what happened to the calving ease?

[novatech]

I will grant that the majority of the problem lie with the bull. But consider the fact that the heifers did in fact contribute. They may be part of the problem.
How big were the calves?
What was the BCS of the heifers?
What % weight were the heifers as compared to mature weight?
Have you had calves from heifers with the same genetics before with no problem?

 

[AngusLimoX]

How big were the calves?

Second time this has neen asked. Looking forward to the contrived reply.

So, is when is pulling necessary something we leave up to you? To make your "stats".

 

[novatech]

How big were the calves?

Second time this has neen asked. Looking forward to the contrived reply.

So, is when is pulling necessary something we leave up to you? To make your "stats".

Just wondering. If they where 80 lbs. then I would think they are not all that big. If they where a 100 that's another story.
If I had heifers that I had to pull calves from I would ask myself all the same questions.
Now would you mind tell me what you mean by contrived reply?

 

[hillsdown]

There are also some breeders that say the bulls are calving ease bulls because they throw 50lb calves, to me that is a runt, not a calf. I used the pullers once last year and it too was on a heifer but she was not a beef breed. There are quite a few things to look at ,,,,the heifers themselves ,your mineral program or the young bull (which could be the problem for sure) but if you are having to pull 70 lb calves then I would think it would be more a heifer and not being fully developed problem or a nutritional/mineral problem.

FW sorry about you troubles as of late . Malpresentations sometimes just happen , now that being said what is your mineral program, I think you may need to up it for the heifers that still need to calve this year.

I sure hope the rest of your girls have beautiful healthy calves all on their own FR .. Good luck and my fingers are crossed for you..

 

[dun]

There are also some breeders that say the bulls are calving ease bulls because they throw 50lb calves, to me that is a runt, not a calf. I used the pullers once last year and it too was on a heifer but she was not a beef breed. There are quite a few things to look at ,,,,the heifers themselves ,your mineral program or the young bull (which could be the problem for sure) but if you are having to pull 70 lb calves then I would think it would be more a heifer and not being fully developed problem or a nutritional/mineral problem.

FW sorry about you troubles as of late . Malpresentations sometimes just happen , now that being said what is your mineral program, I think you may need to up it for the heifers that still need to calve this year.

I sure hope the rest of your girls have beautiful healthy calves all on their own FR .. Good luck and my fingers are crossed for you..

I'll take those 50 pound BW calves thast wean over 600 pounds every day. Sure don;t need/want anymore of the 104 pound BW calves

 

[farmwriter]

Novatech - You're right, I'm not insistant my girls couldn't have been a factor, but I'm not convinced of it either. I wish I could tell you how much they weighed, but we don't weigh them at birth. What I can tell you is they have been larger calves than we're used to seeing. Another thing I didn't mention is that one of the heifers that had an easy pull is half longhorn, and I certainly have never had that happen and frankly don't personally know anyone who has. BCS - 6 and 7. Now, percetage of mature weight is better than 70% for all but two - one yet to calve, the other smaller girl was the malpresentation. And that's a big 10-4 about previous first calvers being problem free. The first-generation were bred to a composite bull when we bought them. Pulled two that year, but none in the years since.

AngusLimoX - We don't weigh when they hit the ground. Contrived? Are you kidding me? What possible reason would I have to make this stuff up? Once the sac appears, if there is no progress for 2 hours, we intervene. Don't know what To make your 'stats' means. I'm not looking for some cyber-peeing contest, either.

HD - Thanks for the well-wishes. All of ours get free choice loose mineral most of the year, hi-mag in the spring, and protein/mineral blocks in the winter. Don't have the labels handy to give you the specs.

 

[hillsdown]

Dun a good cow with a healthy nutrition and mineral program can easily calve a 104 pound calf even if she is a frame 5 or 6, I have seen it. I guess I expect too much from my gals ,they are supposed to calve unassisted unless it is the second twin or a very strange malpresentation. They should be calving out 70-100 lb calves on their own and the calves should be running as soon as they hit the ground they also should ween a 650-750 lb calve at 205, without creep, even in a drought, and maintain their BSC.

You can tell alot of you palp. a heifer at 15 months whether or not she will have calving problems..

Now I may just have jinxed myself with my season in a couple of weeks but after culling so hard my expectations are even greater this year..

If the only way I had live calves unassisted were if they weighed 50lbs I would be out of business; as I could never ever sell a bull from that kind of pedigree or more importantly calving records the oldtimers here would call BS on me and move onto the next breeder.

