wall hangers

Many days I cared for our nation's richest and poorest children side-by-side.  To me, their similarities where remarkable with regard to their sense of entitlement and lack of empathy. It seems to me that a society's well-being is directly proportional to the size of its middle-class. Our middle-class is shrinking...and look what is happening to us. So, in this regard, the Tru-Line concept of minimizing the outliers applies to us humans too. The outliers are not a pleasant bunch to deal with.

(outsidethebox)

If you have a complaint about humans, look at the reason.  

THEY have been told they are entitled for 100 years.  Schools, politicians, Unions. That attitude has exploded in my lifetime.  Pretty much parallels the debt.  I guess you get what they pay for.

 Frankly, if you are Rich you are entitled to what you can pay for. Others are feeling free to take that right away from them.  

How did the poor get this way?  Hiring politicians to rob the rich?  Listening to $10 million a year newscasters bash them?  

How do you know the difference anyway?  I know lots of poor folks who handle lots of money in and out but if  the bank called in the loans the old man who has lived on his grandparents section of ground and never borrowed a dime would have more left.  Perhaps because the bank did call in the notes on his grandfather and they altered their behavior based on that experience.  

Outliers are what make humans great.  The Education system tries to eliminate the outliers.  Government tries to eliminate the outliers. I don't care to live in a world full of submissive little utopian worker bees.  

Nearly every time I have dealt with the healthcare system I have felt like an animal being pushed through the chute.  I will take my share of the blame, I have never wanted to be there.  I will say that those bitching about their job when I am there seem to have a sense of entitlement too.    



There is something wrong with any system that allows those who cannot do their job well to stay employed.

That sense of entitlement I have comes from me writing the damn checks amounting to nearly $15,000 a year just in case something happens.

I guess it makes the bill for pretending to be an Angus breeder pretty cheap.  The only time I visited the the AAA, John Crouch, The head of the whole place at the time,  said hello in the parking lot and knew my name.  

Which Doesn't impress Tom Burke, but it impressed me.

tulip wrote:

Many days I cared for our nation's richest and poorest children side-by-side.  To me, their similarities where remarkable with regard to their sense of entitlement and lack of empathy. It seems to me that a society's well-being is directly proportional to the size of its middle-class. Our middle-class is shrinking...and look what is happening to us. So, in this regard, the Tru-Line concept of minimizing the outliers applies to us humans too. The outliers are not a pleasant bunch to deal with.

(outsidethebox)

"...if you wish to improve your cow herd then you must use your own bulls."

Mr. Gavin Falloon

cattle breeders...always wanting what they don`t need just because it rarely is witnessed...

there is a difference in my mind between selecting for females versus selecting for beef...and culling the females that don't work...

MK

for Will
Angus is a business not a breed. Breeders selling hobbies and tax write offs. isn't America great.

for Larkota from Kent P.
I don't know anyone who sells poor bulls, but lots of people seem to end up buying them.

If there is a huge difference in the "quality" of your bulls you are probably doing a lousy job.
Angus 62

added or price

IMO this is a joke and one of the major flaws of the mainstream "seed stock" business. AI and ET would be just fine if the parents were from stock that had proven they can breed/calve and otherwise function under commercial conditions. My guess is that a pedigree analysis would clearly demonstrate that few AI sires would come close to passing such a critique. They were birthed in controlled environments by surrogates from the egg and sperm of 5/6 figure sires and dams who were coddled and primped and saved and propagated and marketed to the nth degree. And this has gone on for how many generations now?

But why consider any changes here. The folks who pull the strings have an endless supply of new folks coming on board every year-full of good intentions and lots of money-and overflowing with ignorance. Between the human's inability to self-assess and our gift for rationalization...progress doesn't have a chance.

outsidethebox

Framers and polishers




The framer asks the original question, roughs out the starting designs, provokes the new thing.

The polisher finds typos, smooths out the rough edges and helps avoid the silly or expensive error.

Both are important. Unpolished work is hardly worth doing.

Polishing is relentlessly reinforced in school and feels safe. Framing is fraught with risk and thus avoided by many. Too often, we spend our time on a little more polish, instead of investing in the breakthrough that a framer can bring.

Seth Godin

producers keep searching for genetic cures for management failures.
MK

along the same line

you can buy their bull but you can't buy their feed.
KP

Years ago I had a guy raising another breed tell me the secret to selling high dollar bulls was to make sure and not cut the bottom end. That way you could convince the unsuspecting that the ''better'' bulls were worth a lot more.  

One of the best set of bulls I ever had was also one of the hardest to sell - very little difference from one to the other. Hell I always thought that was an accomplishment, evidently not in the wacky world of trying to convince people one bull was worth two or three times as much as another.

