In the realm of bulls and cows too, we've really come so far. I mean, there's so few breeds that can't successfully (in terms of health) be crossed. The biggest problem that I see for me, as a guy with a fixed (looking for more) amount of range, is that so many cows are just freaking whoppers nowadays. 1,400-1,600 lbs is not uncommon at all and they eat like it too. I just don't see the need imo. I really don't. We kept the nation in beef just fine before all of that and call me crazy, but I just don't believe that they're all producing animals with a higher overall potential for slaughter weight. I fed some cows for a guy I know this week and he mostly had, if I was clocking them off my shirt cuff, 850lb-1,100lb cows and they were hustling and making it just fine on some fairly "meh" range conditions. The only ones found wanting were getting busted off of the feed by the ones that were just real aggressive. He's running something like maybe 90 head or so and the drought didn't cost him a single cow because they could handle it. And maybe I've lost the plot and these leather tractors are really something special, but for my entire life up until I was well an adult, we really only had a few "big" cows and we weaned good calves just fine. We used brangus cows, simm bulls. Some replacements kept, but they were out of my herd and had a higher percentage of brahma in them because brahma crosses (BrahmaXJersey) were what I was able to get first as a kid.
