2017 Keeney Angus Bull Sale

sire weigt adg hotcarwt dress% fat rea rea/cwt yg Usda yg % retail prod marb ..chqgrade.... carprice
abs 1207 3.52 749.... 62.1.. 0.54 12.9 1.73.. 3.08 2.7.... 63.03........ sm11....... 67.00%........ 173.95
wulf 1185 3.17 748... 63.1.. 0.65 14.4 1.92.. 2.8 2.2.... 64.23........ sl95.......... 50.00%......... 173.22

some heifer feedlot results...bottom line, be sure and AI breed to those top ABS SIMMENTAL EPD BULLS and create your cows with epds too...that will
gross you 73 cents/cwt carcass{$6/HD} over using a KA maternal bred cow bred terminally to average wulf limmy bulls...

More and better data coming...bearing out what I thought already...

here`s the bottom line based on 13hd 977 steers versus 10hd wulf limmy sired sires from the same kind of cows as the 977`s make...
the Wulf steers were worth $70/hd more {gross} at delivery{might have been up to 21days older on average} ...the Wulf sired steers returned $80/hd more {net} than the 977`s in the feedlot...so, the $70 minus the extra cost of growing 70 lbs {no cow cost difference} to weaning + $80 = est $120/hd advantage to using terminal bulls on moderate, maternal cows when fed to finish; same days on feed...versus straight maternals 977, etc...
it should be noted the terminal limmy bulls were "average" of the wulf genepool...quick glance shows only one Angus bull in the test with a 97 yw epd equaling the wulf bulls in the feedlot...but they weighed 100lb less at delivery , same age...and were from simmental angus cross cows...
for the curious, 30% of both 977 and wulf were cab...wulf crosses made the coveted 80% yg 2 or less, 80% low choice or more...the two failures select plus...
on to the next experiment, low birth, high $b straight angus terminal bulls on maternal cows versus the maternal bulls ...it will be a while...

977 steers gain 3 lb /day while Wulf gained 3.5...
977 finished at 1120, Wulf at 1270...same age, same fat...rea in 977 excellent, same per cwt as Wulf...
simple indications of the value of maternal-terminal system approach...
in general, make cows from breeding yearlings, 2 yr olds maternal...terminal the rest ...marketing challenges having two kinds etc...

good to know, sure this will add no value to my stored semen. am happy to own many daughters and 2 full brothers - son's of 977.
maternal worth more then terminal, in my non EPD, non pedigree, non i50k or 50khd opinion.

Mike GREAT NEWS, happy for your success....less marketing challenges having two kinds, more opportunity.

best thing I did was to return 977
4th best thing I did was getting 977

hard to share when nobody wants simple

977 more proven than ever for what he was bred to do, any supposed deficiency covered with the terminal mating for more from less...back to the two sheets of paper with holes, each completely covers the other so no profit leaks out...

MKeeney wrote:

977 more proven than ever for what he was bred to do, any supposed deficiency covered with the terminal mating for more from less...back to the two sheets of paper with holes, each completely covers the other so no profit leaks out...

wye killed 6 steers, {top} bottom end  purebreds I`m sure...977, 13 hd,bottom

age.........         final wt.......     fat....      rea...       qualitygrade.............   yield grade
15 month........ 1050........        .55...     11.3...        5ch-, 1ch{1cab}..........     3.3
15 mo..............1120.............   .56........12.6..........8ch-,4ch{4cab}, 1se...2.8
conclusions...epds are pretty accurate for growth...

critiques are welcome...

Based on the principles below, my "purebred breeding" way has evolved to...
"the principles of the successful breeder have been exceedingly simple. He isolates
and fixes a good type by careful selection and close breeding. The difficulty lies not
so much in knowing the principles as in applying them."
"in judging the value of a pedigree, it is, of course, important to give as much weight to the
inferior animals represented as to the champions. unfortunately, it is not possible to learn much
of the characteristics of any but the latter class. The rest of the pedigree consists merely of names.
A knowledge of the methods and ideals is of great assistance in giving substance to these names."
Sewell Wright circa 1920
I no longer rely on any names {pedigrees}, just a simple methodology of
1...a closed herd, selected with a MATERNAL priority, , the names become the same while making the
most informed selection, from your own experience and knowledge of YOUR own genepool..
2..a short breeding season {30 days} for the purebreds, crossbreed the failures for sustained commercial profit...
3..select bulls from the older cows, the "stayers" versus the "sprinters"; the cows with fewer problems
4..select bulls average to above herd average while avoiding outliers to maintain {not increase} the phenotypic production level of the purebred
5..use multiple young sires to breed "the herd to the herd" ; moderately increasing prepotency with generational turnover. A practical benefit is growing a yearling bull into a commercially preferred 2 yr old for sale
6..knowing "The proper cow size and type will automatically adapt to the environment that is provided" something
like the picture is becoming predominant
7..whatever epd levels evolve, they will be the form {level} that follows function, and I need know no more...neither
would the buyer who believes the selection program is paramount to predictability and functionality in maternal breeding...
8..if the growth of the crossbred progeny sired by select terminal bulls is not enough, then the cow environment must be
changed to accommodate more cow
9..time, not money, will be your most limiting factor; but it always has been for a breeder...
10..if the desired phenotypic level cannot be maintained from within the herd over a long span of time, the last resort
is to outcross with the same type and begin again using the same methodology...
11...be prepared to live on commercial dollars; few will appreciate your product, but some will...developing a market for
reality flies in the face of human nature...

