Acceptable birth weights

[ROAD WARRIOR]

Personally, I think a 98 lb BW bull can be considered a calving ease prospect if.... and this is a BIG IF.... he comes from solid genetics that have a reputation for few problems at birth. As I have mentioned on here more than once, I think the industry is getting too hung up on BW and not talking enough about Calving ease. My vet has told me for years that the so - called calving ease Red Angus bulls, in this area, have generated more business for his vet clinic during calving time.... than any other breed.

I happened to be at the vet clinic last spring when a neighbour was having a c- section done on a heifer.I commented on how small the calf looked, so we weighed it shortly after birth. It weighed right on 70 lbs... but it was just about as wide as it was long. This neighbour went through pure Hell last spring and ended up with 6 c -sections and several more hard pulls. The bull is now making his home at the Golden Arches, and being sold in quarter pound pieces. Too often, people do not put enough emphasis on calving ease, and do not use enough common sense when considering birth weights.

It only makes sence that a 6 foot long gas pipe will slide through a stove pipe easier than a bowling ball. When we do our private treaty sales I rate each bull in the catalog for calving ease - *** is a sleep all night calveing bull. ** acceptible for use on large frame heifers and cows, * use on mature cows. This rating is based on actual BW, calving history of the cow ( and many times her dam, grand dam etc,) the bulls calving ease in our herd, and the shape of the sale bulls head, shoulders, etc. Most of the bigger BW calves we get are out of high accuracy, calveing ease AI bulls - go figure. RW

 

[rtmcc]

Birth weight  and EPD's are important but it seems the shape of the calf and pelvic measurement of the heifer/cow makes the most difference.  We have all seen some 95# calves slip out like a snake and and some heard pulls with small calves.  Remember,  they don't shape a fighter jet like a mack dump truck. <cowboy>

 

[OH Breeder]

Birth weight  and EPD's are important but it seems the shape of the calf and pelvic measurement of the heifer/cow makes the most difference.  We have all seen some 95# calves slip out like a snake and and some heard pulls with small calves.  Remember,  they don't shape a fighter jet like a mack dump truck. <cowboy>

Exactly.
We had big calves in the past with no dystocia, this year our average was 96 and up and pulled quiet a few because of shoulder and hip shapes. Kind of like a square peg and a round hole. All the calves had big hips and shoulders. TO me, shape is more important than weight.

 

[aj]

In general....do club calf types come out blocky shaped?

 

[ELBEE]

I never worried about birth weights (one of the reasons I prefer big cows).  An old cattleman told me years ago that lower birth weight cows and bulls passed down a smaller and smaller pelvic area as well as lower birth weights.  He said you can't breed both low birth weights and easy calving, other that the fact you just keep have smaller calves, that have to have smaller calves.



Exactly, Birthweight is a relative term! If your not constantly pushing the limits, you'll soon find yourself with a herd of useless replacement stock. My lightest birth weight bull would be the last one I'd pick for my herd sire!

Example; Why not breed your first calf Longhorn heifers to a 0.0 EPD Simmental bull?????

The only thing that really maters is, input to receipt ie: (efficiency)... That includes cost of; C-sections, labor of extractions, night checks, re-breeding ECT.....

 

[TJ]

I hate EPD's.  We don't have them in the Lowline breed & calving problems are virtually unheard of.  I even know a guy whose 3 year old purebred Lowline female calved unassisted with a calf sired by the neighbors Simmental X Angus bull that jumped the fence.   In fairness, on the flip side, I know another guy who did have to pull a calf out of a 3/4 Lowline 1st calf heifer because the neighbors big black bull (we think it was a Gelbvieh) jumped the fence, but that calf was an easy pull (it fell out once the shoulders popped out) & it was pulled out with a sky rope tied to each leg because they didn't own any calving chains.   

Calving ease works 2 ways... the bull siring easy birthing calves & females who can have calves on their own that are bigger than what they are, if necessary. 

