Masculine bulls?

Hilly lets assume a person wants to make a living with a cow calf enterprise, and as such prefers to select for traits that will make life with these cattle easier on a day to day basis. It seems fair to assume that a few things would be obvious in terms of there contriibution to this day to day operational ease. Disposition, sound feet and legs, quality udders that require no attention, calving ease that requires no assistance, mothering ability that requires no assistance, pigment that prevents sunburn and cancer eye, etc.

Before you have a herd to work with you need to find some cows and you need to get a bull, on what basis would you select your stock to start your herd?

Dylan Biggs wrote:

Hilly lets assume a person wants to make a living with a cow calf enterprise, and as such prefers to select for traits that will make life with these cattle easier on a day to day basis. It seems fair to assume that a few things would be obvious in terms of there contriibution to this day to day operational ease. Disposition, sound feet and legs, quality udders that require no attention, calving ease that requires no assistance, mothering ability that requires no assistance, pigment that prevents sunburn and cancer eye, etc.

Before you have a herd to work with you need to find some cows and you need to get a bull, on what basis would you select your stock to start your herd?

In my case, I had around 20 hd of the original cows that made it into their late teens under my management, I went looking for that type, happened to find it in the Shoshone cows bought a mob of bulls from Larry and closed down the my maternal herd base on those cows and the Shoshone mob...

As has been suggested my mob bulls are not what most would select for in bulls, and they are not perfect.... but I like my odds

Hilly wrote:

Dylan Biggs wrote:

Hilly lets assume a person wants to make a living with a cow calf enterprise, and as such prefers to select for traits that will make life with these cattle easier on a day to day basis. It seems fair to assume that a few things would be obvious in terms of there contriibution to this day to day operational ease. Disposition, sound feet and legs, quality udders that require no attention, calving ease that requires no assistance, mothering ability that requires no assistance, pigment that prevents sunburn and cancer eye, etc.

Before you have a herd to work with you need to find some cows and you need to get a bull, on what basis would you select your stock to start your herd?

In my case, I had around 20 hd of the original cows that made it into their late teens under my management, I went looking for that type, happened to find it in the Shoshone cows bought a mob of bulls from Larry and closed down the my maternal herd base on those cows and the Shoshone mob...

As has been suggested my mob bulls are not what most would select for in bulls, and they are not perfect.... but I like my odds

Hilly I don't believe you answered my question. Pretend you are starting with an empty pasture, on what basis would you select your stock?

I liked your last post Hilly, it made a lot of sense to me. I hope I'll be excused in my enthusiasm for learning and believing these principles when I post pictures that illustrate phenotype which I've no way of knowing will be reproduced. I don't have the experience that LL has had producing a strain of cattle, or that DV, MK or BobH of using these genetics and seeing the results so I whittle away my time by judging my cattle by eye on an everyday basis. I agree with you though we need to get the herd/strain/type that works best for us then learn to like the look not the other way round. "Form Follows Function..." and all that.

I also agreed with Dylan's post this morning about genetics not being the most important thing determining profitability on the farm/ranch. Preaching it to the wrong audience here though as most seem obsessed with the genetic side - nothing wrong with that - I think it's a noble cause and there is no other I would rather be involved in.

Dylan Biggs wrote:

Hilly wrote:

Dylan Biggs wrote:

Hilly lets assume a person wants to make a living with a cow calf enterprise, and as such prefers to select for traits that will make life with these cattle easier on a day to day basis. It seems fair to assume that a few things would be obvious in terms of there contriibution to this day to day operational ease. Disposition, sound feet and legs, quality udders that require no attention, calving ease that requires no assistance, mothering ability that requires no assistance, pigment that prevents sunburn and cancer eye, etc.

Before you have a herd to work with you need to find some cows and you need to get a bull, on what basis would you select your stock to start your herd?

In my case, I had around 20 hd of the original cows that made it into their late teens under my management, I went looking for that type, happened to find it in the Shoshone cows bought a mob of bulls from Larry and closed down the my maternal herd base on those cows and the Shoshone mob...

