El_Putzo
Well-known member
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??
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??