The only way to get calving ease is to cull every female that you have to assist & cull every bull whose calves that you have to assist... if you develop a herd like that, it wont be long & you can throw away the pulling chains & winches.  And at that point you wont have to worry about birth weight so much, you will just have to buy bulls from herds with similar cattle who practice the same things.  If that is too extreme for you, breed all your heifers, and possibly all your cows, to a fullblood Lowline bull & you wont have to worry about it.            

 

[aj]

If there are curve benders for growth-bw say in the ABS catalog. Is there a possibility that there are outliers out there that are low bwt bulls that sire daughters with big pelvic measurements? I guess the say the shorthorn breed is a great breed cause our cows lay down and have 110# calves unassisted.And most of the showcattle are born with 110# bwts. How do we as Shorthorn breeders try and merchandize 110# bwt's to say a herd of linebred low bwt cattle. It seems like you have to get the bulls bwt's down to 90# for at least the first cross.How do you say "the Shorthorn breed is the greatest breed in the world but you commercial people are to stupid to use 110# bwt bulls"? Can you pelvic measure bulls in a bull test station somehow.Seems like we have gone as far as we can of maxing out say yearling wts. would pelvic measuring be the next frontier in cattle breeding somehow. How do you promote"this bulls daughters will have large pelvic measurements"? I guess you would need data to back it up somehow. Some kind of a study at Marc in Nebraska or something like that maybe.

 

[justintime]

I think you are onto something aj.  I really think that much more can be done in the research of pelvic measurements. Are there relationships between pelvic measurements and low birth weight? I am not sure and I have tried to find some research on this. A few years ago, I heard a leading reproductive physiologist from a leading vet college speak on the topic of" Be careful what you wish for" and he claimed that consistent selection for low birth weight sires will lead to a herd with smaller than average pelvic measurements. He claimed this was the reason that so many assisted births were being seen from daughters of low birth weight sires.

I have nothing to base this on, except what I heard in this speech. I have been trying to find some research to support this, but so far, haven't. I have heard other people claim this as well, but again, I do not know what they base this on. To me, it does make some sense, in that, almost every other trait we deal with in the cattle business, seems to be the most efficient and trouble free if it is used in what is considered to be an optimum state... not minimum or maximum but somewhere in between. This seems to go for most any trait I can think of.

 

[aj]

I was thinking you can rectally measure a bulls pelvic area. I am not sure it is done much. I am almost sur I did it on a byearling bull I had back in the 1980's. I was thinking that his measurement was 185. I know the vets at the Oakley vet clinic do check heifers for pelvic problems. I think they may look more for abnormalities in shape and slope than measurements. jit you are right on with the optimum statement.Maybe a vet could fill us in on the latest thinking on pelvic area.

 

[CAB]

  AJ, you said something about using Jakes Proud Jazz to lower BW EPDs. Wouldn't this be giving the buyer a false impression of the pedigrees capability to throw those 110lb BWTs? I agree with JIT that if you breed for small BWTs you are eventually going to have a wreck.
  A far as any club calf bulls being used consistently for calving ease, I have yet to find one that I would feel free to sleep the night through. JMO. Brent

 

[aj]

CAB you are right. When you produce cattle that jump around all over the place as far as bwt's are concerned, there is no predictability. However you have to start somewhere I think. There will probably sons of jpj that will be "better than him". Someone like elbee that linebreeds and doesn't chase fads has predictible cattle. There seems to be alot of jpj progency that have 100# bwts and who knows how they will breed. I am using jpj as an example.jmo

 

[simtal]

I was thinking you can rectally measure a bulls pelvic area. I am not sure it is done much. I am almost sur I did it on a byearling bull I had back in the 1980's. I was thinking that his measurement was 185. I know the vets at the Oakley vet clinic do check heifers for pelvic problems. I think they may look more for abnormalities in shape and slope than measurements. jit you are right on with the optimum statement.Maybe a vet could fill us in on the latest thinking on pelvic area.

