bigbull338":7g04wfy0 said:
frankie ive got a question for you.with all of the branded beef thats on the market.where does that leave the crossbred cattle producers in the future.im heard of an seen those brands of meat youve mentioned.scott
There are lots of good crossbred cattle around. But in my area, at least, there are herds of cattle that have been crossbred to the latest bull fad until they have no consistency. Brahman, black, baldies, tigerstripes, spots, may all show up in one herd. No bull is going to work on every one of those cows. IMO, an Angus bull works best because he'll get you a more uniform LOOKING calf crop.
Since each cow is half of the individual calf, you need to know something about her performance/production. If there's any way possible, I would encourage everyone to send some calves through a feed out program. We did it years ago and it made an Angus believer out of me. I think the Beef Records program that the Angus Assn has can help out a lot of people.
Not all branded beef programs want high quality beef. Laura's Lean Beef doesn't want Angus cattle. They want lean, high yielding beef, Limousin, Charloais, Belgium Blues. Sterling Silver uses a lot of Red Angus. The Drovers magazine used to have a list of beef alliances with information on what sort of cattle each group is looking for. I don't have a link, but maybe someone else will post one.
I don't think crossbred cattle will go away. I do think serious producers will look closely at what breeds make up their crossbreeding and maybe buy a bull that will help them qualify for a specific market. For example, Bradley's B3R Beef (now part of Coleman Natural Beef) used to look for a three quarter Angus/one quarter Continental calf for their program. But they would pay a premium for ANY backgrounded cattle delivered to feedlots sired by Angus bulls of specific bloodlines.