Uniform Herd vs. Several Breeds.

[cbcr]

Commercialfarmer,

I am not going to get in a be nice contest with you or anyone else. I have over 37 years involved in genetics, as a breeder, AI Technician and Embryo Transplant, with both dairy and beef cattle, so no means am I a rookie a rookie.

The information on our website are FACTS, all backed by the science and technology.

Doesn't this individual have more than one breed of cows? Angus, Hereford and Black Baldie, right?

How would you breed them?

Yes, we say and continue to say that Composites DO have a place in the beef industry. But here is the thing, everyone seems to be missing the point and one of the primary purposes of the Composite Beef Cattle Registry.

Look back at a previous post about the bull Mytty In Focus and his EPD's. Many commercial producers that we have visited with use what? MOSTLY Angus bulls!!! Why? The same comment repeated over and over is we DO NOT understand the EPD's from these other breeds or how to compare them with each other.

What is WRONG with me saying that this breeder should use a single breed bull on his cows? Why then not continue to compliment those resulting offspring with a COMPOSITE bull? He will have more consistency and uniformity and retained hybrid vigor? How many seedstock producers belong to more than one Association? Are you in a roundabout way saying they are wrong too for belonging to more that one Association?

http://animalscience.tamu.edu/images/pd ... csE189.pdf

If you are selling bulls, and if you have a Simmental/Angus bull you are selling that is an outstanding animal, and you have a neighbor selling Registered Angus bulls, If you lose sales to the Angus breeder because potential customers are in confusion over the EPD's, how would you feel? Is losing sales putting money in your pocket? What if you had ACCURATE ACROSS BREED EPD's that would show your potential customer that the bull you are selling will work better for him?

The old saying goes "some people can't see the forest for the trees."

I was not trying nor did I say anything or promote on this post about the Composite Beef Cattle Registry. YOU DID. We were offering a suggestion to the poster.

Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Feb 20, 2011 1:06 am

 

[Commercialfarmer]

We were offering a suggestion to the poster.

Who is we?

 

[Black Coos]

It is simple , the more diversity in your cows , the more uniformity in The bull.

A uniform (geno/phen) set of cows should use a bull for hybrid vigor....

I use a hereford bull for 2 years, then I use 2 Black angus bulls for 2 years each, then back to Hereford....

I keep about 50% of my cows pure Black Angus, 25% F-1 Baldies, and the rest higher and lower %s ...And yes I do believe I could get better quality calves by using a Bull in a 3 way terminal cross....BUT WHAT BULL ?

NO char, simm, or limm, Maybe a Bal. or Brangus

USING A BLACK ANGUS BULL ON MY HERD YEILDS A VERY UNIFORM SET OF CALVES IN TYPE AND COLOR..

USING A HEREFORD BULL ON THE SAME SET OF COWS GIVE ME EVERY COLOR AND SHAPE CALVES THERE IS...

But I select some great heifers to add back to my herd....Yes it takes years to build a good set of cows and one bull can put you off track...CULL CULL CULL

 

[SRBeef]

There is a mention above in this thread about cross-breed EPD's.

I assume this is referring to how the EPD's of one breed, say Hereford, compare to the EPD's of another breed, say Angus.

Here is a link to a chart which was recently posted by someone on another board. It looks to me like it could be very useful in some situations, such as looking for Hereford bulls to breed on Angus cows or vice versa.

http://www.extension.umn.edu/beef/components/homestudy/mlesson3b.pdf

Jim

 

[cbcr]

from the New Beef Registry Forum

Breed Association EPD's / BIF / Multi-Breed EPD's

As we have said in previous posts, with our genetic evaluation, an Angus can be compared to a Hereford, and likewise these two animals can be compared equally with any other breed such as Simmental, Brangus, Shorthorn, or even a Composite animal with more than one breed such as an Angus/Hereford, Angus/Shorthorn/Simmental/Gelbvieh, and the list and combinations can go on and on.

There was a question posted about the Angus bull Mytty In Focus. So we answered with what his WW EPD would be if we used the BIF adjustments with his EPD's that were from Angus, Simmental, Gelbvieh and Limousin Associations as an example those adjustments were +54 - Angus / +63.1 - Simmental / +42.7 - Gelbvieh / +58.4 - Limousin. The same bull but over 20 lbs difference between the lowest adjusted and highest adjusted EPD's.

Look at what has happened to cow size. The Angus breed has increase cow size while most of the Continental breeds have reduced cow size.

Simmental 1353 pounds
Hereford 1348 pounds
Angus 1342 pounds
Charolais 1339 pounds
Limousin 1330 pounds
Gelbvieh 1282 pounds

The system used by the Composite Beef Cattle Registry, is truly multi-breed in all aspects (meaning Angus, Shorthorn, Charolais, Red Angus, Hereford, Brangus, Gelbvieh, Simmental, Maine Anjou, Composites, etc.) , which makes it globally unique. Our model has extensive central test data, which many breeds do not include in their evaluations.

