Weaned calf weight as a % of Mothers weight?

[SRBeef]

With numbers like that in a pedigree I can further refine my herd to smaller cow size yet not have many calving problems and still wean heavy calves and process heavy yearlings at 13-14 months of age. jmho.

Jim

I am curious how you will get smaller cows out of calves weaning heavier unless you would use a bull like that as a terminal.

My T21 bull with 3008 in his pedigree had numbers somewhat along those lines: good calving ease and good growth. He was a bit large however. But keeping heifers sire by him but out of my "1200 lb" cows I am ending up with some very nice moderate size heifers who appear to have both the calving ease and growth from their sire but the moderate size of their dam.

I also have a homegrown bull out of T21 and my best cow who seems to have the best characteristics of each: smaller size but good CE, WW, YW and very good conformation, who I am going to use on my commercial females this summer.

Using a different bull with much the same calving ease and high growth on them I should end up with some calves that can be born unassisted, have good growth and early maturity so they are near 1100 lb finished in the 13-14 months that I need them to be in my system shown on the other thread with steers grazing corn. Am I missing something in this logic?

Jim

 

[novaman]

near 1100 lb finished in the 13-14 months that I need them to be in my system shown on the other thread with steers grazing corn. Am I missing something in this logic?

Hey if it is working for you than great. I just have a hard time believing an animal weighing 1100 pounds at 13 months is going to have a mature weight of 1200 is all. I realize you are talking 1100 pound steers but heifers wouldn't be far behind weight-wise.

 

[SRBeef]

near 1100 lb finished in the 13-14 months that I need them to be in my system shown on the other thread with steers grazing corn. Am I missing something in this logic?

Hey if it is working for you than great. I just have a hard time believing an animal weighing 1100 pounds at 13 months is going to have a mature weight of 1200 is all. I realize you are talking 1100 pound steers but heifers wouldn't be far behind weight-wise.

I see what you mean. My mature cow weight target of 1200 may be a bit low - maybe they need to be 1300 or so. What it looks like to me is that the high growth, ww & yw do not necessarily mean a much larger mature size, just that they get there sooner.

If you think about people - there are kids that reach their mature size early in life and stay there. And there are kids who grow to the same mature size but more gradually.

I am not under delusions about "finishing" in 13 months. My steers, or some of them, may not be truly "finished" at 13 months by normal interpretations. However what I am finding is that even though they may not have as much visual marbling as they would at say 16 months off of a feedlot, the beef is very tasty and tender as a more marbled steer. I keep thinking about veal - younger, tender and little fat. Mine is not veal by any means but somewhere in between veal and a fully finished feedlot steer.

I am looking for a combination of genetics which can give me the early growth and early maturity. Using calf 205 day ww as a percent of cow wt at weaning is a means of getting to that goal.

Jim

 

[Dylan Biggs]

I agree with SRBeef, that its value is primarily as an in herd comparison. The actual % may not necessarily tell a person that much. For those that use it, do you use actual weaning weights or adjusted? For me we calved from 10th of May to the 4th of July and this year we weaned the 4th of November so our actual weaning weights were on an average age of around 150 days. Hard to get 50% for a herd average at that age. So just looking at percentage with out knowing age of the calf may not be that valuable.

 

[SRBeef]

I agree with SRBeef, that its value is primarily as an in herd comparison. The actual % may not necessarily tell a person that much. For those that use it, do you use actual weaning weights or adjusted? For me we calved from 10th of May to the 4th of July and this year we weaned the 4th of November so our actual weaning weights were on an average age of around 150 days. Hard to get 50% for a herd average at that age. So just looking at percentage with out knowing age of the calf may not be that valuable.

I think to be a fair comparison, there must be some adjustment for age differences between calves. If the calves are gaining about 2-1/2 lb per day near fall weaning time, a 30 or 45 day difference in age can make a big difference in the ww to cow wt ratio. I use the calf's 205 day adjusted weaning weight as it is calculated by my Cattlemax program and the cow's actual weight at weaning.

Jim

 

[dun]

I use the calf's 205 day adjusted weaning weight as it is calculated by my Cattlemax program and the cow's actual weight at weaning.

Jim

That's what I do too. If I had figured it out sooner I would have the software calculate it automaticly instead of me having to do it manually

 

[Dylan Biggs]

I use the calf's 205 day adjusted weaning weight as it is calculated by my Cattlemax program and the cow's actual weight at weaning.

Jim

That's what I do too. If I had figured it out sooner I would have the software calculate it automaticly instead of me having to do it manually

Makes sense to me.