Too small.--How small.

Jack,

You have hit the nail on the head for me.

Over the past several, several years. Basically since 1992, we have been selecting bulls exclusively for hiefers.

We joked we had three critiea for selecting bulls.

1. Low birth weight
2. Low birth weight
3. Black Angus

I don't think that we have purchased a bull with a BW EPD of over 2 ever. I would also guess that we have purchased the majority of bulls with a bw of 0.0 or lower.

In doing this I have seen more of our cattle get the look of the top cow. I agree with Grass Farmer, Frailer. While we have sent the calf puller to the museum :cheers . We have created a non-easy doing, frail cow. Generally, winter does away with ultra frail ones. I will agree the cows like the top pictured don't seem to have it, what ever it is.

So how do I get an easy-fleshing, productive cow with the goal of decent calves.

Basically, I like the general shape of the bottom cow. Is there anyway to get one made to a 5/6 scale. Or is that some sort of Dexter/Low Line thing.

Jack, thank you, your insight and camera magic are helping me.

Mike, in the vicinity of have a meeting of the minds with Jack.


However, then the question I have is. How do

In my opinion extreme calving ease angus bulls are TERMINAL. Just like the Wagyu's we are using on our heifers this year. The longevity type females here mostly come from sires/dams with a little more birth and bone to them, not ugly raw bone just a little more. I have stacked caving ease like Mike is saying and it gets awfuly deer like in a few generations and you better be damn careful what you breed them back to as heifers as they are completely limited on what they can give birth to.

Ben, in the vicinity of only having one cent to give.

We raise commercial cows. I have seen our calves and don't like the idea of saving our own calves.

I think the whole low birth wieght curvebender thing stacked after a couple generations reminds me of the kid that was 6'0" in the seventh grade. All frame no meat. No strength. Frail.

Mike

I agree Ben and I think the tendency is to use some big, massive, heavy birth weight bull to try to fix this fast and then you have a new and maybe a worse wreck on your hands. Even in the cows that I feel I bred wrong and ended up with the wrong type of cows, I can still find some good things about them so in your quest to change them don't over look the good that is there already. You can't change them without changing them. LL

Ian I don't know about the organ thing. It could be but if that is the case than that bull that sired the thinner cow passed that defect on to his daughters because most of them were that way. I would lean more toward the masculinity isssue in the bull though. I will be very interested in seeing what these guys get for daughters out of Final Answer. I'm betting the same type of cow just based on what that bull looks like. If you turned him out with bunch of bulls that looked like DV's 7129 bull this summer, he'd spend his summer picking flowers.

Jack, but what do I know?

mikejd4020 wrote:

We raise commercial cows. I have seen our calves and don't like the idea of saving our own calves.

I think the whole low birth wieght curvebender thing stacked after a couple generations reminds me of the kid that was 6'0" in the seventh grade. All frame no meat. No strength. Frail.

Mike

Easy now. I was 6 ft tall and weighed 85 pounds in the 5th grade but I preferred to think of myself as wiry.

Jack still wiry, just a little heavier gauge now.

Jack McNamee wrote:

Easy now. I was 6 ft tall and weighed 85 pounds in the 5th grade but I preferred to think of myself as wiry.

Yeah, but you were 15.

Quote :

So how do I get an easy-fleshing, productive cow with the goal of decent calves.

Go back up to his post and see how the described the sire of the better cow.

Jack, I apologize for the big skinny comment. I used a poor analogy.

The question I have is how do the calves from both the frail cow and the beefer cow differ. I wouldn't have the record keeping ability to answer a question like that, you might. Do you think frail cow will always pass on frailer looking cows. As a nine will she prehaps grow out of the funk with age. Assuming she is a comin 3.

How about Keeneyes comment was the frailer cow supposed to be larger and just never got there.

I also agree with you guys, if on the skinner type cattle a guy was to throw in a huge massive high birth wieght bull. I think the hole might just get deeper.

Mike

Jack, I agree with you and did not mean to imply that the use of "powered up" bull would solve all of your problems. I just meant more bone and size as compared to frail type cattle. Instead of trying to select sires to fix my problems like I used to, I now try to select bulls to moderate the problems and hopefully someday I can then "fix" those traits that I was moderating. I agree that even in my least favorite cattle here there are some good parts and pieces and try to remind myself of that every day. On the other hand there are some less desirable parts and pieces on each and every one of my favorites. I guess you can never have it all in your cattle those pesky damned trade-offs again.

