What can you tell me about these

[Santas and Duhram Reds]

A breeder that I bought my Durham Reds from is having a bull sale coming up. Not really interested in a bull (since I predominantly use them in my star5 production) I went ahead and looked through his catalog. He does have a handful of females available that I might be interested in.

Most of them are Durham Reds. The red angus sires are either Bieber Make Mimi out of Make My Day or Milk Creek Capstone 901 out of Buffalo Creek Chief 824-1658.

They are bred to either angus bull Koupal's Juneau 7206 or Mytty in Focus.

What can you tell me about these critters

 

[dun]

Make mimi's calves are born easily his daughters are notorious for calving problems. Chief is one of the old line RA bulls that has produced truckloads of very good breeding cattle and is in a lot of pedigress.

 

[Sage]

Make Mimi and Capstone both are very good sires. Both are calving ease and both are deceased. Capstones heifers seem to be his strong point. Make Mimi is the sire of Feedes Big Sky in the Genex catalog, his bulls seem to be better han his heifers in my openion.

 

[Santas and Duhram Reds]

I have a few DRs that are out of Cherokee Canyon. I have been told that his heifers are prone to calving problems. Knock on wood, I have not had a problem with them with my Santa bulls yet. In your opinion are Make Mimi's heifers more or less prone to these problems? I realize this is a difficult to say, just looking for info.

So, are the Capstone heifers the ones you would lean towards getting? If so why? Is it due to the calving problems?

Any opinions on the Black Angus bulls?

 

[dun]

I have a few DRs that are out of Cherokee Canyon. I have been told that his heifers are prone to calving problems. Knock on wood, I have not had a problem with them with my Santa bulls yet. In your opinion are Make Mimi's heifers more or less prone to these problems? I realize this is a difficult to say, just looking for info.

So, are the Capstone heifers the ones you would lean towards getting? If so why? Is it due to the calving problems?

Any opinions on the Black Angus bulls?

I don;t have direct experience with either CCs or Make Mimis daughters. A neighbor Red Angus breeder used them a copule of years ago, all of the daughters from both bulls are long gone because of calving problems. I don;t know if it was 100% but it was high enough that he didn;t want to mess with them, and he normally pulls about 2-3% of his calves each year. Haven;t used Capstone and have only had a couple of bull calves from Pfred, that's the only blk Angus bull we used until this year.
We have a Mjor League son (CC grandson) and won;t keep any heifers form him. Worked too long to get an easy calving trouble free herd, don;t want to take a chance on going backwards

 

[Santas and Duhram Reds]

Talked to the guy directly tonight and he said that actually they are out of Big Sky. Does this change your opinion in any way?

 

[Sage]

I like the looks of the Capstone heifers, deep ribed and are gaining extreamly well. About 80% of our heifer calves for replacements this year are Capstone daughters. We did keep one Big Sky R9 daughter I think she will be fine. I talked with Chuck Feddes a few weeks ago (Feddes Red Angus - Big Sky R9) and he will have some R9 heifers calving this spring. He told me that he thought the daughter would be R9s strong point. I don't think I would use R9 on a questionale calving cow (low CETM) and expect to have a no problems daughter but I wouldn't knock, he is a 4 on CETM whitch is the breeed average on that EPD.

 

[Santas and Duhram Reds]

I went and looked at the heifers over the weekend and looked at some of the CED numbers and the Make Mimi calves actually have a higher number than the Capstones on average. I think I am leaning towards the Capstones b/c the Make Mimis are consistently smaller...much smaller. Is this consistent?

My next question is do the Make Mimis mature earlier or do the capstones mature later? Any generalities you can share are appreciated.

Also, I will tell you that there is the possibility that I will be buying a DR bull from this breeder either later this fall or in the spring b/c my numbers are getting to the point that I merit another bull. I currently have DRs out of Hobo, Cherokee Canyon, and either one of the group of heifers mentioned above. I will probably pick the bull calf to be out of the opposite group. This bull will primarily be used on the DRs and a few Santa cows that I want to lower their frame size.

Based on this, which line would you rather be your bull and which would you rather be your cows.

If it seems I am rambling I am sorry.

 

[Sage]

I would lean tward the Mimi bulls and the Capstone heifers as a general statement. I'm sure there are better and worse on both sides though.