Don't see any thing to disagree with. Good plan.

RobertMac wrote:

Don't see any thing to disagree with. Good plan.

close to the X-strain program that Larry evolved to from prior Tru-line ambitions, we used to discuss privately
and here a lot about whether to pick the average, or above average bull to replenish the strain...I`m prone to the good doer, LL was more for selecting to the average
the 30 day breeding season more closely mirrors your thoughts than Larry`s Robert...he was never a proponent of
such{ discussed here often} and I tend to agree it won`t improve fertility much...but I cannot come up with a better method,
and no way to improve the fertility and utility of the later calving cow offspring than crossbreed her with maternals for replacements,
or terminal and be done with it...I`m anxious to see what the Casey`s do for crossbred cows, but many would be well served using Herefords...

MKeeney wrote:

critiques are welcome...

Based on the principles below, my "purebred breeding" way has evolved to...
"the principles of the successful breeder have been exceedingly simple. He isolates
and fixes a good type by careful selection and close breeding. The difficulty lies not
so much in knowing the principles as in applying them."
"in judging the value of a pedigree, it is, of course, important to give as much weight to the
inferior animals represented as to the champions. unfortunately, it is not possible to learn much
of the characteristics of any but the latter class. The rest of the pedigree consists merely of names.
A knowledge of the methods and ideals is of great assistance in giving substance to these names."
Sewell Wright circa 1920
I no longer rely on any names {pedigrees}, just a simple methodology of
1...a closed herd, selected with a MATERNAL priority, , the names become the same while making the
most informed selection, from your own experience and knowledge of YOUR own genepool..
2..a short breeding season {30 days} for the purebreds, crossbreed the failures for sustained commercial profit...
3..select bulls from the older cows, the "stayers" versus the "sprinters"; the cows with fewer problems
4..select bulls average to above herd average while avoiding outliers to maintain {not increase} the phenotypic production level of the purebred
5..use multiple young sires to breed "the herd to the herd" ;  moderately increasing  prepotency with generational turnover. A practical benefit is growing a yearling bull into a commercially preferred 2 yr old for sale
6..knowing "The proper cow size and type will automatically adapt to the environment that is provided" something
like the picture is becoming predominant
7..whatever epd levels evolve, they will be the form {level} that follows function, and I need know no more...neither
would the buyer who believes the selection program is paramount to predictability and functionality in maternal breeding...
8..if the growth of the crossbred progeny sired by select terminal bulls is not enough, then the cow environment must be
changed to accommodate more cow
9..time, not money, will be your most limiting factor; but it always has been for a breeder...
10..if the desired phenotypic level cannot be maintained from within the herd over a long span of time, the last resort
is to outcross with the same type and begin again using the same methodology...
11...be prepared to live on commercial dollars; few will appreciate your product, but some will...developing a market for
reality flies in the face of human nature...

John Nyquist checked in this morning with a preg report...16 opens out of 360 cows; no KA sired two`s open...I guess we`ll just keep putting the boys with the girls via the steps above...
edit regarding point 8...the environment has not been changed...

I`ll be working some cows on Wednesday on a historical ranch...glad to have sold them some bulls, but the friendship far exceeds that......meanwhile...

http://www.verobeachdriftwood.com/images/BriefHistoryofWaldoSexton.pdf

So if anybody read about Waldo and wondered what a Guinea bull is..

As seen in Chapter 3, dwarfism in 20th century American range cattle was
seen as financially detrimental for beef production and great efforts were made to
eradicate the carrier animals. However, a contemporary study of Puerto Rican cattle
(Arrillaga 1949) suggested that female dwarves of the indigenous criollo cattle might
be more productive than conventional breeds in the mountainous regions of tropical
America. Dwarfism would appear to have been a trait in the cattle introduced to the
Americas by the Spanish settlers as a further criollo breed, the Florida Cracker, also
has a dwarf variant known as the Guinea. Guinea cows were retained because of the
high milk yield for body size but if mated to a Guinea bull could produce bulldog
calves.