 

[dun]

Dun a good cow with a healthy nutrition and mineral program can easily calve a 104 pound calf even if she is a frame 5 or 6, I have seen it. I guess I expect too much from my gals ,they are supposed to calve unassisted unless it is the second twin or a very strange malpresentation. They should be calving out 70-100 lb calves on their own and the calves should be running as soon as they hit the ground they also should ween a 650-750 lb calve at 205, without creep, even in a drought, and maintain their BSC.

You can tell alot of you palp. a heifer at 15 months whether or not she will have calving problems..

Now I may just have jinxed myself with my season in a couple of weeks but after culling so hard my expectations are even greater this year..

If the only way I had live calves unassisted were if they weighed 50lbs I would be out of business; as I could never ever sell a bull from that kind of pedigree or more importantly calving records the oldtimers here would call BS on me and move onto the next breeder.

Since the cow had averaged 89 pound calves for 8 previous calves I don;t begrudge her the pull of the 104 pound calve. Our calves usually run 75-85 pounds, this is the first calf we've had to pull in 7-8 years. What I;ve found is that those 90-100 pound calves don;t wean heavier by the difference of the BW over the 50-60 pound calves. There also up and nursing within a couple of minutes. The pull was up in less then 5 minutes and nursing in 10.
I would like to be able to see what the difference in BW and WW weights would be if we weren;t on the toxic KY31. But there really isn;t anyway for me to do a test of all else being the same except
the forage. I guess I'll just stick with my backward way of doing things, live with the KY31 and not have to feed hay till february/march.

 

[novatech]

Novatech - You're right, I'm not insistant my girls couldn't have been a factor, but I'm not convinced of it either. I wish I could tell you how much they weighed, but we don't weigh them at birth. What I can tell you is they have been larger calves than we're used to seeing. Another thing I didn't mention is that one of the heifers that had an easy pull is half longhorn, and I certainly have never had that happen and frankly don't personally know anyone who has. BCS - 6 and 7. Now, percetage of mature weight is better than 70% for all but two - one yet to calve, the other smaller girl was the malpresentation. And that's a big 10-4 about previous first calvers being problem free. The first-generation were bred to a composite bull when we bought them. Pulled two that year, but none in the years since.


HD - Thanks for the well-wishes. All of ours get free choice loose mineral most of the year, hi-mag in the spring, and protein/mineral blocks in the winter. Don't have the labels handy to give you the specs.

After eliminating the possibility of it being the heifers I believe I would have talked to the man you bought the bull from. Most people in the bull business do not intentionally lie. It would be hard for me to believe that anyone would scam you knowing that birth weight was the primary factor you were interested in. It's not good for business. An honorable breeder would have bought the bull back or traded you out. Of course hind sight is 20/20.

 

[Oldtimer]

One of the problems I've seen at bull sales- is an auctioneer that just looks at a bulls birthweight- and then starts screaming "a sleep all night calving ease heifer bull"-and folks with little or no knowledge of the cattle buy into his spiel after the auctioneers promotion and commotion---BUT if you actually look at the pedigree you can find a major amount of birthweight- and a lack of calving ease in the background- and definitely something I wouldn't call a "heifer bull".....

 

[Herefords.US]

One of the problems I've seen at bull sales- is an auctioneer that just looks at a bulls birthweight- and then starts screaming "a sleep all night calving ease heifer bull"-and folks with little or no knowledge of the cattle buy into his spiel after the auctioneers promotion and commotion---BUT if you actually look at the pedigree you can find a major amount of birthweight- and a lack of calving ease in the background- and definitely something I wouldn't call a "heifer bull".....

In a number of sales that I have watched, the auctioneer just looks at the BW EPDs and proclaims the young bull to be a "calving ease" bull. Never mind that his actual BW was 110% of his peer average, etc., etc.

There was a time when there was honor - even among the thieves.

One of the best quotes i've seen on this board in some time came from robert in another thread:

any idiot can stack numbers, which I am assuming is exactly what you did to get 'good' epds, doesn't mean that the cattle will perform to those levels, or that they will transmit those levels, or if they even changed performance at all given that almost no-one in the purebred business is using epds in the way they were designed it has merely become a marketing tool where the sale managers and 'in crowd' set the goalposts, which continually move in order to keep everyone playing along.

Folks need to quit blindly buying into the hype and look deeper. They need to look closely at the promotional "folklore" that some of these purebred breeders put out and determine if its mostly "smoke and mirrors" or there is actually some MEAT behind their claims.

