Reflections from LL ©

Will wrote:

Oh D Bigg's I almost forgot. Do you think Traitmaker was soft sided? Never did answer that over on Advantage. I

Will, you'll have to explain to me what this "soft sided" comment means as I have simply no idea what it refers to. I've never associated anything about my bulls with the word soft, I don't want them to have soft hair, soft feet, soft muscles - bulls are meant to be rugged, hard creatures are they not? I was checking cows last night and caught a fight in the bull pen on the way home. A 4 year old propelled a 3 year old sideways over the electric fence, through an old page wire fence and into the next field. I'm sure glad the recipient wasn't "soft sided" or he may have damaged something.

Grassfarmer, don't have time to explain. Already posted a bunch of posts on Advantage and I think I won that discussion when I posted a picture of Traitmaker. Soft sided is a maternal trait in my opinion. I bet the top maternal lines in Tru-Line are soft sided. Might be wrong though. My herdbulls are not hard sided. Soft also bounces off things better than hard.

Bob H, you must think the average commericalman is stupid. You wasted 5 years of your commericalman's life. Wow what a waste. Ever think you might of just bought your bulls from the wrong bull producer, or worse yet you did not know what you were doing and chased a fad?

MK, not my fault if the purebred breeders were doing the puking for me. They will not have to in the future because I will be buying F2 herdbulls from now on. That way no one has to puke. I was looking for a hybrid herd bull who's mother is sired Traveler 23-4. Grandmother Dividend and great grand mother Bando 155. Was not asking for much! Can you explain some, more and less?

Will wrote:

Bob H, you must think the average commericalman is stupid. You wasted 5 years of your commericalman's life. Wow what a waste. Ever think you might of just bought your bulls from the wrong bull producer, or worse yet you did not know what you were doing and chased a fad?

Will , If you want to muddy the water please do it somewhere besides reflections . Thanks in advance. Jon

Is there a source of truly divergent foundation stock which would produce what could qualify as a filial cross?

Traveler, Dividend, Bando, -Brothers, Grandsons, and cousins. Parabolic chain reaction pukation of obsolescence for the cutting edge crowd. Sounds like borderline linebreeding to me.

Jonken, how am I mudding the water?

Borderline linebreeding, you bet!

Will wrote:

MK, not my fault if the purebred breeders were doing the puking for me. They will not have to in the future because I will be buying F2 herdbulls from now on. That way no one has to puke. I was looking for a hybrid herd bull who's mother is sired Traveler 23-4. Grandmother Dividend and great grand mother Bando 155. Was not asking for much! Can you explain some, more and less?

are you a former Leachman CC co-operator Will?
Yeah, commercial men can be very stupid because many follow registered fads with the same reverence as registered breeders..so you are just doing a video to show while you are conducting the auction with the bulls standing right outside? your customers must have short memories...and why see them at all since they are consistent in type and EPD`S...even actual birthweights; 90% or so 88 to 92 lbs...

jonken wrote:

Will wrote:

Bob H, you must think the average commericalman is stupid. You wasted 5 years of your commericalman's life. Wow what a waste. Ever think you might of just bought your bulls from the wrong bull producer, or worse yet you did not know what you were doing and chased a fad?

Will , If you want to muddy the water please do it somewhere besides reflections . Thanks in advance. Jon

Jon, if I can move mountains with this computer mouse, it`ll be no problem to move a molehill all in due time

Will wrote:

Grassfarmer, don't have time to explain. Already posted a bunch of posts on Advantage and I think I won that discussion when I posted a picture of Traitmaker. Soft sided is a maternal trait in my opinion. I bet the top maternal lines in Tru-Line are soft sided. Might be wrong though. My herdbulls are not hard sided. Soft also bounces off things better than hard.

Always in a hurry, no time to explain, bulls to peddle....or is it bullshit to peddle to keep the circus wheel turning? Maybe you should take Jon's suggestion to put your comments in another location - maybe over on 4.9Y would be a better fit for you? Along with the horn tooters, know-it-alls, pedlars and merchandisers.

Will wrote:

Borderline linebreeding, you bet!

Don't that make you want to puke?

Grassfarmer wrote:

Will wrote:

Grassfarmer, don't have time to explain. Already posted a bunch of posts on Advantage and I think I won that discussion when I posted a picture of Traitmaker. Soft sided is a maternal trait in my opinion. I bet the top maternal lines in Tru-Line are soft sided. Might be wrong though. My herdbulls are not hard sided. Soft also bounces off things better than hard.