I can't take credit Briann.

larkota wrote:

producers keep searching for genetic cures for management failures.
MK

along the same line

you can buy their bull but you can't buy their feed.
KP

If there is one thing EPD's have not demonstrated the ability to identify, it is crappy cattle. If they did these message boards would have little to discuss.
KP

larkota wrote:

If there is one thing EPD's have not demonstrated the ability to identify, it is crappy cattle. If they did these message boards would have little to discuss.
KP

  

Angus 62 wrote:

Years ago I had a guy raising another breed tell me the secret to selling high dollar bulls was to make sure and not cut the bottom end. That way you could convince the unsuspecting that the ''better'' bulls were worth a lot more.  

One of the best set of bulls I ever had was also one of the hardest to sell - very little difference from one to the other. Hell I always thought that was an accomplishment, evidently not in the wacky world of trying to convince people one bull was worth two or three times as much as another.

I think you are right Angus62 - that is an accomplishment!!!! - on another vein - we had breeder from another breed suggest to us some years ago that the easiest way to fix an EPD / EBV problem ie not good enough, was to invest in some "phantom cows" ................we think we know to what he was alluding ........ any comments from the "corner"?

Back on track - conversely to having an even sale day line up ........... when we look at a line of say 100 bulls where you know the breeder has 6-800 cows and the bottom 50% of the line up are such absolute crap that they are an embarrassment to the breed - our question is what do the "culls" look like? And more importantly why the hell would anyone invest or use the genetics where only 50 out of say potentially 400 bull calves would even come anywhere close to being "reasonable" - fully prepared and presented on sale day - hello - by the by, one of the studs that I am thinking of in NZ which meets this criteria can rightfully state that their cattle are all within the top % for this or that trait and more lately indexes - leaves us shaking our heads that is for real.

The cattle business has a great surplus of inexperienced "experts" promoting complicated paint by the numbers selection methodologies .
LL

"It has suddenly dawned on me that I am the common denominator in every argument I have ever had."

looking back

There was an Old Granny that started a breed,
Hugh felt the need to start up a breed,
Did he succeed?
They bred her to Jock to keep her polled,
But then all the daughters didn't get so old,
But at least they were polled.
They bred her to Laddie to keep her black,
Polled and Black! Imagine that.
No going back.
They brought the breed across the ocean,
With a good deal of polled and black promotion,
Oh what commotion.
They bred her to Sunbeam to make her squat,
Like it or not, they made her squat.
Was it all for naught?
They bred her to Colossal to make her bigger,
Bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger,
That's what they figured.
They bred her to a Holstein to make her milk flow,
And see just how far they could get her to go
Well now we know.
They bred her to Rito to make her gain,
And make bigger cows for folks to maintain,
Oh what a pain.
They bred her to Big Sky to make her tall,
To compete with the Chi's and Simmentals,
She beat 'em all.
They bred her to Precision to make her scan,
And so on and so on, there is no plan,
It's all a scam.
They bred her to Precision to fix the Big Sky,
They bred her to Big Sky to fix the Rito,
They bred her to Rito to fix the Holstein,
They bred her to Holstein to fix the Colossal,
They bred her to Colossal to fix the Sunbeam,
They bred her to Sunbeam to fix the Laddie,
They bred her to Laddie to fix the Jock,
They bred her to Jock to fix the Granny of Old,
And they're still black and polled!

TD,

I thought the act of registration was to fulfill the 'need to associate' and to garner the implication that the cattle are "better" because they are registered?

RobertMac

giving credit wherever credit is due...
Scott Shively with a masterpiece...


Originally posted by ......


But what is going to happen to Milk EPD ?


Don't worry your cows will keep giving the same amount no matter what happens.


     

seems Gavin has wall hangers as well...18 of them...

April 2014

Autumn has arrived and although the weather has not changed greatly the trees are turning and the nights are cooler. New Zealand is having one of those patchy years when parts of the country has remained in drought and others have had a good season.
Prices for agriculture products have risen slightly giving a little relief to the sheep and beef industry. Any improvement in prices has been quickly overcome by rises in the currency. The dairy industry has had good prices but some areas have been effected by the drought. Something that cows dairy and beef cows do not appreciate.

In this newsletter I am going to write about bulls, their patterns of growth and its effect on their management.
I explained how one year we wasted a lot of money supplementing our weaner bulls to see if they became any bigger as two year olds at sale time. Having them 100 kilos better at yearling made no difference to their 2 year old weights and they were just the same weight they had always been at sale time. In other words we had wasted all the hard feed that we had put into them. Their genetic code did not allow them to get any bigger.

It takes four and a half times the amount of feed to put on a pound of fat as it does a pound of muscle. These are old figures but I do not suppose it has changed in the intervening years.. What happens is that the animal’s genetic code controls its pattern of growth and each bulls growth pattern is different.

We once did a trial where we weighed all our bulls on the same day every month for 8 months. Bulls were stood over night in the yards before weighing in the morning. We found that each bull grew at a different time. So interesting was this to me, that I graphed out all their growth patterns on a graph paper to see exactly what happened.
Looking at the growth patterns it occured to me that I could offer my buyers bulls that grew when their grass growth was at its best. Not one buyer was interested!.
This is another example of genes turning on and off and can be clearly demonstrated in your own children where they suddenly put on a growth spurt and grow very fast for a period.

