X breeding

[Anonymous]

What breed of cattle would be good to cross breed with a Charolais bull. The crosses would be sold at weaning age.

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[Anonymous]

That's an odd question, as a person usually picks their cowherd before their bull.

However Charolais are a lean, usually high performance breed, so you should have cows that will balance that. Angus or Hereford will cross. Herefords will produce a yellow calf, Angus will give you a grey one. A baldie cow (HerefordxAngus) will produce a tan white face with that cross.

You say calves will be sold at weaning, so you will want heavy milking cows. That will be on a case by case, but usually Angus milk better than Hereford. Baldies usually milk well if they are from good milking stock.

Carcass traits have to be considered as it will influence what price buyers will pay for the calves at weaning. Charolais have very little in the way of marbling, so the cows will have to carry this as well.

As I said before, usually you get the cows and then choose a bull to compliment what you have.

Jason Trowbridge Southern Angus Farms Alberta Canada

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[Anonymous]

Shannon,

As usual Jason has brought up a lot of good points. One more item to keep in mind is that "as a rule" Charolais tend to produce large calves. This means that unless the bull that you pick throws smaller calves you will need to only breed to mature cows that can handle the larger calves. Using Angus cows, these calves could be a problem especially if the cows are small or young. As everyone is expecting that has seen my responses in the past, now is when I will put in my vote for Salers. If you have your heart set on using a Charolais bull I would seriously consider looking at using saler of salerX (probably salerXangus to get the increased marbeling)cows. These cows will be bigger and better able to handle the larger calves so you will not have nearly as many pulled calves or possibly injured (or dead) cows as with a small breed. They will also produce a much larger calf at weaning as using straight angus (again I am generalizing). As far as worrying about marbeling, unless you are retaining ownership this has much less importance than weaning weight. In short the increased poundage will bring more at the sale barn than the Angus premiums will bring on smaller calves. Just my 2 cents worth, hope it helps.

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[Anonymous]

> What breed of cattle would be good
> to cross breed with a Charolais
> bull. The crosses would be sold at
> weaning age. Angus would be 1 choice, but I would recommend Shorthorns to increase carcass quality of your feeder calves.

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