George

 

[Red Bull Breeder]

Knowledge of the cattle you see in a bulls pedigree will tell you more than numbers on a peice of paper.

 

[AngusLimoX]

Bunch of pharts in the wind without birth weights from the OP.

( Thats who the contrived part was addressed to nova ).

 

[[Bez]]

Quite frankly I think a large number of folks on this board like to talk about EPDs rather than think about breeding.

Continual small calves at birth reduces the size of the cow over generations.

Weight of the calf is far less important than shape of the calf at birth.

Cannot believe how many people blame the bull when they seem to ignore the other half of the equation - yet they are out and out EPD experts on paper - or CT computer screens. We will see it again next week and the week after and the week after and the week after - and truthfully a lot of blame is to be placed on the EPD experts here who do not emphasize the entire breeding equation - EPD is a small part and I do not care what any self proclaimed expert here states - it is a whole picture that needs to be looked at.

If you breed a calf that turns into a cow that can handle a decent calf and throw away those that cannot - you lessen the calving problems. Far too many here keep everything - or at least most of the females - when in fact probably less than 30% of them deserve to be held over for breeding. In all honesty that number is way too high as well but there will be a wailing and gnashing of teeth from the hobby guys and the "I love my pet cow" folks if I say that only 10% deserve to be kept. And even that number may be high in some years.

I do not care how sweet or pretty she is - fatten her and kill her if she is a liability. Do not sell her as a breeder - but many here will because they really believe they have a wonderful "registered" product to sell. Seen that here on a regular basis and we will continue to see it on almost a daily basis - and yes folks papers are important - especially if you want to sell that heifer to another newbie. (Sarcaasm)

While it is not ideal - if a cow cannot handle a 100 pound or a bit better calf she is trouble - and would not stay in my herd and sure as HE!! should not be in yours either. So you need to cull a lot more and breed a bit more responsibly unless you buy in your replacements.

If a heifer cannot calve out a calf that comes close to this - she is trouble. She should either have not been bred when she was, or not been bred period. Try weighing the calves - with a scale and not a tape - most folks screw up tape weights - a scale if calibrated does not lie. A lot of heavy weight calves are born on grass and are born with no probs because people - thank heavens - in some parts of the world are not EPD slaves.

If you breed for weight using EPD info and nothing more - YOU are the cause of most of your trouble.

You want push button cows? Think more on all the above and spend a little less time on the bull and his EPDs.

[Bez]

 

[Red Bull Breeder]

So if you buy replacements your troubles are over Bez?? I agree that you need to breed cows that can have calves.

 

[[Bez]]

So if you buy replacements your troubles are over Bez?? I agree that you need to breed cows that can have calves.

That is not what I meant and you darned well know it

The info is solid and I have no need to get into it with nit pickers - they are about to come out of the wood work - it will be fun to read but I will not add any more to this thread

Merry Christmas my friend

[Bez]

 

[novatech]

'Selecting cattle by maximizing EPDs in any one or all areas can tip the cattle out of balance. Since EPDs are for maximizing not optimizing, they're worthless.'
"A good genetic package is a well-balanced package that performs optimally in one's environment. Maintaining and reproducing that balance is the key. Tweaking the optimum balance, which is the optimum genetic package for the environment, by asking for more here and less there can tip the scale so that it is out of balance. Therefore, change has to come slowly and it has to involve the entire package, not just a few popular traits.

by Ted Slanker

 

[Red Bull Breeder]

Just making sure your sense of humor is still intact Bez. Merry Xmas to you Bez, and stay safe as you can.

 

[farmwriter]

Wow, some of you guys were cocked and ready, huh?
I'm a little surprised at some of the sweeping generalizations, especially the fact that some of you seem to be certain it couldn't possibly be the bull. That said, I appreciate the ideas all the same. Right or not, I do like the opportunity to see how other people's wheels turn.
Thanks for posting.

 

[angus9259]

Wow, some of you guys were cocked and ready, huh?
I'm a little surprised at some of the sweeping generalizations, especially the fact that some of you seem to be certain it couldn't possibly be the bull. That said, I appreciate the ideas all the same. Right or not, I do like the opportunity to see how other people's wheels turn.
Thanks for posting.

For the record, I didn't hear anyone say "it couldn't possibly be the bull" let alone anyone say they were certain of that. What some said (me included) is that the bull, while a PART of the equation, is overrated (re-read what Bez just said - PART!!). The thing about the bull and EPDs is that it gives the cow/calf operator someone to blame for any contribution they had to their own problems.