasn't on the scene yet then and I only remember Penelope. She was born in 1982 and lived until 2005 (The last two or three years she enjoyed a well deserved retirement). Probably 3/4 of our herd is related to Penelope.
Our Salers bulls have average scrotal sizes as far as I know. As far as semen tests go, our vet says that on average when he semen tests other bulls on average 10% fail the semen test. So far, only one of our bulls has ever failed. It was obvious that he was going to fail beforehand because he had a frosted scrotum from one of the many awful winters we've had. I don't know if scrotal size is an indication of fertility or not because Salers are so fertile to begin with.
quackingduck Our herd was closed in 1986 and we haven't brought in any new genetics since then. My dad's main donor cow was named Penelope 700; her dam was Lettre 130 and her sire was James 166. We also have cattle that go back to Lambine 140, Jumbo Jet 75, Liberte Bell 941. Those are the names that seem to show up most on our early registration papers before dad closed the herd. I wasn't on the scene yet then and I only remember Penelope. She was born in 1982 and lived until 2005 (The last two or three years she enjoyed a well deserved retirement). Probably 3/4 of our herd is related to Penelope.
Our Salers bulls have average scrotal sizes as far as I know. As far as semen tests go, our vet says that on average when he semen tests other bulls on average 10% fail the semen test. So far, only one of our bulls has ever failed. It was obvious that he was going to fail beforehand because he had a frosted scrotum from one of the many awful winters we've had. I don't know if scrotal size is an indication of fertility or not because Salers are so fertile to begin with.
Stocker Steve
Well-known member
quackingduck":3cvmuo3w said:
I bought some Saler cross heifers. The ones I sold to the stockyard looked and acted like nervous Holsteins, the ones I kept are great cows. The national Saler tour is based out of St. Cloud this week.
quackingduck
Active member
My favorite Salers bull pictured at eight years old. We used him till ten. Keys Total X Banners Pride X Conoco bloodlines.
piedmontese
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check cattlerange.com there is a guy on there that has some saler cattle for sale n kentucky,maybe he has a bull too.trin":2dpaurqw said:
We tried a few straws of Saler on commercial cows when they first came into Australia. The cows were great long lived mothers, although their calves were pretty flighty even the next generation. The crossbred bulls dug trenches along the fence lines between them like they were in World War I. The bull we used was called GWD Princeton from memory, if that means anything to anyone. I think we've still got some straws in the tank.
crazychicken
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We have a pretty good bunch.
Great mothers, easy calving. Have never had to pull one. All range or grass fed. No grain--none.
I think the craziness has more to do with the handling. I can drive right up to them in the truck or the ATV and pat them on the butt. Three of the March calves try to ride in the Kawasaki Mule with me. And we do not try to make pets out of them by any means.
At home we had Jersey, Gurnsey, Holsteins and Angus.
Myself had Angus, Hereford and Saler.
Still have the Saler's--exclusively. Won't have anything else.
CC
Great mothers, easy calving. Have never had to pull one. All range or grass fed. No grain--none.
I think the craziness has more to do with the handling. I can drive right up to them in the truck or the ATV and pat them on the butt. Three of the March calves try to ride in the Kawasaki Mule with me. And we do not try to make pets out of them by any means.
At home we had Jersey, Gurnsey, Holsteins and Angus.
Myself had Angus, Hereford and Saler.
Still have the Saler's--exclusively. Won't have anything else.
CC
