Theoretical Replacements??

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El_Putzo

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I have a theoretical question which I'm sure some of you have experience with. Here's the situation:

A guy has a group of 20 commercial heifer calves out of a good purebred maternal type bull and good, sound, almost purebred cows. He has performance records on the cows and bull and the set of heifer calves as well. All of heifer calves have BW's between 62 and 85 lbs. The heifer calves have adjusted WW's between 420 and 600 lbs, with WDAs ranging from 2.00 to 2.75 lbs/day.

OK, obviously these heifers are not all created equal, as some have not grown as well as others, but lets assume that all are moderate in frame, sound on their feet, and acceptable in muscle definition and bone structure.

This guy is thinking of trying to save some of these heifers, breed them to a lbw bull and sell them as commercial replacements. The question is, where does he draw the line on how many of these heifers to do this with? Does he keep the top 50%, 40%..... performance wise, or should he keep all the ones with a WDA above the average of the contemporary group? I'm sure there are other criteria to go by, what do some of you all do??

Assuming the guy has plenty of grass to develop these heifers, is it worth his time to do it??
 
El_Putzo":1vdp5wty said:
I have a theoretical question which I'm sure some of you have experience with. Here's the situation:

A guy has a group of 20 commercial heifer calves out of a good purebred maternal type bull and good, sound, almost purebred cows. He has performance records on the cows and bull and the set of heifer calves as well. All of heifer calves have BW's between 62 and 85 lbs. The heifer calves have adjusted WW's between 420 and 600 lbs, with WDAs ranging from 2.00 to 2.75 lbs/day.

OK, obviously these heifers are not all created equal, as some have not grown as well as others, but lets assume that all are moderate in frame, sound on their feet, and acceptable in muscle definition and bone structure.

This guy is thinking of trying to save some of these heifers, breed them to a lbw bull and sell them as commercial replacements. The question is, where does he draw the line on how many of these heifers to do this with? Does he keep the top 50%, 40%..... performance wise, or should he keep all the ones with a WDA above the average of the contemporary group? I'm sure there are other criteria to go by, what do some of you all do??

Assuming the guy has plenty of grass to develop these heifers, is it worth his time to do it??

How will he market them? IMO, that's the kicker. Over the years, we've bought some weaned heifers, grew them out, got them bred and have done pretty well with them. But we were able to put them in sales where the buyers were willing to pay for information. If he has access to that sort of sale, he might be able to make a few bucks. If he winds up selling them to ranchers who don't care about genetics, weights, etc., it might not pay for him.
 
Good point Frankie. I forgot to put that in the original post. This guy could sell either in the local paper, which has proven useful to other producers in the area, or the local sale barn has "Special Cow" sales monthly from about September til May.
 
As far as what percentage to keep, I don't see where one can draw a definate line. The owner of the heifers will know which ones don't measure up, sell these and keep an eye on the rest, the ones not worth keeping will weed themselves out. dun said something that caught my ear the other day, not to keep any heifer as a replacement unless you would consider buying it from someone else. Makes sense.

cfpinz
 
Imo, try to group them in sets according to weight. But, you also have to consider how much a calf will bring right now as opposed to keeping it another year or two. The beef cattle short course at A&M said expect another summer like this one next year.
 
IF the managment and genetics are all ~the same, I would be tempted to sort out the ten least desirable heifers. What are the real weaning wts? You got a 180 lb spread in adjusted weaning wt. does that spread grow or decrease when you look at real numbers. My gut reaction is to send the light 420 lb heifers to the sale barn; but you MIGHT also want to look at the heavy 600 lb heifers. Nice weight, nice performance, BUT are they too framy for YOUR goals and YOUR herd? Also bear in mind that TYPICALLY it is cheaper too feed out a heavier heifer to breeding weight than it is a lighter heifer. Anything that is poor structured probably needs to go now as do any that are ridiculously flighty. IF you got 20 heifers and you don't have a reputation yet, I would only grow out the 10-12 nicest heifers. Get paid for the problems, the dinks, the outliers NOW at the sale barn and save the best for a private treaty sale later.
 