As has been suggested my mob bulls are not what most would select for in bulls, and they are not perfect.... but I like my odds

Hilly I don't believe you answered my question. Pretend you are starting with an empty pasture, on what basis would you select your stock?

Oh... I believe my uncle bought the original heifers in the classifieds from out at Rocky sight unseen for tax reasons

I would image if a person wanted to be a seed stock breeder, he would get the type of seed stock he liked and start breeding his own cattle.

In answer to your question Dylan I would go out buy some teenage cows that have survived in a commercial system and keep some bull calves off them - doesn't matter what they look like. No guarantee the bulls would work out but breed them to female offspring of the same old cows and after a few generations you might get some predictability.
Up to a few years ago I would have picked females on looks, bulls on looks and then been disappointed with the results - phenotype doesn't mean much to me now if it's based on a one generation deep genotype. Phenotypical selection as advocated by Gearld Fry, where it can be done off the road, with no knowledge of the cattle or their genetic background doesn't impress me any more. It may indicate higher semen test scores in bulls but how does that relate to cow longevity?? This idea of dismissing any yearling bull unless it has a 40cm+ measurement at a year old is nonsense in my opinion. Dennis Voss could maybe tell us what his Longhorn bulls scrotal measurements are like but I've heard they can be very low but they still manage to breed every cow in the county.

Hilly wrote:

Dylan Biggs wrote:

Hilly wrote:

Dylan Biggs wrote:

Hilly lets assume a person wants to make a living with a cow calf enterprise, and as such prefers to select for traits that will make life with these cattle easier on a day to day basis. It seems fair to assume that a few things would be obvious in terms of there contriibution to this day to day operational ease. Disposition, sound feet and legs, quality udders that require no attention, calving ease that requires no assistance, mothering ability that requires no assistance, pigment that prevents sunburn and cancer eye, etc.

Before you have a herd to work with you need to find some cows and you need to get a bull, on what basis would you select your stock to start your herd?

In my case, I had around 20 hd of the original cows that made it into their late teens under my management, I went looking for that type, happened to find it in the Shoshone cows bought a mob of bulls from Larry and closed down the my maternal herd base on those cows and the Shoshone mob...

As has been suggested my mob bulls are not what most would select for in bulls, and they are not perfect.... but I like my odds

Hilly I don't believe you answered my question. Pretend you are starting with an empty pasture, on what basis would you select your stock?

Oh... I believe my uncle bought the original heifers in the classifieds from out at Rocky sight unseen for tax reasons

I would image if a person wanted to be a seed stock breeder, he would get the type of seed stock he liked and start breeding his own cattle.

So it seems safe to assume then that you refuse to share on what basis you would select any breeding stock male or female.
Do you also refuse to admit any prefernce for good udders, good feet or legs, good disposition etc, etc?

As regards homozygosity, I uderstand the intellectual and logical appeal and after identifying stock that I deem worhty of concentrating by virtue of the practical, pragmatic traits they demonstrate I am in fact experimenting with 30 plus half sib matings.

To me if I were going to bake a cake and I wanted to improve my odds of success I would want to select the right ingredients and quality ingredients.

Your cake sounds a bit like a mix accepted by default with an added ingredient that you are assured will contribute a consistent result, which result you seem either reluctant to identify or even more oddly uninterested in identifying.

Grassfarmer wrote:

In answer to your question Dylan I would go out buy some teenage cows that have survived in a commercial system and keep some bull calves off them - doesn't matter what they look like. No guarantee the bulls would work out but breed them to female offspring of the same old cows and after a few generations you might get some predictability.
Up to a few years ago I would have picked females on looks, bulls on looks and then been disappointed with the results - phenotype doesn't mean much to me now if it's based on a one generation deep genotype. Phenotypical selection as advocated by Gearld Fry, where it can be done off the road, with no knowledge of the cattle or their genetic background doesn't impress me any more. It may indicate higher semen test scores in bulls but how does that relate to cow longevity?? This idea of dismissing any yearling bull unless it has a 40cm+ measurement at a year old is nonsense in my opinion. Dennis Voss could maybe tell us what his Longhorn bulls scrotal measurements are like but I've heard they can be very low but they still manage to breed every cow in the county.

