Udders out of beef bulls?

[WAguy]

I was wondering how you can know how good of udders will result from a beef bull without seeing his dam and sisters. Any kind of scoring or grading system?

 

[vs_cattle]

You Can check out his EPDs

 

[KNERSIE]

You Can check out his EPDs

I have never seen a udder quality EPD in my life, maybe I look in the wrong places?

WAguy, in short, there is no way you can tell for certain without knowledge of his dam, sisters, etc. But in the end without seeing his daughters and without knowing what their dams' udders looked like, it will be no more than a educated guess.

From my observations, cows with very sound udders tend to produce bulls with perfectly symmetrical squarely attached scrotums. Of course there will be exceptions to the rule, otherwise breeding would have been too simple.

A bull with an unsymmetrical scrotum with a twist that almost drags on the ground is unlikely to sire nice tight udders, but using one with a perfect scrotum still won't guarantee anything.

 

[vs_cattle]

I was leaning toward more if they have good udders that would go along with having good milk traits, and or Maternal traits. Some operations are rating udders on their own scale so just call up the places your looking for a bull and ask if they rate udders, Dispotition, Easy fleshing

 

[Frankie]

I was wondering how you can know how good of udders will result from a beef bull without seeing his dam and sisters. Any kind of scoring or grading system?

I don't know any way to tell in the Angus breed, except word of mouth or seeing daughters. I saw a set of ABS dairy breed EPDs once. They had about a dozen EPDs for udder.

 

[WAguy]

Yes, I am aware of dairy udder scoring, though I don't know much about them. I've heard they score for udder snugness, teat length and placement, height of front vs rear quarters, etc.

My interest is in someday breeding some dual-purpose cows - beef/dairy, as family cows for milking and meat production. Would breed a dairy cow to beef bull. Of course, to hand milk, need teats of a certain length, and a beef bull could mess that up. Don't necessarily want to drive a long ways to evaluate the teats/udders of relatives before ordering semen.

I have seen beef cows with teats too big for the calf to suck on, so I would assume you serious producers pay considerable attention to that. I can understand not having as detailed a scoring as dairy, but shouldn't there be something? How much do you all worry about udder/teat issues?

 

[Frankie]

Yes, I am aware of dairy udder scoring, though I don't know much about them. I've heard they score for udder snugness, teat length and placement, height of front vs rear quarters, etc.

My interest is in someday breeding some dual-purpose cows - beef/dairy, as family cows for milking and meat production. Would breed a dairy cow to beef bull. Of course, to hand milk, need teats of a certain length, and a beef bull could mess that up. Don't necessarily want to drive a long ways to evaluate the teats/udders of relatives before ordering semen.

I have seen beef cows with teats too big for the calf to suck on, so I would assume you serious producers pay considerable attention to that. I can understand not having as detailed a scoring as dairy, but shouldn't there be something? How much do you all worry about udder/teat issues?

ABS has a GTS summary on many of their Angus bulls. I'll put a link and see if it helps you.

http://abs-bs.absglobal.com/beef/Angus_ss_main.asp

Click on the link for New Design 878 and look at his Genetic Type Summary (GTS) graph just below his picture. It has info on Udder attachment, depth and teat size. Not all the bulls have that much info, though. You'll have to check each one out.

I don't know if other bull studs have similar data.

 

[dun]

Yes, I am aware of dairy udder scoring, though I don't know much about them. I've heard they score for udder snugness, teat length and placement, height of front vs rear quarters, etc.

My interest is in someday breeding some dual-purpose cows - beef/dairy, as family cows for milking and meat production. Would breed a dairy cow to beef bull. Of course, to hand milk, need teats of a certain length, and a beef bull could mess that up. Don't necessarily want to drive a long ways to evaluate the teats/udders of relatives before ordering semen.

I have seen beef cows with teats too big for the calf to suck on, so I would assume you serious producers pay considerable attention to that. I can understand not having as detailed a scoring as dairy, but shouldn't there be something? How much do you all worry about udder/teat issues?

