SAV Net Worth 4200 (Angus)

[Aero]

By the way Aero, bulls are typically used to add a little something to a herd.

and BTW... I dont want my bulls to add anything. i want them to maintain what i have and get rid of problems. if they bring something new, it's usually accompanied by a new problem.

Well I just gotta ask how you accomplish breeding to a given bull and having him not do anything but fix problems for you. Sounds to me kinda like ordering that piece of pie in the restaurant that has all the calories knocked out and just the flavor remains?

Not picking a fight , would just like to hear that explained.

pretty simple... less heterozygous bulls.

 

[Aero]

So what are you trying to say. The extra 20 lbs of WW that these bulls will produce is not worth the cost?

based on where you are according to the input-vs-output scale, probably not. the bigger they get, the less those extra pounds are worth.

the sale barn (last resort) will routinely show you that an extra 100 lbs is only worth $20-30 on the bigger calves. that means you are getting paid ~$.025/lb of gain for the extra. very few can put a lb of meat on an 800 lb calf for $0.25. almost nobody can make money getting paid that much for gain.

 

[DOC HARRIS]

I am impressed, you guys have optimized your cow herd to where an extra 10 or 20 lbs of WW will tip the balance of your program. I and thousands of other ranchers that purchased performance based genetics arent there yet. Congratulations..

:bang: :bang: :banana: :clap: :lol2:

DOC HARRIS

 

[TexasBred]

More lbs at weaning requires more milk, more milk requires more inputs, so unless you have an unlimited supply of dairy quality inputs, there is a point where more equals less.
Here are a few articles that may be of interest.

http://beef.unl.edu/stories/200809170.shtml

http://beef.unl.edu/stories/201010110.shtml

Perhaps where you live..... Sometimes it's as simple as a good cow calving at the right time and having adequate high quality grazing available. That gives your cow what she needs, produces more milk, higher quality milk and actually relieves some of the stress from the cow. You might study "net energy maintenance" as well as "net energy production". A little more and you actually have "net energy gain". :nod: Not trying to oversimplify a potential problem but as Alacoman says "it ain't rocket surgery".

 

[Cattleman200]

I had a neighbor down the road from me back about 5 years ago asked about using one of my bulls on a small set of his cows. He had been using average bulls of a different breed on his herd. I leased him a bull and he turned him in on 17 females. In about 75 days I picked the bull up. At weaning time the calves out of my bull out weighed the calves out of his bull by 100 pounds across the board out of a similiar group of females. The females that calved to my bull all stayed in good flesh throughout the calf raising period with no extra anything that the other herd was not getting and all bred back in a timely manner. He sold all 17 calves along with the calves out of his bull and averaged $90 - $110 more per calf on an average market out of my bulls calves. Someone explain to me how it cost him more to get those extra pounds and please don`t tell me they had to eat more grass. In this real world that actually happened scenario how is more weaning weight redundant ? In this situation the females bred to my bull were on a rented pasture that actually was not fertilized as well as the pasture his other females were on. Genetics do count for something in the cattle world. I do know he was well pleased with the extra $1700.


Circle H Ranch

 

[Jovid]

I had a neighbor down the road from me back about 5 years ago asked about using one of my bulls on a small set of his cows. He had been using average bulls of a different breed on his herd. I leased him a bull and he turned him in on 17 females. In about 75 days I picked the bull up. At weaning time the calves out of my bull out weighed the calves out of his bull by 100 pounds across the board out of a similiar group of females. The females that calved to my bull all stayed in good flesh throughout the calf raising period with no extra anything that the other herd was not getting and all bred back in a timely manner. He sold all 17 calves along with the calves out of his bull and averaged $90 - $110 more per calf on an average market out of my bulls calves. Someone explain to me how it cost him more to get those extra pounds and please don`t tell me they had to eat more grass. In this real world that actually happened scenario how is more weaning weight redundant ? In this situation the females bred to my bull were on a rented pasture that actually was not fertilized as well as the pasture his other females were on. Genetics do count for something in the cattle world. I do know he was well pleased with the extra $1700.