Grassfarmer, as regards structure of feet, legs, udders, wry faces, wry tails, asymmetrical epidyimal developement, prolapsing prepuse, nervous flighy dispositions how is it wrong or worthless to evaluate these visually?

As for Gerald Frye I have never followed him or his ideas, so I can not comment. As regards scrotal 34 or 35v cm scrotal is worthless if the semen is wothless so is 40 cm's. But 34 cm's is great if the testicles are producing excellent quality semen. More often then not 35 cm's at a year to a year and a half will consistently better semen quality then will 39 's or 40's. Quite often but not always testicles of the large size are inflamed and compromised.

Dylan Biggs wrote:

Hilly wrote:

Dylan Biggs wrote:

Hilly wrote:

Dylan Biggs wrote:

Hilly lets assume a person wants to make a living with a cow calf enterprise, and as such prefers to select for traits that will make life with these cattle easier on a day to day basis. It seems fair to assume that a few things would be obvious in terms of there contriibution to this day to day operational ease. Disposition, sound feet and legs, quality udders that require no attention, calving ease that requires no assistance, mothering ability that requires no assistance, pigment that prevents sunburn and cancer eye, etc.

Before you have a herd to work with you need to find some cows and you need to get a bull, on what basis would you select your stock to start your herd?

In my case, I had around 20 hd of the original cows that made it into their late teens under my management, I went looking for that type, happened to find it in the Shoshone cows bought a mob of bulls from Larry and closed down the my maternal herd base on those cows and the Shoshone mob...

As has been suggested my mob bulls are not what most would select for in bulls, and they are not perfect.... but I like my odds

Hilly I don't believe you answered my question. Pretend you are starting with an empty pasture, on what basis would you select your stock?

Oh... I believe my uncle bought the original heifers in the classifieds from out at Rocky sight unseen for tax reasons

I would image if a person wanted to be a seed stock breeder, he would get the type of seed stock he liked and start breeding his own cattle.

So it seems safe to assume then that you refuse to share on what basis you would select any breeding stock male or female.
Do you also refuse to admit any prefernce for good udders, good feet or legs, good disposition etc, etc?

As regards homozygosity, I uderstand the intellectual and logical appeal and after identifying stock that I deem worhty of concentrating by virtue of the practical, pragmatic traits they demonstrate I am in fact experimenting with 30 plus half sib matings.

To me if I were going to bake a cake and I wanted to improve my odds of success I would want to select the right ingredients and quality ingredients.

Your cake sounds a bit like a mix accepted by default with an added ingredient that you are assured will contribute a consistent result, which result you seem either reluctant to identify or even more oddly uninterested in identifying.

I guess I don’t understand what you are after I already stated that I don’t want to debate type we all have different preferred types what good does it do to debate who has a more useful type as the cattle will stand on their own merits. I can post pictures of the type I have... what does that prove, I would go out and buy cows of this type and have clean ingredients to start making the perfect cake? Not going to happen here... but if you have these secret ingredients great... more than likely you will become famous.

Here is a link to a few of my first calf heifers but it doesn’t tell anyone much of anything in my estimation....

http://5barx.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=4857

And here is one of my herd bulls,

And another cow that I like

Hilly wrote:

Dylan Biggs wrote:

Hilly wrote:

Dylan Biggs wrote:

Hilly wrote:

Dylan Biggs wrote:

Hilly lets assume a person wants to make a living with a cow calf enterprise, and as such prefers to select for traits that will make life with these cattle easier on a day to day basis. It seems fair to assume that a few things would be obvious in terms of there contriibution to this day to day operational ease. Disposition, sound feet and legs, quality udders that require no attention, calving ease that requires no assistance, mothering ability that requires no assistance, pigment that prevents sunburn and cancer eye, etc.

Before you have a herd to work with you need to find some cows and you need to get a bull, on what basis would you select your stock to start your herd?