When an animal is growing they require a certain amount of feed but they will stop , and remain at their code given size. If you attempt to make them bigger you require concentrates and you are beginning to lay on fat. Fat is of course stored energy. Animal naturally lay on fat as nature demands when feed is abundant because in nature food is often hard to get and so it is important to store it when it is plentiful.

In males there appears to be evidence that excess fat can be detrimental to fertility as excess fat can be stored around the testicles preventing the cooling that is necessary for the production of high class semen.
This also occurs in yearling heifers when fat can be stored in the udder effecting the milking ability of the cow for life. A small amount of fat is required in the cow to bring it into oestrous and begin it cycling.

The result is every animal is genetically coded to reach a give weight at a given age and this weight can be achieved at any time.

All my writings have been based on 18 sayings that geneticists have quoted to me over the years and it is my intention to work through explaining them, in future newsletters. Most of them are at the top of entry of each article on our web.
I suggest you print them out and pin them above your desk because they will have the answer to any problems you may have in animal breeding in the future.

They are pinned to the wall above my desk and I referr to them often and add to them occasionally.
They have been said to me by all the top brains in animal breeding of my generation. They apply today just as much today as they did when I was studying genetics.
Which I still am.

"Some say that this bull is THE bull in this sale but I think he might be the bull of the Century!" - internet auctioneer

MKeeney wrote:

seems Gavin has wall hangers as well...18 of them...

April 2014

Autumn has arrived and although the weather has not changed greatly the trees are turning and the nights are cooler. New Zealand is having one of those patchy years when parts of the country has remained in drought and others have had a good season.
Prices for agriculture products have risen slightly giving a little relief to the sheep and beef industry. Any improvement in prices has been quickly overcome by rises in the currency. The dairy industry has had good prices but some areas have been effected by the drought. Something that cows dairy and beef cows do not appreciate.

In this newsletter I am going to write about bulls, their patterns of growth and its effect on their management.
I explained how one year we wasted a lot of money supplementing our weaner bulls to see if they became any bigger as two year olds at sale time. Having them 100 kilos better at yearling made no difference to their 2 year old weights and they were just the same weight they had always been at sale time. In other words we had wasted all the hard feed that we had put into them. Their genetic code did not allow them to get any bigger.

It takes four and a half times the amount of feed to put on a pound of fat as it does a pound of muscle. These are old figures but I do not suppose it has changed in the intervening years.. What happens is that the animal’s genetic code controls its pattern of growth and each bulls growth pattern is different.

We once did a trial where we weighed all our bulls on the same day every month for 8 months. Bulls were stood over night in the yards before weighing in the morning. We found that each bull grew at a different time. So interesting was this to me, that I graphed out all their growth patterns on a graph paper to see exactly what happened.
Looking at the growth patterns it occured to me that I could offer my buyers bulls that grew when their grass growth was at its best. Not one buyer was interested!.
This is another example of genes turning on and off and can be clearly demonstrated in your own children where they suddenly put on a growth spurt and grow very fast for a period.

When an animal is growing they require a certain amount of feed but they will stop , and remain at their code given size. If you attempt to make them bigger you require concentrates and you are beginning to lay on fat. Fat is of course stored energy. Animal naturally lay on fat as nature demands when feed is abundant because in nature food is often hard to get and so it is important to store it when it is plentiful.

In males there appears to be evidence that excess fat can be detrimental to fertility as excess fat can be stored around the testicles preventing the cooling that is necessary for the production of high class semen.
This also occurs in yearling heifers when fat can be stored in the udder effecting the milking ability of the cow for life. A small amount of fat is required in the cow to bring it into oestrous and begin it cycling.


The result is every animal is genetically coded to reach a give weight at a given age and this weight can be achieved at any time.

All my writings have been based on 18 sayings that geneticists have quoted to me over the years and it is my intention to work through explaining them, in future newsletters. Most of them are at the top of entry of each article on our web.
I suggest you print them out and pin them above your desk because they will have the answer to any problems you may have in animal breeding in the future.

They are pinned to the wall above my desk and I referr to them often and add to them occasionally.
They have been said to me by all the top brains in animal breeding of my generation. They apply today just as much today as they did when I was studying genetics.
Which I still am.

Maybe I slept through it, but has anyone ever posted the 18 foundational statements here? The points might help me to avoid delusional thinking.

And I need to train my eye to recognize a yearling bull that is the bull of the century and is "worth" $22,000 even before he has even sired a calf. If you could use him for the century that is still pretty cheap: $22,000 / 100 = $220/year. What a deal! Share him with a buddy and you're down to $110/year. Can't beat that.

Here is the wall hanger that our Mennonite trucker told me not to long ago

Blessed are those who are flexible for they will not get bent out of shape.