It's like walking through history here in Vero...dinner last night with Sean and Sharon was a walk through history , with a full grasp of the future, and a son already engaged to take it further...tired of paying 6000 for bulls, they will use their own, when I mentioned using terminals, Sean just frowned and said he loved making good cows too much to venture off on another path...must be the artist in him , when he first came to our place , he had never sold a single work.. now, a traveling exhibit titled The Art of Life is quite popular, and I can't wait to delve into the newly published book of poetry...Blood Writings..
I thought my tru line talk to the cattlemans association a few years ago had amounted to little more than a guided vacation of cattle ranches, but now another tru liner type doing his thing...next stop, Deseret...where the brother in law of my best customer is the environmental lawyer...you don't throw orange peelings in streams here, let alone coal waste. .

Laughing at the "pedigree is a path" club...is it still termed a path when following leads to a different destination each time ? Seems a more proper term would be "lost"

MKeeney wrote:

critiques are welcome...

Based on the principles below, my "purebred breeding" way has evolved to...
"the principles of the successful breeder have been exceedingly simple. He isolates
and fixes a good type by careful selection and close breeding. The difficulty lies not
so much in knowing the principles as in applying them."
"in judging the value of a pedigree, it is, of course, important to give as much weight to the
inferior animals represented as to the champions. unfortunately, it is not possible to learn much
of the characteristics of any but the latter class. The rest of the pedigree consists merely of names.
A knowledge of the methods and ideals is of great assistance in giving substance to these names."
Sewell Wright circa 1920
I no longer rely on any names {pedigrees}, just a simple methodology of
1...a closed herd, selected with a MATERNAL priority, , the names become the same while making the
most informed selection, from your own experience and knowledge of YOUR own genepool..
2..a short breeding season {30 days} for the purebreds, crossbreed the failures for sustained commercial profit...
3..select bulls from the older cows, the "stayers" versus the "sprinters"; the cows with fewer problems
4..select bulls average to above herd average while avoiding outliers to maintain {not increase} the phenotypic production level of the purebred
5..use multiple young sires to breed "the herd to the herd" ;  moderately increasing  prepotency with generational turnover. A practical benefit is growing a yearling bull into a commercially preferred 2 yr old for sale
6..knowing "The proper cow size and type will automatically adapt to the environment that is provided" something
like the picture is becoming predominant
7..whatever epd levels evolve, they will be the form {level} that follows function, and I need know no more...neither
would the buyer who believes the selection program is paramount to predictability and functionality in maternal breeding...
8..if the growth of the crossbred progeny sired by select terminal bulls is not enough, then the cow environment must be
changed to accommodate more cow
9..time, not money, will be your most limiting factor; but it always has been for a breeder...
10..if the desired phenotypic level cannot be maintained from within the herd over a long span of time, the last resort
is to outcross with the same type and begin again using the same methodology...
11...be prepared to live on commercial dollars; few will appreciate your product, but some will...developing a market for
reality flies in the face of human nature...

Topic Next Topic
hbrdv
USA
437 Posts

Posted - 02/28/2017 : 22:19:09 Show Profile Reply with Quote
Just looking at my new Wye angus sale catalog. For me a real special point in time in the spring. I look forward to their tape every year with the birds in the background and the squeaking gates. They're featuring a bull this year called Claymont. Quite a nice looking bull in the picture. He has a weaning ratio of 127 and a yearling ratio of 123. Now over the years I've heard people criticize the Wye program for underlining the performance merits of their offerings. Because they say, why buy a Wye bull for its performance. Just buy it for its low birthweight and maternal lineage and hooey on the performance. If Wye isn't entitled to performance records and everybody else is, how does that square? Excluding the performance naysayers of course, breeders who do not believe in performance at all. In another topic we're talking about a bull's ability to pass on good health and strong immunity to barnyard diseases. My contention is you cannot take health away from a bull's ability to excel in performance. So in effect, I believe you're also measuring the healthiness of a bull by measuring his performance. Many things go into measuringin the gain ratios of a growing bull, not just the obvious appetite, feed conversion, etc. Just curious about others on this site that either agree with me or have a different opinion

Good supportive post by Dennis of my current methodology, completely agree conceptually. ..but I would, given Larry's teaching based on experience, avoided the feature bull if maternal was the priority...

some pics from the visit with Sean Sexton, poet, artist , author, historian, environmentalist, humanitarian, cattle breeder and one cautious cowgirl...making for the most enjoyable afternoon since I last sat on the porch with LL in Red Lodge...

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1276118229102206&set=pcb.1276118959102133&type=3&theater

three more bull calls...
but laughing this morning more that some of the greatest pleasure comes from the calls I no longer get...ran across the London
piece, so appropriate...