In my case, I had around 20 hd of the original cows that made it into their late teens under my management, I went looking for that type, happened to find it in the Shoshone cows bought a mob of bulls from Larry and closed down the my maternal herd base on those cows and the Shoshone mob...

As has been suggested my mob bulls are not what most would select for in bulls, and they are not perfect.... but I like my odds

Hilly I don't believe you answered my question. Pretend you are starting with an empty pasture, on what basis would you select your stock?

Oh... I believe my uncle bought the original heifers in the classifieds from out at Rocky sight unseen for tax reasons

I would image if a person wanted to be a seed stock breeder, he would get the type of seed stock he liked and start breeding his own cattle.

So it seems safe to assume then that you refuse to share on what basis you would select any breeding stock male or female.
Do you also refuse to admit any prefernce for good udders, good feet or legs, good disposition etc, etc?

As regards homozygosity, I uderstand the intellectual and logical appeal and after identifying stock that I deem worhty of concentrating by virtue of the practical, pragmatic traits they demonstrate I am in fact experimenting with 30 plus half sib matings.

To me if I were going to bake a cake and I wanted to improve my odds of success I would want to select the right ingredients and quality ingredients.

Your cake sounds a bit like a mix accepted by default with an added ingredient that you are assured will contribute a consistent result, which result you seem either reluctant to identify or even more oddly uninterested in identifying.

I guess I don’t understand what you are after I already stated that I don’t want to debate type we all have different preferred types what good does it do to debate who has a more useful type as the cattle will stand on their own merits. I can post pictures of the type I have... what does that prove, I would go out and buy cows of this type and have clean ingredients to start making the perfect cake? Not going to happen here... but if you have these secret ingredients great... more than likely you will become famous.

Here is a link to a few of my first calf heifers but it doesn’t tell anyone much of anything in my estimation....

http://5barx.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=4857&hilit=Mob+Mates

And here is one of my herd bulls,

And another cow that I like

Hilly, I apologize, I must not be making my self clear. Let me try to be more clear.

Do you keep and breed all your heifer calves. If you sell some of them as feeders and keep some to breed, I am assuming that you discriminate in some way or another who to sell and who to keep. Now I will be the first to admit the futility of trying to predict the future productive ability of heifer calves by looking at them. But also I would expect that if you "saw"
some heifers with obvious structural feet and leg deficiences or disposition deficiences or growth deficiencies you would not select them as replacements. Am I wrong?

I cull on birth weight (CE) after that only extreme outliers get sold from the maternal group...

Success for me with my breeding program is defined by demonstrated pragmatic traits, calving ease for example, that taken as a whole results in a herd that takes minimal management and labor inputs and produce optimally in return.

From my experience a degree of visual evaluation for the physical traits that will facilitate the above function is required.

Homozygosity for the sake of predictability alone without identifying the associated traits and defining pragmatic productive benchmarks seems rather pointless.

Dylan Biggs wrote:

Grassfarmer wrote:

In answer to your question Dylan I would go out buy some teenage cows that have survived in a commercial system and keep some bull calves off them - doesn't matter what they look like. No guarantee the bulls would work out but breed them to female offspring of the same old cows and after a few generations you might get some predictability.
Up to a few years ago I would have picked females on looks, bulls on looks and then been disappointed with the results - phenotype doesn't mean much to me now if it's based on a one generation deep genotype. Phenotypical selection as advocated by Gearld Fry, where it can be done off the road, with no knowledge of the cattle or their genetic background doesn't impress me any more. It may indicate higher semen test scores in bulls but how does that relate to cow longevity?? This idea of dismissing any yearling bull unless it has a 40cm+ measurement at a year old is nonsense in my opinion. Dennis Voss could maybe tell us what his Longhorn bulls scrotal measurements are like but I've heard they can be very low but they still manage to breed every cow in the county.

Grassfarmer, as regards structure of feet, legs, udders, wry faces, wry tails, asymmetrical epidyimal developement, prolapsing prepuse, nervous flighy dispositions how is it wrong or worthless to evaluate these visually?