Brandonm2":n627j6pp said:
IF the managment and genetics are all ~the same, I would be tempted to sort out the ten least desirable heifers. What are the real weaning wts? You got a 180 lb spread in adjusted weaning wt. does that spread grow or decrease when you look at real numbers. My gut reaction is to send the light 420 lb heifers to the sale barn; but you MIGHT also want to look at the heavy 600 lb heifers. Nice weight, nice performance, BUT are they too framy for YOUR goals and YOUR herd? Also bear in mind that TYPICALLY it is cheaper too feed out a heavier heifer to breeding weight than it is a lighter heifer. Anything that is poor structured probably needs to go now as do any that are ridiculously flighty. IF you got 20 heifers and you don't have a reputation yet, I would only grow out the 10-12 nicest heifers. Get paid for the problems, the dinks, the outliers NOW at the sale barn and save the best for a private treaty sale later.

Best advice so far!

dun
 
I agree to not keep the biggest heifers if the genetics are unknown. With your scenerio and known genetics I would keep the heaviest replacements. You know the mature frame size and I feel these will be preformance type animals for your customer.
 
Brandonm2":2k77fv31 said:
IF the managment and genetics are all ~the same, I would be tempted to sort out the ten least desirable heifers. What are the real weaning wts? You got a 180 lb spread in adjusted weaning wt. does that spread grow or decrease when you look at real numbers. My gut reaction is to send the light 420 lb heifers to the sale barn; but you MIGHT also want to look at the heavy 600 lb heifers. Nice weight, nice performance, BUT are they too framy for YOUR goals and YOUR herd? Also bear in mind that TYPICALLY it is cheaper too feed out a heavier heifer to breeding weight than it is a lighter heifer. Anything that is poor structured probably needs to go now as do any that are ridiculously flighty. IF you got 20 heifers and you don't have a reputation yet, I would only grow out the 10-12 nicest heifers. Get paid for the problems, the dinks, the outliers NOW at the sale barn and save the best for a private treaty sale later.


I like your advice, it's near what I was thinking. But to answer your questions, on the top half: Actuall WW span from 622 lbs (237 days old) to 480 lbs (174 days old). WDA's span from 2.45 to 2.8.

I went back and did some sorting on my spreadsheet and the first thing I did was sorted of everything with an ADG less than the average of the contemporary group, which was 2.09 lbs/day. That should have weeded out the poor growers. The next thing I would do is weed out any heifers from cows with structural/udder problems. After that, I think I'd eliminate the heifers with excessive BW (Over 95 or so) One thing I would do differently if I was selling the heifers as opposed to retaining them, is I would not cull the ones that were too big frame wise. Mostly because I wouldn't know what frame size my customers were looking for.

As I said before, this is all theoretical, and I've been using numbers from the last set of calves we weaned, even though they've all gone to the sale barn already. This is mainly for future reference. We will be weaning the spring calves next week.
 
El_Putzo":ehk6rw6g said:
This guy is thinking of trying to save some of these heifers, breed them to a lbw bull and sell them as commercial replacements. The question is, where does he draw the line on how many of these heifers to do this with? Does he keep the top 50%, 40%..... performance wise, or should he keep all the ones with a WDA above the average of the contemporary group? I'm sure there are other criteria to go by, what do some of you all do??

Assuming the guy has plenty of grass to develop these heifers, is it worth his time to do it??

It is absolutely worth his time! By keeping his top heifer calves as replacements, he knows their genetics, lineage, what to expect (usually), temperament, breeding, health record, how their mother, grandmother, great grandmother performed, etc. Every one of our replacements were calved out and raised by us - we've done it since day one. We keep the top heifer calves (part of that criteria is how their mother, grandmother performed as far as temperament, milking ability, mothering ability, feet, etc.), put them with a good 'heifer-type' bull, and they almost always go on to take their place in our herd.
 
As a whole cattleman have a hard time distinguishing big from growthy. Remember frame isn't so great.
 

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