Always in a hurry, no time to explain, bulls to peddle....or is it bullshit to peddle to keep the circus wheel turning? Maybe you should take Jon's suggestion to put your comments in another location - maybe over on 4.9Y would be a better fit for you? Along with the horn tooters, know-it-alls, pedlars and merchandisers.

But silence is not the native element of the drummer. An average fish can go a longer time out of water than this breed can live without talking. One of them now looked across the table at the grave, flannel-shirted Virginian; he inspected, and came to the imprudent conclusion that he understood his man.


"Good evening," he said briskly.


"Good evening," said the Virginian.


"Just come to town?" pursued the drummer.


"Just come to town," the Virginian suavely assented.


"Cattle business jumping along?" inquired the drummer.


"Oh, fair." And the Virginian took some more corned beef.


"Gets a move on your appetite, anyway," suggested the drummer.


The Virginian drank some coffee. Presently the pretty woman refilled his cup without his asking her.


"Guess I've met you before," the drummer ' stated next.


The Virginian glanced at him for a brief moment.


"Haven't I, now? Ain't I seen you somewhere? Look at me. You been in Chicago, ain't you? You look at me well. Remember Ikey's, don't you?"


"I don't reckon I do."


"See, now! I knowed you'd been in Chicago. Four or five years ago. Or maybe it's two years. Time's nothing to me. But I never forget a face. Yes, sir. Him and me's met at Ikey's, all right." This important point the drummer stated to all of us. We were called to witness how well he had proved old acquaintanceship. "Ain't the world small, though!" he exclaimed complacently. "Meet a man once and you're sure to run on to him again. That's straight. That's no bar-room josh." And the drummer's eye included us all in his confidence. I wondered if he had attained that high perfection when a man believes his own lies.

Will for your information.
The comment of wasting 5 years of my life came from the time 20 or so years ago when I had the paradigm of the Marc research in my mind and that crossbreds were better than straight bred cattle. What they didn't know or tell anyone that the were comparing average staight bred to crossbred cattle which after much learning found that they are the same they are all crossbred so they do compare. If they would have tested trueline maternal cattle with crossbred cattle they could have understood the value of having inbred parentlines, but it does not matter to most socailist people that work for the Government.

If you would like a little history on me I am a Commercial Cattleman that also buys feeder cattle. I handle about 10000 feeders a year. We currently run 1500 mother cows. We also backgrounded 3500 yearlings on grass this winter. What I write on this site is what I see and have saw in the 35 years of being in the cow bussines. My experience is that when you start with true parents you up the % of the good that you want. We backgrounded 900 of our own cattle.We ram them right with the others from all types of the cattle from the Northwest. You might not think that I am very intelligent but I can weigh cattle with the best of them and there is no program that I see compares with what I write. We can't sell Blue Sky here in Idaho we have to weigh our cattle. One more little peice of information for you we finish all of our raised cattle to maximize our true hybred.

One more peice of information the knowledge that has made this possiible came from a smoke filled office in Cowly Wyo. Thank you Larry

Bob H

df wrote:

Bob H,

That is quite remarkable! If I understand you correctly, about 85% of the calving 2-yr-olds are still in the herd until age 10. I suppose you lose ~10% that don't get bred back to calve at 3 and another ~5% that don't get bred back to calve at 4?

df: I assume that I am misinterpreting what you wrote here, but it seems to me that you might be calling Bob a liar?... Please explain.

Bob has impressed me as someone I could learn a lot from. University staff,,, not so much.

Gregory Walker wrote:

Bob has impressed me as someone I could learn a lot from.

I'm with you Greg, Bob got street credit...there ain't no bullshit in those posts coming out of Idaho.

Bob H wrote:

D F I will cover the 2 breed rotation in my second comment.

1 What we have found is that by using Shoshone genetics as our base in this program, with the multiple sire concept to retain vigor that our cowherd is very fertile and productive.

2 About uniformity in a rotation that you talk about the calff crop goes from straight Angus to straight Charolais and all of the crosses in between. What we found was that by using Shoshone femalesl and Charolais bulls we had a much more uniform calf crop that has about 15% out liers or 7.5 to big and 7.5% smaller on the bell curve with about 85% in the middle of the bell curve that you are trying to hit.

3 20 years ago I thought that I could use crossbreds on crossbreds or Industry purebreds but could not stop having the same luck. That was we would sort the heifer calves in the fall and 25%were too big 25% were too little or undesirable and 50% were okay but would grow out to be ununiform. I thought that this was normal until I met Larry. This has since stopped and we can keep about 85% of the Shoshone on Shoshsone heifers with what appears to be 85% of those making it to 10 year old cows.

