Should I .. Changing BULLS?

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machslammer

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I currently have a Charolais bull breeding to baldies and black hided cows. He is calve ease bull in the Char breed and throws 70-80# Heifers and 90-105# Bulls. They grow off really nice as well. I usually just sell at the stock barns.. My problem is I can only run about 15 momma cows and the bull at my current "hobby" farm. I would like to start marketing heifers and then sale the steers at barn or what not.. What would you do? I have all black/BWF cows already.. What would you use as a bull for selling heifers? Attempt at selling the Char cross outta him now, or go buy a horned/polled Hereford for Baldy Heifers? Will a horned always throw a horned calf? The Char is calving ease and still throws good sized calves, but with keeping in the English breed of Hereford, if I go that route, should I get a balanced/terminal bull for weight growth? Had a polled calving ease hereford prior, and had such small calves that grew just ok and the muscling was poor.. Thanks.
 
I wouldn't change anything. This isn't a good market to sell replacements or bred heifers. Keep the char as a terminal sire and buy replacements as needed.
 
I love char cross momma cows crossed back to an angus bull for terminal calves. If you lived need me and had good looking heifers at the right price I would probably be a customer.
 
You are doing it right already. What Toad suggests is a step in the wrong directiom.
 
Lots of questions and a few answers ...

Can you AI your heifers for their first calf? If you can, I'd seriously try -- give each one two attempts at AI, and if they don't take, either sell them or let the bull breed them and hope she has a heifer calf (because a bull calf would probably be a nice vet bill, and maybe a dead cow and/or calf).

Whether or not a calf will be horned/scurred is a multi-gene trait and I don't feel knowledgeable enough to tell you whether or not some miscellaneous horned/scurred bull will produce horned/scurred calves out of your cows -- you'd need to DNA test everyone to have a better handle on what's hiding in the woodshed.

There are many guys who like Char x. cows ... so, you can sell your Char x. BL/BWF heifers to those guys and put your money back into more BL/BWF cows so you can keep your crossing system in tact.

**********************

So, here's what I'd do if I were you:

* Breed your BL/BWF cows to a terminal bull -- Char is fine for that.
* Sell your steers however you'd like.
* AI your heifers to a calving ease bull of the breed of your choosing and sell them as breds (once you can confirm they're bred) and anyone that doesn't breed up goes into your personal freezer.
* Take the money you get for your steers and bred heifers and buy more BL/BWF replacements (and/or a new bull when it's time) out of a program that's near you and where the management is at least as hard as your own.
 
With your Charolais bull from what you have said, works well on your cows and produces some really nice calve. You know what your bull produces and that is hard to replace, no matter what breed of bull you would decide to go with.

At some point, however, you are going to need to replace your bull. Another option would be to collect semen on your bull. Then selling your bull wouldn't be such a big deal. Even if you replace him, you could then AI once or maybe twice and then let a new bull clean up.

Like WalnutCrest said, "there are more questions than answers"!

This is just another option you may consider.
 
If you had all black cows, assuming they're Angus or Brangus, I'd recommend a Hereford bull in a heartbeat, and even if he had horns the calves would still be polled. In your situation I'd agree that it might be best to stick with what you're doing.

However, if you still want to raise replacement heifers, I'd suggest selling your crossbred cows and replacing them with one of the breeds I mentioned above, then get you a good Hereford bull.
 
I currently bought a charolais bull and some more charolais cross heifers. Gradually I am moving my herd to charolais crosses much like what your heifers calves would be. Like Toad said, i'd be a customer if were closer. I use 2 bulls trying to get the best of both worlds, by splitting my 30hd into 2 pastures. I use the charolais on what I feel are my best 15cows for heifers and my black balancer on the other half for black calves, which I don't mind keeping a nice black heifer. I do what for 60days, then turn them all together for another 60days to ensure all cows bred to something
 
I personally wouldn't buy a 3 way cross heifer .. It doesn't leave me any room to keep my own heifers out of the cows. I have brangus cows and breed them to Hereford and brangus bulls .. Sell the baldies and keep some brangus as replacement heifers . If I had baldie cows I'd breed them to either brangus or angus bulls depending on how much ear your market will allow.. However that's just my opinion and others have good ideas too. For terminal calves you can't beat a char bull .. Calves will be 50 to 100 lbs heavier that black calves the same age ..
 
No.
Hard to sell replacement heifers here unless you have registered cattle or are cooperating with some well known local producers. Sometimes they will pool 100s of heifers from the same lines AI ed to the same bulls.
I dabble in replacements because I like things complicated. My retained heifers winter on the cow, get re sorted again before breeding (culls sell as heiferettes), AI synced, then re re sorted after calving (culls sell as freezer beef). My retained second calvers are reasonable since my inputs are low and I usually make a little off the culls.
An interesting thing is that some cow lines turn out to be bullet proof, while others are almost useless, for replacements. If you think you have a couple of the bullet proof kind you should invest in proven AI cow maker semen.
 
