Starting out with Dairy bred with SimAngus?

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TTBHG

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As the title suggests, I'm looking at buying calves to start a beef herd. I have a local dairy that breeds all their animals with SimAngus semen and sells the calves.

Would these be decent animals to start a herd with? I know at a sale anything with a dairy frame gets beat up but I don't know if it is ok to start with these cheaper animals and then breed to better semen as they mature.

I'm looking to start with about thirty. The heifers would be to keep and breed while the steers would be raised for a while and then sold.

Any advice would be appreciated.
 
Well. . . They sure would milk good. Once you get the first calf out of them then bred them to a wide, deep, low to the ground type Angus bull like Guinness. You would shrink the frame, the calves would only be 1/4 dairy. And with the way the heifers should milk, the calves would GROW like crazy.
 
TTBHG said:
As the title suggests, I'm looking at buying calves to start a beef herd. I have a local dairy that breeds all their animals with SimAngus semen and sells the calves.

Would these be decent animals to start a herd with? I know at a sale anything with a dairy frame gets beat up but I don't know if it is ok to start with these cheaper animals and then breed to better semen as they mature.

I'm looking to start with about thirty. The heifers would be to keep and breed while the steers would be raised for a while and then sold.

Any advice would be appreciated.
Not ideal, but it can work to get you started.
Bottle calves will be gentle as cows because they view humans as friends from birth.
The added milk and frame from Holsteins will make them large framed, big eating inefficient cows with too much milk and udder.

Plan to sell them as young cows (before their 3rd calf) before their udders blow.
10 out of 30 will be obvious culls after their 1st calf and 2 or 3 will be good cows for 6 or 7 calves.

As SBMF said, breed them to a short, wide, low milk bull for replacement females.
1 out of 4 of the replacement females will need to be culled in the same manner as their mothers for the same reason and build your herd from there.

Good Luck and :welcome: to the cattle forum board
 
What's the price on these bred heifers? If you're paying anywhere close to what a straight beef bred heifer is, I'd pass for all the reasons mentioned above. There needs to be a good financial incentive to the game you're getting ready to play.

Edit: Apparently you're buying calves and not bred heifers? If that's the case you're going to wait a long time to recoup any money. Might be better to buy some old cheap sale barn pairs and sell the hopefully rebred cows at weaning.
 
Son of Butch said:
TTBHG said:
As the title suggests, I'm looking at buying calves to start a beef herd. I have a local dairy that breeds all their animals with SimAngus semen and sells the calves.

Would these be decent animals to start a herd with? I know at a sale anything with a dairy frame gets beat up but I don't know if it is ok to start with these cheaper animals and then breed to better semen as they mature.

I'm looking to start with about thirty. The heifers would be to keep and breed while the steers would be raised for a while and then sold.

Any advice would be appreciated.
Not ideal, but it can work to get you started.
Bottle calves will be gentle as cows because they view humans as friends from birth.
The added milk and frame from Holsteins will make them large framed, big eating inefficient cows with too much milk and udder.

Plan to sell them as young cows (before their 3rd calf) before their udders blow.
10 out of 30 will be obvious culls after their 1st calf and 2 or 3 will be good cows for 6 or 7 calves.

As SBMF said, breed them to a short, wide, low milk bull for replacement females.
1 out of 4 of the replacement females will need to be culled in the same manner as their mothers for the same reason and build your herd from there.

Good Luck and :welcome: to the cattle forum board

I appreciate the advice. While definitely not ideal, I do have a pretty unique situation in that I can buy the calves for $100 each and he's going to raise them on milk for 75 days with his calves and wean them for me. He's going to take care of all of their shots and deworm them once before I ever get them.

He is an old family friend and he's going to do it once to help me get started and then I'll be on my own. Thirty weaned calves at 75 days old, even while dairy crosses, still seem like a good deal for $100 each.

He also told me that if I get the animals back to him at breeding age and buy the semen, he'd have his breeders AI them at first service for me.

So, while this probably isn't the ideal way to get into the business in a perfect world; it does seem like almost fail-proof with the first thirty.
 
The only thing cheaper about those heifers will be the initial purchase price. Most dairies around here figure the cost of raising a replacement to be around $2000. You'll have a hard time beating that on a small scale, and the shorter longevity of the dairy cross heifers means you'll only get 3-4 calves to try and recoup that expense and turn a profit.

For the same input cost, you can buy some really nice young pregnant cows that are going to perform better and make a lot more money in the long run.

Sell the dairy x heifers as 4-5 weight feeders and you'll be much better off.
 
I'd rather save my money and buy a couple of cow calf pairs from the sale barn. Than try to breed dairy out of my herd. Dairy looking anything, around here gets Slammed at the sale barn. .. But that's my personal preference.
 
Weaned calves at $100 each, go for it. Hard not to make money on them.
Contrary to what others have shared some of the best cows I have owned were dairy cross, even a few were Simmental cross. They will just need to be bred to a heavier muscle bull.
 
I used to raise dairy calves and kept a few beef crosses for cows. It worked ok for the most part but the most don't last in the herd for very many years due to udders not lasting. No experience with the SimAngus component as I ran Angus and Hereford bulls but think it would be a bit more milk coming from the sire breed in that cross.
 