I never said I didn't evaluate these traits but equally I don't get hung up on them either. I don't think driving around the country looking for perfect structured cattle to buy is the way to build a herd (not saying you do that but I know some people that do exactly that). I have a friend in Scotlkand always on a search for the perfect animals but when he gets them they don't breed true because he is only buying based on one generation phenotype. There have been cows I've encountered over the years that did not have the ideal leg angles and managed just fine - I think this is one place where genetic selection can take precedence over functional cattle that would work fine commercially if you are not careful.

Grassfarmer wrote:

Dylan Biggs wrote:

Grassfarmer wrote:

In answer to your question Dylan I would go out buy some teenage cows that have survived in a commercial system and keep some bull calves off them - doesn't matter what they look like. No guarantee the bulls would work out but breed them to female offspring of the same old cows and after a few generations you might get some predictability.
Up to a few years ago I would have picked females on looks, bulls on looks and then been disappointed with the results - phenotype doesn't mean much to me now if it's based on a one generation deep genotype. Phenotypical selection as advocated by Gearld Fry, where it can be done off the road, with no knowledge of the cattle or their genetic background doesn't impress me any more. It may indicate higher semen test scores in bulls but how does that relate to cow longevity?? This idea of dismissing any yearling bull unless it has a 40cm+ measurement at a year old is nonsense in my opinion. Dennis Voss could maybe tell us what his Longhorn bulls scrotal measurements are like but I've heard they can be very low but they still manage to breed every cow in the county.

Grassfarmer, as regards structure of feet, legs, udders, wry faces, wry tails, asymmetrical epidyimal developement, prolapsing prepuse, nervous flighy dispositions how is it wrong or worthless to evaluate these visually?

I never said I didn't evaluate these traits but equally I don't get hung up on them either. I don't think driving around the country looking for perfect structured cattle to buy is the way to build a herd (not saying you do that but I know some people that do exactly that). I have a friend in Scotlkand always on a search for the perfect animals but when he gets them they don't breed true because he is only buying based on one generation phenotype. There have been cows I've encountered over the years that did not have the ideal leg angles and managed just fine - I think this is one place where genetic selection can take precedence over functional cattle that would work fine commercially if you are not careful.

GF, thank you for the reply. This seems to be where you and I differ. There are traits that I am committed to, especially if I am going to work on concentatrating them for the purpose of predictability through inbreeding, other wise personally speaking I don't see the point. I want predictable outcomes such as excellent feet, excellent udders, excellent fertility, excellent disposition. I don't see how I can possibly get that without a visual evaluation component being included in the process of selecting the building blocks to concentrate.

I would think it a given, that before a breeder closes down a strain in order to prove it for its purpose... the select breeding stock and know ancestry would express the traits they wish to concentrate and they would want as much knowledge of the ancestral pen of cows as possible, as we cannot sort them, they are who they are and that is why I am more interested in the picture pedigree of a bull or cow in hopes of revealing continuity of type... then the sortable offspring or the outward appearance of the individual.

To tell you the truth I am not sure what we are even discussing any more, other than I think GF is on a worth while endeavour with his cow and I would expect he will see a reduction in phenotypical production levels as he moves toward a more homozygosis state base on what I have read here at KC.

I am going to take a stab at what Dylan is asking and I think that Hilly already has. If I had an empty pasture to start out with I would search out a commercial breeder that had enough volume of cattle that were either 5 generations deep of breeding like kind of maternal cattle of the same breed with minumal growth junk genes or had been using linebred cattle of the same maternal quality for at least 10 years or more. This would be for the females. Then if the linebred heifers suited me I would use the linebred sire's that they were out of as long as they were structurly sound regardless of perdigm in my was to what they should look like. As the calf crops showed up I would analyse what I was getting with a set of scales. If I was not returning enough profit not pounds I would then think about cross-breeding a percentage to up the pounds or work at marketing straight bred cattle as breeders. This I believe would have helped me allot 30 years ago.

I like the bull Craig.

Well, not that much really, but I'm betting I'd probably like his mom and his daughters.