Circle H Ranch

So tell us more about this amazing story. What breed where his cows? What breeds where the bulls he was using? What breed was your bull?

A Charolais bull on Jersey cows would probably produce a calf that weighed 100 lbs more than a Jersey bull on Jersey cows.

 

[Cattleman200]

I can give more details to the story but what is being discussed or reputed in several of the last posts are how a heavier weaning weight hurts or costs something extra. Some posters said they didnt want a bull to add anything, another said a heavier weaning weight was redundant. I am saying heavier weaning weights are important and attainable without a lot of extra costs. I do not know anyone that would oppose adding a few more pounds at weaning time. For the record I am glad you think my story is amazing. I was kinda proud of it myself.


Circle H Ranch

 

[jscunn]

At the end of the day, we (ranchers, farmers, etc) are gonna have to produce more protein (beef) with less cows. You cant do that unless you increase CW on fewer steers to produce the same or more lbs of beef.

 

[ALACOWMAN]

I can give more details to the story but what is being discussed or reputed in several of the last posts are how a heavier weaning weight hurts or costs something extra. Some posters said they didnt want a bull to add anything, another said a heavier weaning weight was redundant. I am saying heavier weaning weights are important and attainable without a lot of extra costs. I do not know anyone that would oppose adding a few more pounds at weaning time. For the record I am glad you think my story is amazing. I was kinda proud of it myself.


Circle H Ranch

i liked it to :cowboy:

 

[Dylan Biggs]

It is very difficult to access anyone elses herd from a remote location regarding their need for more WW. It seems that there is a very strong belief that there is no such thing as enough WW and that ever increasing WW can be justified financialy regardless of associated costs and or unintended negative production efficiency side effects.

Looking at sale barn market reports and the corresponding calf weights in South Dakota, and for a number of barns in Alberta there seems to be only a few conclusions that can be drawn. Either the majority of these herds have hit a limit of some sort with weaning wieghts (though hard to assume actual age of any lot of calves, lots of guys around here are calving later and still marketing at weaning) or they for some unexplained reason are choosing to leave a signifigant amount of money on the table. Considering that at a lot of these sale barns the lot size from single contributors are in the hundreds it may be safe to assume that they are not part time cattlemen but rather full time dedicated cow calf enterprises. Therefore either they are making so much money lately that they don't mind leaving money on the table, or they can't do math, or it may be that they can do math and after accessing their enterprise they have actually come to the conclusion that the profitability equation in their cow calf enterprises actually dictates an optimum WW. No doubt this will strike some of forever more WW weight crowd as ludicrous, but it just may be that there is more then one way to look at cow calf enterprise economics. :tiphat:

http://www.ftpierrelivestock.com/
http://www.stongelivestock.com/reports/CattleMarketArchive/2010/11.12.10.pdf
http://www.drylandcattle.com/rendermarketreport.aspx?reportID=12f27558-94b5-4797-9c18-e44e1ffaf4ef

 

[jscunn]

Dylan,
I dont remember anyone on this post saying unlimited WW is a good thing. I agree there are some give and take with more WW. I have seen enough cows in my part of the world to that a better phenotype is more important, but I guarantee you that if the phenotype of the cows I am talking about is improved the WW will come with it.
I didnt look at your links but I assume that you are looking at some magic weight, say 500# in which you make the most money. Well if you use a bull from SAV why cant you still sell your 500# steers at 15 to 30 days of age younger. Still selling the 500# calves but you are taking some pressure off the cows because they are weaning there calves 15 to 30 days sooner. The feedlot operator gets the bigger frame more terminal type steer and will buy from that rancher again, while the rancher has the calves on the cow less time. Win Win

Once again if you keep replacements that is a different ball of wax.

