When is terminal too terminal?

We have a small starting yard. Some of the calves in it are owned by me. I have an order buyer picking them up at local barns. It's becoming increasing hard to put gain on these calves. Today especially, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. Mainstream bulls are mostly terminal. The majority have a negative $EN value and high milk. This sure makes for hard doing daughters but how does this impact their sons, the steers in feedlots? Does it make their energy requirements higher in order for them to gain a pound? There's a lot of talk about the female side of this but no one mentions the steers. What say you?

Tough question, maybe not meeting their needs at an early enough age to be able to fully express their capabilities? ,,,,,causing general unthriftyness?

If they come in here right off the cow, how much "Corn or Grain or Creep feed" do I have to provide to meet their nutritional requirements? And, the big question......Can I afford it?

My consulting fees are terribly high, for their worth, but the Doctor must ask more specifics from the patient. Are the calves poor, in flesh, eating well, fat and dumpy, or just not eating and gaining weight? Yes we are internet experts, but we need data dang it!!!! to solve all the worlds problems

Your point CC highlights something folks like Dennis Voss and Mean Spirit have been pointing out in some of there posts. Levels of production and performance must be sustainable in our typical environment. A first calf heifer can only handle so much calf so to overload her with more birth and growth than environment and the heifer can sustain is foolish. I would guess many on this site have sampled genetics that would represent higher growth values and have found no increase in performance and maybe less. I have always found less. We couldn't feed that potential. Factor in the manipulation and cheating and maybe some of those cattle are not at all what the numbers say. +40 yearling weight cattle would make better cows and better calves in your yard. + 30 milk means dairy and we know they are the optimum beef and feeding animals. I think the answer to your second post and question is lots and no. Guys selling $4000 dollar bulls can so there you go.

This'll be thread drift, but I don't care that much. Reading a book now about trying to be more grateful for all of the gifts we receive, including the bad stuff. Which is a pretty hard thing to do, obviously. Anyway, there was a chapter on how expectations kill relationships. I enjoyed reading Horse Butte's explanation on 4.9 re why the Eastern Colorado bull seller of note has been so successful. I think it boils down to this-- he actually sells acceptable bulls in working condition. They don't die. They breed cows. They do it for several years. That's the guts about why it works. The small cattle story that goes along with it is largely bullshit, but it's bullshit that doesn't really raise expectations all that much-- nobody is buying a 900lb yearling and expecting to raise high performing cattle. Lowered expectations result in far fewer failures. His trick is that the story results in lower expectations more subtly than most of us can do it-- when we do it, we get paid for the lowered expectation (ie, less)-- he manages to do it and still get a premium. It's an outstanding trick, kinda like jujitsu.

I guess I should add that I don't personally approve of the trick. Those folks keep coming back because the bulls work ok, I think, but they are definitely being tricked.

I agree with you MS. I am firmly in the not feeding bulls hard camp. But I would never claim that my bulls will sire 3 frame cattle, especially if they were from 4&5 frame genetics I also am opposed to the Our bulls can do everything crowd. Some of these call Mike and Dennis dishonest. I have seen nothing that would make me think that M and D are dishonest, on the contrary, I have found them to be painfully honest from time to time.