This cow isn't perfect Dylan, her udder is not ideal and she may have faulty leg angles, I don't know. Point is she reared calves to 23 and was never assisted to calf, suckle, was never lame or had feet trimmed so in my mind that beats a picture perfect second calver every time - because you don't know what she will do over the long haul. "Form Follows Function - it doesn't predetermine it" as LL likes to say.

If I had empty pastures again, I would find a long time linebreeder, buy all breeding stock from him and continue the journey. I would single trait select for function.

I may be getting the wrong impression, but is the quest for homozygosity mutually exclusive to basic selection standards.

It seems to me both could be practiced.

If I throw myself down at the altar of homozygosity must I become blind and abandon any former value placed on sound structure or docile disposition for instance?

If so this neccesarily implies I must cease choosing and thus culling.

I think that if you have to cull to high of % then you have chosen the wrong line for your enviroment. If you can live with what your culling % then you are on your way to sustainablity. If you need more income from your choice's and your culling % is not the problem of the maternal parents then you need to study to the parts of your marketing strategy ie terminal cross, bred heifers, sale bulls or any number of marketing stratigies.

Basic selection standards are fine-- but heres what I think:

(1) picking cattle based on expression of phenotype is sort of a crap shoot unless the cattle are inbred-- pretty much every trait is effected in a positive way by heterosis. That makes for very nice cattle, of course, but it doesn't really make for parents who can do it again.
(2) if you do have a phenotypically outstanding animal who is more than moderately inbred, I'd be fairly suspicious about the genes he actually got. In legal terms, I'd say there is a rebuttable presumption that such an outstanding animal actually got an evolutionarily favorable set of genes, and that he's not so very inbred at all-- his pedigree is, in fact, not an accurate proxy for his genotytpe. The presumption can be rebutted by looking at a bunch of calves, a bunch of similar brothers and sisters, or the animals in his pedigree-- if they are all alike, its good.
(3) in a more than minimally inbred population, it appears to me that one will need to temper his selection standards. Obviously, you still have to select for function, but you gotta remember that its progeny you are after. After all, it's the fruit you are after-- the tree need not be that pretty.

Bob H wrote:

I think that if you have to cull to high of % then you have chosen the wrong line for your enviroment. If you can live with what your culling % then you are on your way to sustainablity. If you need more income from your choice's and your culling % is not the problem of the maternal parents then you need to study to the parts of your marketing strategy ie terminal cross, bred heifers, sale bulls or any number of marketing stratigies.

Bob H, please quantify "to high of %".

Is it safe to assume then that in answer to my question, in your opinion at least, that breeding for homozygosity is not mutually exclusive to visually accessed selection standards in a culling, selecting process?

We have our own value added market direct to retail and consumer which makes our culls profitable in and of themselves.

As regards our annual cow herd cull%, including non pregs, age culls and strucrural culls, it ranges from 10% to 15%.

Mean Spirit, thank you for your reply.

#1, I don't know if you are aware of the Beef Booster program or not, link, but a neighbor of ours that runs 700 to 800 cows has sourced his genetics from them for many years. The beefbooster program is designed and premised on the customers beneifitting from sustained heterosis. Yearly I help at branding and at weaning as well as looking at the cattle routinely as the are adjacent to us, and every year he brands and weans a very good quality even set of calves from a preformance and phenotypic stand point. The parents seem to be doing it repeatedly.

#2 So if genes are not responsible for phenotype what is? Looking at the calves above that all "look" alike it "seems" good!
The contradiction in your fall back to visual appraisal to access whether or not "an animal actually got an "evolutionarily favorable set of genes" and thus a fair rebuttal determining whether his pedigree is an "an accurate proy for his genotytpe",
seems rather blairing. So if I am reading this right you can't use visual assessment of phenotype for selecting breeding stock but you can use it to determine the the quality of breeding stock in accessing the progeny? The logic escapes me.

#3 My adage has always been beauty is as beauty does.

Quote :

Is it safe to assume then that in answer to my question, in your opinion at least, that breeding for homozygosity is not mutually exclusive to visually accessed selection standards in a culling, selecting process?

in the parent stock, yes...