I dont think you should change bulls. You like the calves off him in terms of performance from birth to weaning. Keep your heifers and put the boy with the girls when the time is right. The line bred daughters will be uniform and predictable, and by the time they are in production you will have gotten a few more years use on the bull you are happy with. When he gets too old, you can go back hereford, angus or what ever with your new bull. The heifers you produce in the line bred situation will be appealing to somebody that wants a small group of replacement heifers that are consistent and uniform. I vote to keep that bull you like. And just because I know many will say line breeding causes problems, I want to say that line breeding compounds traits. If you are happy with the sires calves, chances are you will "prove" your bull by doing father daughter line mating. By limiting the possible genes in the pool, you can eliminate the bad or undesired traits once identified. If you do it and have no problems, you cattle will improve in quality. Cross breeding brings Heterosis until you have too much cross breeding, if you tighten the gene pool a little and then change breeds when your current bull gets old you will find a boost in heterosis and likely perfomance. Whatever you decide, best wishes
 
Do tell why? You have 17 cows, on average will say you get a 50% percent heifer crop. Of those heifers on average about 1 at best two will be good enough to keep as breeding heifers. Just because these animals look good as terminal stock doesn't mean they will be good breeding stock. You are not taking into consideration the hybrid vigor of crossing English/continental breeding.

You would most likely have to go to straight bred cattle, otherwise who ever buys your heifers is giving up potential hybrid vigor. I don't think in your part of the country you could sell cattle with a bit of ear. If you could that would help a lot. You could cross your current cows with Brahman, then a buyer could use a Continental bull for max vigor.
 
cbcr":313xkv0x said:
houstoncutter
You would most likely have to go to straight bred cattle, otherwise who ever buys your heifers is giving up potential hybrid vigor.

I don't understand your thought here?



He is breeding English cattle to Continental. Nice cross that works well. The problem is the only way to again maximize hybrid vigor is to use a Bo's Indicus bull. He lives in Tn., I don't think eared cattle will sell well there. Hence my statement that he will have to either go straight English crosses or straight Continental crosses or just purebred in all the cattle.

Hybrid vigor is one of very few freebies that we as commercial cattlemen get!
 
Post by houstoncutter » Sat Nov 28, 2015 10:11 am

cbcr wrote:
houstoncutter
You would most likely have to go to straight bred cattle, otherwise who ever buys your heifers is giving up potential hybrid vigor.
I don't understand your thought here?
He is breeding English cattle to Continental. Nice cross that works well. The problem is the only way to again maximize hybrid vigor is to use a Bo's Indicus bull. He lives in Tn., I don't think eared cattle will sell well there. Hence my statement that he will have to either go straight English crosses or straight Continental crosses or just purebred in all the cattle.

Hybrid vigor is one of very few freebies that we as commercial cattlemen get!

He is using a Charolais bull on BWF and Black cows, so some of those cows are already 3-way crosses. That is fine as the 3-way crosses have around 87% hybrid vigor. The 2-way crosses have around 66%.

While the English/Continental crosses are very nice cattle, he could go back with any one of the breeds, Angus or Hereford he would still have around 66% to 87% hybrid vigor. If he were to use another breed, such as Simmental, Gelbvieh, etc., some of the offspring would be a 4-way cross and would have around 93% hybrid vigor. If he were to breed straight one breed he would have NO hybrid vigor.

Look at the chart on our website for the amount of hybrid-vigor with different matings: http://compositebeef.com/why-composites.html
 
Houstoncutter

Are you calling sim-angus, balancers, brangus, or any breed that is made up of more than one breed a mongrel, they are ALL COMPOSITES.

IF A PERSON IS USING 3 BREEDS. IF THEY ARE CROSSING ANGUS WITH A HEREFORD, ARE THEY MONGRELS. IF THEY THEN CROSS THOSE COWS WITH A CHAROLAIS, ARE YOU CALLING THEM MONGRELS. From your comments you are, and YOU are very very wrong in your thinking!

YOU are wrong when you start calling crossbred cattle mongrels. How else can you get hybrid vigor?

You need to look at the chart again.

With the dairy industry we have ProCross which is a continual 3-way cross of Holstein, Scandinavian breeds, and Montbeliarde. Research has been done and this cross is our producing the Holstein cow, in production, fertility, solids and other health traits. Are you calling animals such as this that can out produce a purebred a mongrel?
 
While a four way cross is acceptable to some people, however I didn't think there is a much market for replacement heifers from 3way cross or 4way cross, unless they don't care for the color. Some sale barns may sort out the diluted calves from the solids and sold them for less. There isn't much demand for a group of mixed colors.
 
by Muddy » Sun Nov 29, 2015 12:15 pm
While a four way cross is acceptable to some people, however I didn't think there is a much market for replacement heifers from 3way cross or 4way cross, unless they don't care for the color. Some sale barns may sort out the diluted calves from the solids and sold them for less. There isn't much demand for a group of mixed colors.

For many, they may have 3 and 4-way crosses in their herds and are unaware, especially if the bulls used were black or if a Hereford was used and the cows are black-white face.

Certainly at the sale barn they would be sold in similar group, all black, all red, all black-white face, or if a Charolais bull was used, then all of the smokies as a group. We have seen every once in a while a group of black heifers with a black-white face in the group, but their is very little white on the face. It seems that how they are grouped and sold depends on the area.
 

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