4 What I feel we have now is a set of highly productive cows that weigh from 1150 to 1300 lbs depending upon age and time of year, That we can use any bull upon to produce and end product for any consumer whether it be for seestock,meat or high end eating.

5 The simplest system that we found to produce crossbred calves and retain enough females was to put the Shoshone bulls in for 14 days then pull them and put in the terminal bulls for 2 heat cycles. We partner with 2 other ranches so the Shoshone bulls are used 3 different times. This gave us enough females to replace the fall out and a uniform set of feeder cattle to feed.

6 If our goal is produce seedstock we put the Shoshone boys with the Shoshone girls and get the little ones. With the short cow numbers in the US this is what we are doing this year.

Bob H from the land of the trucks are here to unload.

Bob, thank you for posting that. You answered questions that I hadn't thought to ask yet. I was intrigued by your method of turning the Shoshone bulls out for 14 d. No doubt that helps to create uniformity in the heifers vs having them born over a longer period of time. And selecting for the individuals that breed back early. It makes a lot of sense to me. Do you find much variation from year to year in the number of cows that are bred in that 14d period? It would make me a little nervous, in case of a real hot stretch of weather during the first 14 days, but maybe you don't have to worry about heat in ID? I'm curoius, what % of your cow herd do you need to replace each year? I am speaking of opens and necessary culls, not selling productive cows.

My idea was to use a terminal sire on the 2 and 3 yr olds (since they are run separate from the old cows) and use maternal lines on the old cows. I figure that is a good place to start, since the old cows are 1)more proven in my environment 2)have been around long enough for me to have a better idea of mothering ability, udder, temperment, etc 3)more likely to carry some of the old maternal blood that used to be more abundant in the herd. I would hope that down the road, as the maternal-sired heifers become more consistent, and the longevity increases while fall-out decreases, I could use fewer maternal/more terminal bulls and have more F1 feeder calves to market or retain ownership on. The idea of having 70%+ of a given year's females still in production at 10 yrs of age is phenomenal. Seeing is believing...I saw Briann's, formerly Mike's, 5018 cow yesterday, old enough to vote and looking half her age. That's incredible!

Briann gave me a Shoshone book...I might be absent from here for a while... Briann, my eyes thank you! My wife on the other hand...well at least she gets to have more time for facebook as a result.

We never try to breed when it is hot we put our bulls in on the 10th of may because of the strength of our grass is at its peak. We winter where the weather as a rule of thumb begins spring on Feb14 and I have lived there 25 years and never seen it not green in March. I have seen it brown in the other 11 months. When we did this we were keeping I think 70 heifers to replace 400 cows. At times it was a struggle because we did not have enough Shoshone cows. Now we keep around 1 20 heifers and breed them for just over 30 days and are able to increase the size of our Shoshone herd which to date if roughly 500. We are in an expansion of our operation so we are going to breed all 500 of those cows back to their dads, Uncles, and Brothers to replace cows that we have bouhgt in the last year. We set around and talk about how much we like the Shoshone Cows but when you buy a large set of cows and turn them out it becomes very apparent that it is not Bullshit. The percentage of weaned calves goes right what bankers use ,not like our Shoshone Cows at all. The truth is tho that it is about being profitable and those boughten cows now look fine,

Alot of what people read from me is from Larry if you read carefully what he has written it is true. I am sure that he still has some paraidgms but if he learns different he will change immediatly. Bob H

Gregory Walker wrote:

df wrote:

Bob H,

That is quite remarkable! If I understand you correctly, about 85% of the calving 2-yr-olds are still in the herd until age 10. I suppose you lose ~10% that don't get bred back to calve at 3 and another ~5% that don't get bred back to calve at 4?

df: I assume that I am misinterpreting what you wrote here, but it seems to me that you might be calling Bob a liar?... Please explain.

Bob has impressed me as someone I could learn a lot from. University staff,,, not so much.

I certainly am not calling Bob a liar. However, I have known lots of people who have stretched the truth to make their point. I got out of marketing for that reason. I realize Bob has lots of cattle and from what I gather, he is quite successful. Some, if not most, of this success must surely be placed on having a structured breeding program of functional, maternal cows whose calves perform well and provide a good profit.

When I hear comments that are pretty far outside of the norm, I do want to know more. The first thing I want to know is if the numbers are accurate, or is this his best guess. In my line of work, you don't get promotions with guesses. You build a reputation with sound science and good data. I know some have got ahead in this field with deception, but even within these walls, that usually comes to an end and badly. I know many see academia as some sort of enemy. As noted in Allan Savory's book, Mr. Savory was told he could either do something about the problem or just shut up. It is the same here. Unfortunately, researchers must go to where the funding is because you don't get a pay raise without bringing in some money for "the man".