Since you want a combination breed, why not just get some high milking beef cows.

 

[WAguy]

Frankie, that's an interesting place, ABS. I could spend alot of time there. On that graph, is below zero a bad thing? I assume below zero on teat size doesn't just mean small teats, but rather less than ideal, whatever that is.

Since you want a combination breed, why not just get some high milking beef cows.

What would those be? How much milk are you talking about?

I figure that a dairy cross would have less muscle mass to take feed away from milk, yet when bred to beef, the calf would be pretty beefy.

Here's what I think I want to cross with dairy:
A small framed red angus with a nice disposition and udder, not too big or too small of teats. Is this possible?

 

[dun]

Since you want a combination breed, why not just get some high milking beef cows.

What would those be? How much milk are you talking about?

I figure that a dairy cross would have less muscle mass to take feed away from milk, yet when bred to beef, the calf would be pretty beefy.

Here's what I think I want to cross with dairy:
A small framed red angus with a nice disposition and udder, not too big or too small of teats. Is this possible?

The dairy would make the teats too small for hand miling. Try Gelbvieh or Simmenthal. There are animals within those breeds that are very heavy milkers. Enough for a family and to raise a calf. Look for animals with the highest milk EPDs within any given breed and you'll get heavy milkers.
We started a herd 30 some odd years ago with F1 Angus Holsteins. Below average meat production but way above avergae milk. They raised 4-5 calves a year. all at the same time. The biggest problem is that along with the milk comes the need for better feed, i.e. grain and lots of it.

 

[KMacGinley]

A bulls scrotal circumference has a direct correlation between fertility of his sons and daughters and udder attachment in his daughters as well. That is how you can tell. The bigger a bulls nuts the more fertile his offspring will be, the more cows he can breed, and the tighter his daugthers udders will be. Of course the dam plays a role in this as well but not as much as the bull does. Seems like Knersie in his infinite wisdom put it better than I did.

I think you'd better look at moms, sisters and daughters. There is no proven connection between Bull Testicle size and udder tightness, whatever that means.

 

[ALACOWMAN]

udder quailty or quantity. ive seen heavy milker's with horrible bag's.. had a few. that's when i made the decision to change. what good is it to have heavy milker's with faucets big around as mason jars .if your wanting to change you cow's udder quality dont try to go too extreme's one cross could set you back. look at the bulls dam if you cant don't buy on guess work

 

[Frankie]

Frankie, that's an interesting place, ABS. I could spend alot of time there. On that graph, is below zero a bad thing? I assume below zero on teat size doesn't just mean small teats, but rather less than ideal, whatever that is.

Reading the chart: A bull with an STA of 0.0 is average for that trait, compared to all other bulls evaluated by ABS.

If we go back and look at 878:

http://abs-bs.absglobal.com/beef/angus. ... o=29AN1523

You see that his stature is maybe .02? A bit more than average. His daughter's udder attachement and depth are better than average, teats are smaller than average. The longer the colored bar, the more above or below the average of animals evaluated. Not all Angus bulls, just the ones evaluated. And you can see the # of head that have been evaluated to get that info on 878.

Most ABS Angus bulls evaluated have STAs fall between -1 and +1. As you can see 878's rear legs fall out of that range.

 

[dun]

I talked to one of the guys from ABS that does the evaluations and he feels that the affect of any trait that is less then 1 either plus or minus isn;t something that can be really noticed in the calves. That was a few years ago but it probably still is a pretty accurate premiss

 

[Beef11]

ABS in years past has had a chart next to some bulls that gives a guestimate of traits on progeny. I've seen Udder traits listed there.

 

[dun]

ABS in years past has had a chart next to some bulls that gives a guestimate of traits on progeny. I've seen Udder traits listed there.

That's the GTS (genetic type summary). They don;t have it on all bulls. The back of theiir catalog has the entire list and their website displays it for individuals

 

[Beef11]

Ok, it has where the progeny falls in relationship with standard deviations.