Buck Randall said:
Is your goal to be as cheap as possible, or as profitable as possible?

The end goal is always being profitable. I'm not completely sold on this but it sounded like an attractive offer to help me get started. It sounds like this might be a challenging way of getting started.
 
kenny thomas said:
Weaned calves at $100 each, go for it. Hard not to make money on them.
Contrary to what others have shared some of the best cows I have owned were dairy cross, even a few were Simmental cross. They will just need to be bred to a heavier muscle bull.

That was my thinking. I'm not under any guise that this will be a lifelong lineage of impressive animals. But, for a first batch of animals to get me going and then get some better semen in them going forward I don't think it's terrible. Eventually adding better bred heifers down the line as I get more experienced.
 
Agree with Kenny. All things considered it appears the calves are very reasonably priced & a decided plus that going to have an exceptional start in life plus are half beef genetics. Yes there'll be a lag time before they produce income and you'll need to breed them for their future calves to mitigate the dairy influence. Always some naysayers around.
 
Ky hills said:
I used to raise dairy calves and kept a few beef crosses for cows. It worked ok for the most part but the most don't last in the herd for very many years due to udders not lasting. No experience with the SimAngus component as I ran Angus and Hereford bulls but think it would be a bit more milk coming from the sire breed in that cross.

Yes, the short production life will make them expensive cows on average. Either the udder goes or they come open. But you don't have to settle for average.

A dairy beef F1 cross is going to give you lots and lots of variation. A way to play this variation:
1) Breed the dairy cows to a small frame low milk good udder bull. Pass on the SimAngus.
2) Sort the F1 heifers, only retaining the half that take more after the sire.
 
Okay, so everything goes according to plan. You purchase the calves, grow 'em big & strong, wean & sell all you don't want to retain. Your friend has the heifers you want AI'd. Calving out heifers is not for the faint of heart!! Even if you have them pelvic measured, they're in good condition and you know they're bred to a calving ease bull (which I would definitely find out in advance).

I don't want to be a naysayer but something else to think about. And please develop a good relationship with your vet.
 
Stocker Steve said:
Ky hills said:
I used to raise dairy calves and kept a few beef crosses for cows. It worked ok for the most part but the most don't last in the herd for very many years due to udders not lasting. No experience with the SimAngus component as I ran Angus and Hereford bulls but think it would be a bit more milk coming from the sire breed in that cross.

Yes, the short production life will make them expensive cows on average. Either the udder goes or they come open. But you don't have to settle for average.

A dairy beef F1 cross is going to give you lots and lots of variation. A way to play this variation:
1) Breed the dairy cows to a small frame low milk good udder bull. Pass on the SimAngus.
2) Sort the F1 heifers, only retaining the half that take more after the sire.

I agree there is a lot variation not only in size but in milk too. My preference for a bull for them is a Hereford. Those HerefordX calves don't usually milk quite as heavy but still a lot of milk to raise a good calf and mine tended to stay in pretty good shape to keep rebreeding. Even then though they are ready to cull sooner than a beef cow would be. My pick of it if I were doing that program would be Hereford X dairy, and then put an Angus bull with those resulting calves and try to retain the 3/4 beef heifer calves.
 
TTBHG said:
I appreciate the advice. While definitely not ideal, I do have a pretty unique situation in that I can buy the calves for $100 each and he's going to raise them on milk for 75 days with his calves and wean them for me. He's going to take care of all of their shots and deworm them once before I ever get them.

He is an old family friend and he's going to do it once to help me get started and then I'll be on my own. Thirty weaned calves at 75 days old, even while dairy crosses, still seem like a good deal for $100 each.

He also told me that if I get the animals back to him at breeding age and buy the semen, he'd have his breeders AI them at first service for me.

So, while this probably isn't the ideal way to get into the business in a perfect world; it does seem like almost fail-proof with the first thirty.
Go For It.
It's an unique opportunity unavailable to most and sure to make money even if you sell a dozen as 600# feeders. I do like the idea of A.I.ing them to a calving ease Hereford bull to reduce milk and putting a white face on them makes them look more like a beef cow to an untrained eye.

Culling a young cow does not have to mean slaughter.
A few years ago when prices were crazy, I culled bred 3-4 yr old Holstein x Angus cows at the sale barn and netted $300 a hd more than I would have dared to ask for with a straight face.
2 bidders wanted them and they sure paid. Sometimes the stars align. :lol:
 
TTBHG,
Sounds like a sweet deal from your neighbor.
It can work, but some of those half-HO cows may fall out due to overproduction/failure to breed back, if you try to manage them strictly on forages, like a typical beef herd... been there, done that.

Just a few thoughts...
At 75 days... these calves will have only just become old enough to have a sufficiently developed immune system to be able to respond to most routine vaccinations... so don't consider them to 'have had all their shots' at that age... f'r'instance, we don't do a first Clostridial bacterin until about 60 days, then booster accordingly.
Calves reared in confinement on bottle/bucket likely don't need deworming at 75... if they've not been out grazing contaminated pastures, they're not going to have had exposure to any infectious nematode larvae.
 
Even if they're free it's not going to pencil out to raise them . Your not going to see a check for 21/2 years and in another year you start thinking about culling them for bad bags.
Doesn't make sense when you can buy bred solid mouth beef cows for 7-800.00 .
 

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