WHEN a man journeys into a far country, he must be prepared to forget many of the things he has learned, and to acquire such customs as are inherent with existence in the new land; he must abandon the old ideals and the old gods, and oftentimes he must reverse the very codes by which his conduct has hitherto been shaped. To those who have the protean faculty of adaptability, the novelty of such change may even be a source of pleasure; but to those who happen to be hardened to the ruts in which they were created, the pressure of the altered environment is unbearable, and they chafe in body and in spirit under the new restrictions which they do not understand. This chafing is bound to act and react, producing divers evils and leading to various misfortunes. It were better for the man who cannot fit himself to the new groove to return to his own country; if he delay too long, he will surely die.

Jack London

when I asked Larry long ago how in just 13 years breeding cattle, he surpassed Wye in performance using Wye bulls, the answer
was "I had other genetics to work with they didn`t have"
and today, so do I...the notion hit me to buy a Wye bull this spring just to prove the point, but then the reality of you can prove nothing to those too blind to see...if 1000 yearling weights with a half inch fat shows nothing, then neither can I...

Home again and needing a pic to accent the message, I captured the first good pose I encountered...she's a nobody, and the less she stands out in the population, the more satisfying the program. I failed to mention in my "program" post that I register nothing anymore, a pedigree path that leads to varying destinations each trip followed is too much akin to being lost, more a ticket to a rarity game created by names, numbers, and pretty pictures than the business of consistently creating commercial maternal usefulness.
Sport occupies many venues; and creates maxims like "the winner takes it all", "winning isn't everything, it`s the only thing"...Since my paradigm loses more often than it wins versus tradition, I`m more inclined to like "it`s not whether you win or lose, it`s how you play the game."...making a commercial profit with my own cattle in my own way is admittedly kinda like winning a participation trophy, but all I really ask for beyond that is money for green fees And you will have saved enough to join me

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1281729235207772&set=a.948548291859203.1073741834.100001121223406&type=3&theater

This is our heifer calving facility; it is enabled by OUR genetic selection program...we calve at 2, no, we don't weigh calves at birth, or use epds, we use OUR bulls...heifer replacements from heifers offer the best opportunity to create the maternal side of the maternal-terminal system approach...sexed semen commercially priced relative to production income would revolutionize production, but alas, since we operate in a supply-demand system, the greatest beneficiary would be the consumer, a constant in all research and production improvement...


https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1286693441378018&set=pcb.1286712344709461&type=3&theater

I enjoy reading about human nature; imo it has as much influence on registered cattle breeding directions as commercial economics
or breeding research...I can apply the following thoughts to cattle breeding, from Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind...

quote" If happiness is determined by expectations, then two pillars of our society – mass media and the advertising industry – may unwittingly
be depleting the globe’s reservoirs of contentment. If you were an eighteen-year-old youth in a small village 5,000 years ago you’d probably think
you were good-looking because there were only fifty other men in your village and most of them were either old, scarred and wrinkled, or still little
kids. But if you are a teenager today you are a lot more likely to feel inadequate. Even if the other guys at school are an ugly lot, you don’t measure
yourself against them but against the movie stars, athletes and supermodels you see all day on television, Facebook and giant billboards.” end quote...

It took me over twenty years {cira 64 to 87} to discard the Angus Journal; if it takes a contrarian that long, good chance many never will; and besides,
there is money to be made in creating illusions ; ask David Copperfield. So like the teenager, I once would have been hesitant to picture this sampling
of my bulls, no bedding, no clipping, never washed, never fat, and not the best at anything beyond making the cows that have made me independent
beyond attitude. However, I was blessed with the best of breeding advice, and followed it once I got past the smart phase, and let common sense
and courage take over. Common sense and courage cannot be bought, but our bulls can be...around 30 for sale beginning March 20.


https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1288209981226364&set=pcb.1288211154559580&type=3&theater

We sell the unwashed, un-fattened (and likely underpriced) variety too as you know Mike. Finding it easier all the time, selling most sight unseen to customers across the prairies. Could have sold twice what we had this year and already have half of next year's spoken for.

Dropped of some feeders at the sale barn today ready for tomorrow's sale. Lots of Simmental bulls penned up there for a 3-breeder collective sale on Tuesday. Big fat yearlings all fed and clipped - they don't have much covered accommodation at this auction so they are sitting in outside bedded pens. Was about -15F with windchill and they were leading them up one at a time to a trimming chute to blow them out with the big hairdryers. What is that all about  Hard to believe these people operate in the same market we do - It's like a different world.

that`s good news; no one more deserving...I have to be under-priced to sell, but neither do I spend much...and part of the spending has been more to promote principle instead of
promotion, that failed effort ends with this crop of bulls...the only game I play will be here...



a game you cannot win, all you can do is play...but everyday here, is a winning day