But let's get back to the discussion. I don't see that Bob has anything to market, just his experience to share, which is why I continue to read this site. On a different thread, Kent showed the places he has been. I too have been fortunate to travel to a lot of herds and might someday visit Bob. For now, Powell Angus and Keeney Angus are a lot closer and I have been to both places.

So I hope Bob doesn't take my doubt the wrong way. Those numbers are not normal, IMO, and worthy of more discussion.

MK would say you might not be able to learn much in just one visit, and I would agree. However, in my world, we use models to determine if things could work. In fact most people do use models at some level to determine if the enterprise or decision will make money. Without the facts, it is just another Advantage discussion of big cow vs pud which always ends up everybody calling everybody else stupid.

If my comments appear that way, I am truely sorry.

Df I am not sure if those are exact but appear to be fairly close we do not have a 10% fall out from 2 to 3 we are closer to 5 or 6% and if we have a total of 15 that are staight Shoshone out of 500 we start to think something is wrong. We run our cows as cheaply as we know how and have found that Shoshone is remarkabley higher than any thing else we have tried. We will have data back shortly as we never preged and will sell all of the drys by July 8 if you would like to know more. We have some dry 2 yearolds because the manager (me) never read between the lines close enough on last years heifer bulls. Ben Loyning stated it well you can't get more without a cost.

Bob H

Tom D wrote:

Grassfarmer wrote:

Will wrote:

Grassfarmer, don't have time to explain. Already posted a bunch of posts on Advantage and I think I won that discussion when I posted a picture of Traitmaker. Soft sided is a maternal trait in my opinion. I bet the top maternal lines in Tru-Line are soft sided. Might be wrong though. My herdbulls are not hard sided. Soft also bounces off things better than hard.

Always in a hurry, no time to explain, bulls to peddle....or is it bullshit to peddle to keep the circus wheel turning? Maybe you should take Jon's suggestion to put your comments in another location - maybe over on 4.9Y would be a better fit for you? Along with the horn tooters, know-it-alls, pedlars and merchandisers.

But silence is not the native element of the drummer. An average fish can go a longer time out of water than this breed can live without talking. One of them now looked across the table at the grave, flannel-shirted Virginian; he inspected, and came to the imprudent conclusion that he understood his man.


"Good evening," he said briskly.


"Good evening," said the Virginian.


"Just come to town?" pursued the drummer.


"Just come to town," the Virginian suavely assented.


"Cattle business jumping along?" inquired the drummer.


"Oh, fair." And the Virginian took some more corned beef.


"Gets a move on your appetite, anyway," suggested the drummer.


The Virginian drank some coffee. Presently the pretty woman refilled his cup without his asking her.


"Guess I've met you before," the drummer ' stated next.


The Virginian glanced at him for a brief moment.


"Haven't I, now? Ain't I seen you somewhere? Look at me. You been in Chicago, ain't you? You look at me well. Remember Ikey's, don't you?"


"I don't reckon I do."


"See, now! I knowed you'd been in Chicago. Four or five years ago. Or maybe it's two years. Time's nothing to me. But I never forget a face. Yes, sir. Him and me's met at Ikey's, all right." This important point the drummer stated to all of us. We were called to witness how well he had proved old acquaintanceship. "Ain't the world small, though!" he exclaimed complacently. "Meet a man once and you're sure to run on to him again. That's straight. That's no bar-room josh." And the drummer's eye included us all in his confidence. I wondered if he had attained that high perfection when a man believes his own lies.

Tom, those demerits are stacking up! You don't want detention do you?

Will, seems you ask questions that you have already answered. Answering your own questions is a time saver for sure.

Begs the question why you waste your time asking.

I went back to the traitmaker photo and decided you are right, but you already knew that.

KABOOM!!

YOU WIN AGAIN!

GOOD JOB WILL!

D Biggs, glad to hear we agree on Soft Sided cattle. You asked and I delivered and now you are rude. Its not about right or wrong. No problem though. I'm use to it. Have a good day.

Tom D., totally clueless what your point is.

Bob H. first off I think you have a good program. Why did it take 5 years to find out you were on the wrong path with your crossbreeding program? Could you explain your crossbreeding program? 1500 cows and running 3500 calves on grass this winter you must own a lot of land. Or do you run on government land? If you do run on government land what do you pay? I also draw on 35 year of ranching experience to reach my conclusions.

Grassfarmer, ask D Biggs which thread at Advantage he found the picture of Traitmaker and you will find your answers. It will be easier that way.