 

[Dylan Biggs]

Dylan,
I dont remember anyone on this post saying unlimited WW is a good thing. I agree there are some give and take with more WW. I have seen enough cows in my part of the world to that a better phenotype is more important, but I guarantee you that if the phenotype of the cows I am talking about is improved the WW will come with it.
I didnt look at your links but I assume that you are looking at some magic weight, say 500# in which you make the most money. Well if you use a bull from SAV why cant you still sell your 500# steers at 15 to 30 days of age younger. Still selling the 500# calves but you are taking some pressure off the cows because they are weaning there calves 15 to 30 days sooner. The feedlot operator gets the bigger frame more terminal type steer and will buy from that rancher again, while the rancher has the calves on the cow less time. Win Win

Once again if you keep replacements that is a different ball of wax.

jscunn, I agree with your take. No doubt there are herds with room for improvement in phenotype and WW. I agree there is no "magic" weaning as there is also no magic cow calf management system. What "works" in terms of systems varies with grass quality, geography, topography, photoperiod, altitude, pasture (private, lease, or community), enterprise mix, labor avaiability and allocation, marketing system, calving and weaning schedule, personal goals and preferences and many other variables. Needless to say depending on the system 900 lb WW may be the ticket also there are systems in which 450 lb calves are the ticket. Acknowledgement of the variety of what works and what doesn't is IMO the main point. I am not even suggesting that there is not an application for SAV bulls, or that SAV bulls are not of genetic merit, that being said though IMO and experience bulls that have been developed that aggresively will come with higher risk for succesful adaptation to their working roles and will need to be managed more intensively to ensure succesful adaption.

I have no bones to pick with your win win suggested strategy either.

We finish the majority of our own cattle and sell our carcasses value added as retail ready, portion packeged cuts to retailers and direct to consumers. So I know the value of gain, efficient gain, and carcass wieght. :tiphat:

 

[jscunn]

Dylan,
We agree 900# WW bulls arent for everyone, in the right environment and management program they might be worth trying. We also feed out the majority of our steers, and on a per pound basis with most customers taking a half to quarter they really like those 700# plus Hanging Weights, I think the puds eat almost as much as the best steers in the feedlot, I know they take longer to finish when feed to the same ribfat endpoint.

Good luck

 

[Dylan Biggs]

Dylan,
We agree 900# WW bulls arent for everyone, in the right environment and management program they might be worth trying. We also feed out the majority of our steers, and on a per pound basis with most customers taking a half to quarter they really like those 700# plus Hanging Weights, I think the puds eat almost as much as the best steers in the feedlot, I know they take longer to finish when feed to the same ribfat endpoint.

Good luck

jscunn,
Assuming our definition of a "pud" is similar our experience is that they take as much time to finish as the good doing cattle with more frame but don't return you the weight.
Middle of the road is a pretty workable location in our experience. And if you are going to err, the up hill side is safer on the feeder cattle. :tiphat:

 

[Aero]

but I guarantee you that if the phenotype of the cows I am talking about is improved the WW will come with it.

this initially sounds like a lot of assumptions leading to obligatory crazy talk, so please explain it to me so i don't just write it off.

 

[Aero]

At the end of the day, we (ranchers, farmers, etc) are gonna have to produce more protein (beef) with less cows.

i think you have chosen the correct word: "less" cows. i do think it is quite a misstep to think we have to do it with "fewer" cows.

 

[Brandonm22]

At the end of the day, we (ranchers, farmers, etc) are gonna have to produce more protein (beef) with less cows.

i think you have chosen the correct word: "less" cows. i do think it is quite a misstep to think we have to do it with "fewer" cows.

I have not accepted the premise that "we have to produce more protein" yet. If the market wants to pay us (like they are doing now) yea that makes sense. We can put more acres back into production or we can get bigger cows (I don't really see that as a viable option in most herds today) or we can better manage the forage resources that we do have. If the market does not pay us adequately (more years than not in the last 40 years) then all "we" have to do is take care of ourselves and our own families and the public can mix soy grits in their taco filling to make the beef go farther.

 

[Dylan Biggs]

Assume for a minute that the people in the world who are protien deprived are deprived for a lack of supply, then the it is logical to produce more to address the supply shortage and the problem would be solved.

But it seems in reality it is like Brandonm has eluded to, the protien deprived are deprived because they don't have the money to afford such purchases. Until such time as they do this economic reality will not and can not be remedied by addressing supply.