Mike John Deere 4020, I think we all have a tendancy to look at our own cattle and not give them enough credit for what they are, rather we or at least I tend to run my own down sometimes for what they are not. Bottomline is they don't have to be the best or the greatest they just have to make you money in your management system.

Ben, in the vicinity of two ornery boys who need some Dad attention.

I am posting this picture for Rod...he will comment..

This cow in the picture, is 7-8 yrs. weighing 1250-1300#'s. She is 11 yrs. old this spring and while not carrying the condition she once did weighs 12-1250. Her mother preg tested open when she was 8-9 yrs. old. Pounded out she weighed 850#'s. She was always thin and frail. "150's" mother was never sorted off to the hospital bunch because she couldn't winter out. She was in a set of cows that I wintered out on $12.00 worth of supplement and poor water. She was never pleasing to look at, until you saw the hfr. calf she had at her side. I don't remember her ever having a bull calf. I kept every hfr. calf she had as a replacement and most are still here today. She was never bred to a so called "Power bull". They seemed to always have a "Yellow tag" and come from over the mtn. I kept a bull calf out of the "150" cow this yr. to use on my replacement hfrs. The cow gives too much milk maybe and could have a bit better udder, but she is still here.

Nice cow, was her dam in average condition when sold? Not that it matters much as there is so many environmental factors that come into play as well as luck or lack of and although we can look at population trends for some perspective there will always be exceptions that in the end will breed to the average of their ancestry if kept under relatively the same management and environment.

When I look back at the short time I’ve spent with beef cows, I would say I have had more smaller frailer cows live the longest even though I have had bigger ones as well... Both big and small in my imagination have similar skeletal build, but the smaller group seems to take the lead, not so much through genetic superiority but though some sort of adversity early on in life that through surviving tend to be strong minded never give up types and seem to pass that attitude down to their offspring. These same cattle tend to be a bit of a pain for me as they don’t conform well to general management rules and time is money

I tried to pic to average looking cows. I have some frailer and some beefer. I thought these two were average.

This red tag is a 6.




Here is also another no namer.



Mike

The red tag raised a decent calf. I have no clue about no namer.

here`s the cure to that frail cow business...no, not big belly genetics, corn...also the best investment a bull seller can make...even those forage test bulls...I notice the egyptian king says he still feeds no grain ; mostly hay, grain by-products aren`t grain I guess...what a farce; since corn silage is primarily a 12 ft high grass, I guess I oughta call it grass too...
I was wondering how I could control these dang bulls to walk past the camera like gentlemen show bulls...corn seems to be the best thing to slow`em down walking as well...I remember a big pot bellied bull I had here once weight 1300 plus at a year...really thought I had something...he was so disproprotional , he couldn`t breed a cow once in every ten mounts... oh well, just collect them I guess...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PImSXdsQJXI&feature=related

any animal taken out of confinement and put on grass dont know what or how to act.

rross wrote:

This cow in the picture, is 7-8 yrs. weighing 1250-1300#'s. She is 11 yrs. old this spring and while not carrying the condition she once did weighs 12-1250. Her mother preg tested open when she was 8-9 yrs. old. Pounded out she weighed 850#'s. She was always thin and frail. "150's" mother was never sorted off to the hospital bunch because she couldn't winter out. She was in a set of cows that I wintered out on $12.00 worth of supplement and poor water. She was never pleasing to look at, until you saw the hfr. calf she had at her side. I don't remember her ever having a bull calf. I kept every hfr. calf she had as a replacement and most are still here today. She was never bred to a so called "Power bull". They seemed to always have a "Yellow tag" and come from over the mtn. I kept a bull calf out of the "150" cow this yr. to use on my replacement hfrs. The cow gives too much milk maybe and could have a bit better udder, but she is still here.

$12.00 as a total winter feed expenditure, hard to compete with that. What did you spend the $12.00 on?

The cow is in good shape.

DB

Dylan,

I tried a product called "Roughage Buster". The cows did not like it, so they ended up not eating much. The pasture was remote and in accessable during the winter, except with a 4-wheeler. So I sulled up like a bull with a bastard calf and wouldn't feed them anything different. It was the first big test for me as to what the Shoshone cattle could handle, given a limited supplemental winter feed.