The most recent genetic evaluation that ran last week included 2.5 million animals. The animals in the database are a mixture of purebred (different breeds), and Composite cattle of various breed compositions.

There are other multi-breed models out there (e.g. run by the American Simmental Association as developed at Cornell University), but they are applied to data bases from a single Breed. These data bases will have crossbred cattle if used by that breed, but are not really multi-breed because they are mostly limited to a single breed. AGI and a small handful of others (using the model as developed at Cornell University), and BreedPlan offer evaluation services to breed associations. We are not aware of any joint analysis of data from more than 1 (or a very small number of) breeds at a time.

Seedstock producers have been asking for true multi-breed evaluations, which so far has not happened.

The biggest obstacle in the way for a true multi-breed evaluation to happen is for ALL Associations and Registries to share data. But because of politics within Associations and Registries this will be an almost impossible task.

 

[3waycross]

It is simple , the more diversity in your cows , the more uniformity in The bull.

A uniform (geno/phen) set of cows should use a bull for hybrid vigor....

I use a hereford bull for 2 years, then I use 2 Black angus bulls for 2 years each, then back to Hereford....

I keep about 50% of my cows pure Black Angus, 25% F-1 Baldies, and the rest higher and lower %s ...And yes I do believe I could get better quality calves by using a Bull in a 3 way terminal cross....BUT WHAT BULL ?

NO char, simm, or limm, Maybe a Bal. or Brangus

USING A BLACK ANGUS BULL ON MY HERD YEILDS A VERY UNIFORM SET OF CALVES IN TYPE AND COLOR..

USING A HEREFORD BULL ON THE SAME SET OF COWS GIVE ME EVERY COLOR AND SHAPE CALVES THERE IS...

But I select some great heifers to add back to my herd....Yes it takes years to build a good set of cows and one bull can put you off track...CULL CULL CULL

Excellant post. A great model but it takes work, and some smarts to do it right. :clap:

 

[Suzie Q]

I guess we are bypassing this problem a little bit.

This year we are keeping the youngstock and as we now have heifers to go to the bull we are starting to sell off our old stock. I am wanting to end up with a younger herd.

So the steers will not be sold until they are big enough to go to the meatworks. Then we get paid on what they weigh and not what they look like.

 

[dun]

I guess we are bypassing this problem a little bit.

This year we are keeping the youngstock and as we now have heifers to go to the bull we are starting to sell off our old stock. I am wanting to end up with a younger herd.

So the steers will not be sold until they are big enough to go to the meatworks. Then we get paid on what they weigh and not what they look like.

We do things a little differently then a lot of poeple. We have heifer makers and meat makers. The heifer makers are bred to bulls that we hope to get heifers out of to serve as breeding stock, if they have a bull it just goes in the lot with the other steers. If one of the meatmakers has a heifer she goes with the boys. A lot of comes form me not wanting to sell off a good producing cow (even if I don;t want a heifer from her) so those are pretty much the older cows. We have some younger cows that we won;t keep heifers from but onkly becuase their heifers, even though pretty nice don;t really compare to what we want for our own breeding stock. And we won;t sell a heifer as breeding stock if she isn;t something that we would keep ourselves.

 

[SRBeef]

Dun,

What an interesting idea: view your cows as either meat makers or cow makers. I think maybe we could say the same for bulls - some are more meat makers, some are more cow makers. Very unusual to find one that does both?

Thank you. Jim

 

[dun]

Dun,

What an interesting idea: view your cows as either meat makers or cow makers. I think maybe we could say the same for bulls - some are more meat makers, some are more cow makers. Very unusual to find one that does both?

Thank you. Jim

You already have that differentiation in bulls, maternal vs terminal.

 

[Brandonm22]

He has uniformity in the herd of cows, maybe. But then adds non uniform bulls, and yet advises you that you want uniformity. :???: One of the points of having uniformity, maybe the main point, is to aquire a uniform group of terminals for sale, regardless of how you sell. IMO you are better off with uniformity all the way through. If I had mixed cows I would at least have all the bulls the same breed.

Exactly, that was my point. You turn a Charolais bull into a herd of Angus cows you get smokies. Turn a Charolais bull into a herd of Angus, Baldie, and Hereford cows and you get smokies and yellow white faced calves. The same buyer will buy both sets at probably the same price. You didn't really gain much of anything in uniformity by having the straight Angus cow herd in that instance. If you have 3 or more different breeds of bulls and you have calves all over the map no matter what the cow herd was like. If you don't have a uniform end product anyway, maximize the heterosis in the cowherd.