Special Focus or Complement

[tnwalkingred]

All,

I'm thinking about syncing and AI'ing a group of heifers in a few weeks. I had an ABS book laying around and the two calving ease bulls I liked are Special Focus and Complement. Anybody used one of these bulls on heifers before? Happy with the results? Any other bulls with a high calving ease EPD they would recommend? Thanks.

Kyle

 

[Dega Moo]

We have used Special Focus on a good number of our heifers and cows over the past couple of years. I don't recall any calving difficulties requiring pulling. Our spring 13 crop took a big hit as nearly all of the AI calves came in a two week period of near constant freezing rain. Mom's were trying but couldn't get calves dried. We lost a lot of new born calves upwards of 25 but another 20 or so out of Focus survived.

We like the calves out of Focus. They have good length and thickness. Heads are small. Many of his calves come 7 to 10 days early which would contribute to good calving ease.

I am a bit concerned that the heavy loss last spring might imply his calves are fragile but we've used him before and since and haven't found any other evidence of that being the case. Besides we lost calves out of other sires in that weather last spring. So I'm keeping surviving heifers out of that crop and plan to continue use of the Focus line to build and maintain our Angus seed stock.

As for other sires we might recommend: Hoover Dam, Foresight.

 

[cow pollinater]

Complement would be my choice of the two. Absolute is another one to look at.
The only thing I've seen about special focus that I consider to be much of anything special is his sire and my hunch is that that's really about the only reason why he's still on the lineup... but what do I know. ;-)

 

[Lucky_P]

I'm with cp; Complement would get the nod here. Have come 'this close' to buying a cane of Complement for several years, for use on Angus heifers - but haven't done it yet - finally used up all the 'heifer' semen in the tank, so he's in the running for next spring's order.

I dunno, MIF just never appealed to me. Walking herdsire is a grandson of SAF Focus of ER - and we like him (and his daughters) a lot, but MIF...maybe it was the RUMORS about dwarf calves and a short 'tool', but I just never went there, and haven't looked very hard at many MIF sons - though it seems like ABS had one (Yon Future Focus?) that I did consider.

 

[tnwalkingred]

A friend of mine recommended Really Windy and after comparing him to the other two I may very well breed to him.

Kyle