I expect/hope most of the cows to be in that condition.

Rod

Where are you located? Is this winter normal for you so far? When do your cows start calving?

We ran on cornstalks with no protein supplement for years and I guess was to dumb to know that they required blocks or tubs to survive

mjd4020,
Been away for a while, just checked back in.

My original base herd of SimAngus cows (linebred for ~15 yrs) averaged (based on sale weights of cull cows over the past 5-6 years) 1200 lb.; had a few that topped 1400, but they were 'outliers' with some Holstein back in the mix.
Frame score - I dunno, I don't measure 'em. Guessing, I'd say most are mid- 5's, may be a few 6 FS.
Daughters retained from the first Angus bull we purchased when we came back to using Angus sires were/are, in many cases, larger-framed than their 3/8-7/16 Simmental dams. Don't know whether to chalk that up to heterosis, or just overcoming inbreeding suppression. ;>)

But, a high percentage of the daughters retained from our foray into using NBPT D806 are well under 1000 lb, in good flesh, and probably 4 FS or smaller. Sold one 2-yr old D806 this fall that delivered a dead calf and wouldn't accept a rejected calf, at a weight of 875. That's just too little; and there are several more out there that aren't any bigger.

Current preference here is for an 1100-1200# cow, probably 5-5.5 frame, but I don't squinch up too much at something that looks like a 6. 4-frame is just smaller than I want to use, based on the lack of 'grow' I've experienced on my short trip down that road. There may be some 4-frame bulls that'll work for me, but D806 wasn't it.

We rotational graze through 20 five-acre paddocks, from Feb through October - 1-3 days/paddock, depending upon forage growth, and limit-feed ~10-15# hay and 8# modified distiller's grain/hd/day from mid-late Oct to Feb in two 10-acre sacrifice paddocks.

This is about the average of what I have.



This is kind of what I want. I think she is a 05 model.



The problem is, it seems I am getting to much of these. Now this is an extreme headed to Micky D's example.


I don't know what is wrong with the cow in the last picture. I think half of it is her fault and 75% of it is my fault.

Mike

mikejd4020 wrote:

The problem is, it seems I am getting to much of these. Now this is an extreme headed to Micky D's example.


I don't know what is wrong with the cow in the last picture. I think half of it is her fault and 75% of it is my fault.

Mike

She looks just like the one that is not a holstein to me. Nobody really likes to show their failures, just talk about them instead. I applaud you for showing your failures. The first step to solving the problem is admitting you have one. I think their are 11 other steps but I can't ever get past this one.


Bootheel


ps. she does have a nice tail though, so that is always a plus

mikejd4020 wrote:

This is about the average of what I have.



This is kind of what I want. I think she is a 05 model.



The problem is, it seems I am getting to much of these. Now this is an extreme headed to Micky D's example.


I don't know what is wrong with the cow in the last picture. I think half of it is her fault and 75% of it is my fault.

Mike

Being new, young, and naive I am not sure if I can add much, but I have two ideas that have crossed my mind.

1. There has been discussion about metabolic size. Could this be part of the problem? She looks like the average but requires more than her fair share of the food in order to stay in the herd. If you have selected for the high milk production refer to Grassfarmer's post, because it sounds like that could be a majority of the answer.

2. The other idea that comes to mind for me is the surface area required to maintain. If we follow nature, there is an average surface area required by animals to survive the winter. It is the reason the deer in my area are larger than the deer in yours. Is there much difference in the general build of the cattle? Is the "failure" cow narrower or shorter or longer than the average cattle you raise?

Like I said new and young, so may be lost already!

JSelte wrote:

2. The other idea that comes to mind for me is the surface area required to maintain. If we follow nature, there is an average surface area required by animals to survive the winter. It is the reason the deer in my area are larger than the deer in yours. Is there much difference in the general build of the cattle? Is the "failure" cow narrower or shorter or longer than the average cattle you raise?

Like I said new and young, so may be lost already!

And where are you at that has these monster deer?

I thought every hunter in the country came to eastern Montana or Saskatchewan because of the big deer... Anyway thats what it seems like during hunting season....