Cowpoke
CowpokeJ":16uf0obi said:
cypressfarms":16uf0obi said:
CowpokeJ":16uf0obi said:
You know, this beefmaster deal chaps my patuey. I like beefmasters, in fact I have some commercial beefs, but the registered beefmaster business is not suited to the commercial cattleman. The straw fees are way outta sight and the costs for females at most of these replacement sales is absolutely amazing. Lifestyles of the rich and famous...I thought the seedstock guy's end product was supposed to be the commercial cattleman? All I see at these sales is a bunch of rich guys trading cattle, you buy mine and I buy yours kinda deal...
It does seem like the semen prices are way out of whack for beefmasters bulls. Spring of 2006 was the last time I bought registered Beefmasters from an auction/sale. Paid between $1100 to $1300 for two breeding age heifers and one 4 year old cow - auction was Windy Hills in Mississippi. Didn't seem like too high of a price; but that's only a snapshot view.
Sometimes, you can sneak around and buy some right.
The $100 prices for semen
IS outrageous. I can see paying that money for some bulls' semen...but not many. The bulls that have semen priced that high, more often than not, are unproven. And more times than should be, they are mediocre. There are some great bulls of foundation breeding whose semen is less than $50, some $30 or less. And those bulls are the kind that look great, pass that great look off to their offspring, and produce daughters who will wean exceptional calves year in and year out.
The end product is for the commercial man/woman. However, when I grow and become more of a seller, it's not going to stop me from bidding on someone else's females if I think they can help my program. Now, I hope that I soon reach a point that the best females available to me are the ones that I'm weaning from my cows. The demand for a good, solid Beefmaster cow is high, as it should be. If someone's going to pay good money for a cow, it may as well be a good cow. There are good cows from EVERY breed...but in MY opinion (to which I am entitled), you can find good females more consistently throughout the Beefmaster breed.
Start buying beefmaster bulls and you'll stop having to compete with others demanding beefmaster females. You'll have them in every calf crop.
bigbull338":16uf0obi said:
he is calling that bull an angus.an for a beefmaster his sheath looks real good.
I disagree. I'd call his sheath a 3. It's not terrible, but I'm not going to make my mouth up to say it's "real good" either. He's not going to have any functional problems with it, but it's not ideal. Black Granite should have been sold as a commercial bull. If he breeds true, a beefmaster breeder would likely need slick-bellied or really clean underlined cows to prevent sheath problems in the calf crop. On the other hand, a commercial person that needs some bos indicus influence, and has little or none, would do pretty good with this bull. He's a pretty good bull...just not for what I'm doing, and not for $100 a straw.
And breeders are going to stop ignoring that sheath soon enough. Anything with too much sheath needs to be culled and sent to the sale barn. If Beefmaster breeders keep using bulls with unacceptable sheaths, they run right back into the problem of bulls stepping on their manhood. Nobody wants to worry about something that could have been controlled and avoided.
:compute: If I was talking and not typing, I would've ran out of breath.
EC
