Weaning Murray Greys

[OK Jeanne]

I took a few photos today of some of our herd. Not much green on the pasture; but we are hoping for rain Friday. We have dusted in our winter wheat. We will be weaning all our calves on Oct 20th. We were hoping for the 15th but the vet was booked up. We like to use his scales---and he does the tattoos. Our scale is hard to set up.

Here's two young bulls from this spring's calf crop:




Here's another one...Honey Comb is his dam



This is Honey Comb





And another young bull:
[URL=http://s15.photobucket.com/user/beavercreekfarms/media/16bull.jpg.html]

And another


A group shot:


These young bulls will be for sale soon. We will likely sell one of our two year old bulls also - OK Benny, who sired some of these calves. We will get our 1 1/2 yr old bull semen tested asap and if he is good, will sell Benny. The young one up-coming is out of a different bloodline.

Let's hope for a mild and WET winter - at least in this part of the country!

 

[hillsdown]

They look great Jeanne ! :tiphat: I really like Honey Comb

 

[Workinonit Farm]

I like the looks of the guy who's eyes are closed.

 

[Nesikep]

Look like they pack some nice weight to them

 

[Williamsv]

I like them all. Beautiful cattle.

 

[Backbone Ranch]

Honey Comb looks exceptional. The bull calf in the first photo looks phenomenal. What is his breeding?

 

[OK Jeanne]

Honey Comb looks exceptional. The bull calf in the first photo looks phenomenal. What is his breeding?

I didn't get a tag in the photo....and can't tell! Most of the bull calves are very similar.

 

[J&D Cattle]

Good looking cattle. The Murray Grey cattle on this board are always top notch!

 

[MO_cows]

They look great, especially in light of the condition of the grass.

 

[toughntender]

They are all put together really nice! Top notch quality. They sure could do well for some commercial guys too.

 

[branguscowgirl]

Very nice cattle Jeanne! Love those MGs! :clap:

 

[greybeard]

Good looking cattle. The Murray Grey cattle on this board are always top notch!

Got to agree--the more of them MGs I look at, the better I like them.

 

[OK Jeanne]

#20 is sold. Also our 2 1/2 yr old :


If our 18 mo old bull semen tests are good, then OK Buddy will be sold. His birthweight was 67 lbs so I guess he would be classed
as a "heifer bull"?

 

[Nesikep]

he has such short legs could he reach a cow?? I do like him though.

 

[OK Jeanne]

he has such short legs could he reach a cow?? I do like him though.

He didn't seem to have any trouble to reach our grown cows as a yearling. However, we really don't have any tall cows; frame 4 or 4 1/2 would be our limit.
Likely most our cows would be a 3. Our weaning weights are 525 to 600 as a rule. But we have had to supplement feed during this awful drought. It will take 2 years (beginning NOW) of normal rain before our pastures recover to previous condition.

 

[waihou]

Could you enlighten me as to the frame score measurements you use over there please?
I accept they will be in inches but I can convert it! Do you measure at the hip?

When we started with MG's in NZ back in the late 1970's they had to be a minimum of Frame score 4 at inspection time, which was about 18 months I think. I would suspect our average is now about frame score 5 and 6. A frame score 3 would almost be classed as a 'Square Meater" the Australian small version of Murray Greys.

OK Buddy is sure carrying plenty of meat, a carcase attribute that some of the bigger types have lost!

 

[cmf1]

http://www.texasbritishwhitecattle.com/CattleFrameScoreChart.htm

I think this is generally used across all breeds here in the U.S.

I'm curious as to how it relates to yours as well.
Here it is measured at the hip.

 

[FourSquareFarm]

Wow....your MG's look great...very thick in the back. Your doing something right :clap:

 

[waihou]

I'm pretty sure we use the same frame score chart! I have been looking for the laminated Frame score card which we were provided when we joined the MG Society(NZ) back in 1979. At that time all animals had to be inspected prior to being accepted for registration and Frame score 4 was the minimum height.
Since the mandatory inspections for registration have been wiped-due to the cost to members for travelling inspectors we no longer measure. However we still have our measuring cane about 4 years ago I did a number of measurements on one of our sires to see how he complied with the 'ideal' eg girth to height to length measurements put out by Bovine Engineering, Gearld Fry.
I just found them again, sorry they are in cms, but Cheyennes height as a 4r old was 145cm, which equates to 57 inches at the hips, between frame score 5 and 6 on the table. This is probably typical of Australian and New Zealand 'average' MG size nowadays.

 

[Nesikep]

Using the chart listed above, a mature cow with a 54" hip would be a frame 6, 57" would be FS 7 3/4.