Very common around here, bulls in IL Beef Expo Bull sale all have their pelvic area measured.  Don't know if many people have a clue what is good or bad. 

 

[PhilMcKracken]

Maybe we are the exception to the rule, but as we have linebred a bull that consistently lowers BWs, we have documented at least 5 years on steadily increasing pelvic measurements in yearling heifers.  When we started, are pelvics were consistently averaging 190+/- and now are in the neighborhood of 215.  I find this interesting because we have brought down the average frame score as well, so smaller frames, lighter BWs, and larger BWs.  Another comment I will make, that I find interesting, is in this many years of line breeding this bull, we plateaued the BW average in the first year or so, but we have gone from a 35 lb spread to around a 20 lb spread.  More predictability.

I think another key element you all maybe overlooking in BWs and calving ease is gestation length.  Our fall AI calves were anywhere from 4 to 10 days early and being outcross genetics on line bred females the BWs were all in the mid 70s.  They included shorthorn and angus sires.

I think there are multiple factors involved in calving ease, most of which can be measured in one form or the other.  That is why I will not buy a bull or female that doesn't have all the data available published.  Just my thoughts,

 

[ELBEE]

It still amazes me that "rocket science" was able to put a man on the moon! There has to be at least one uneducated "cowboy" at NASA!

                                                                                                              <cowboy>

 

[aj]

I do remember that doc keller from sainty told me you can't compare say a yearling bull's measurements to a heifers measurements of the same age. You can only compare bulls against bulls and heifers against heifers cause each sex has its own measurement patterns. I had a guy tell me that heifers developed on a grain ration don't pelvic out as well as heifers on forage and protein. It is a 10,000 acre deal. However there is also a thought of feeding like 4 pounds of corn only. After that amount you might as well feed 15 # cause the bugs in the rumen are different(grain vs forage). Don't know if there is anything to his claim or not.

 

[Dale]

Scott,

What you have in your bull is rare--it would seem that larger pelvic area and lower birthweights would be antagonistic (just a guess).  The Shorthorn  breed needs cattle that are consistently low on birth weight.  Our KL Double Duty calves are consistent and low enough on BW that we use him on any heifer.  KL DD calves are born easily enough,  that he is a realistic alternative to Red Angus for calving ease to open heifers.

 

[justintime]

When we imported our first Irish Shorthorn bull ( Highfield Irish Mist) from Ireland in 1974, we found that he consistently produced calves with a shorter gestation length than the other sires we were using at the time. We did not hesitate to use him on heifers and cows as we knew the calves would come easily.This also indicated to me that the sire seems to affect gestation length more than the dam's genetics.  When we brought IDS Duke of Dublin from Ireland, we found that there was a difference of 11-12 days in gestation length between these two bulls, with Irish Mist being the shortest.  Irish Mist daughters also made excellent cows and I used to say that they could be bred to any sire and not have any calving issues. I only have two Irish Mist daughters right now, but I am thinking I should compare their pelvic measurements to some of our other cows.

We are using an ET son of Highfield Irish Mist in our herd now, and he has the shortest gestation length of any sire we have ever used, in over 100 years of breeding cattle on this farm. As a result of this, his calves are all born unassisted and are extremely vigorous at birth. We use this bull on all our heifers and never check them after 11 pm during calving, as we know they will calve themselves. Shorter gestation length does not seem to affect the vigor of the calves. What I have found though, is that while these calves develop well, they are not in the top end of our calves for growth. I mentioned this on here before, that in our Sun Country bull test last year, we did not have one bull, who was in the bottom 50% of the birth weights, index over 100 ( that is, be in the top half for growth) in the bull test. This year we have 62 bulls in the test, and we have just had two weigh days, but it would appear that this is occurring again this year. This may not be a bad thing, unless you are chasing rapid growth. I have started to think that optimum is the key to most of the best things in raising cattle .... to the best in your own life. Too much or too little of anything, isn't always the best.

I hear so often that there aren't any calving ease bulls in the Shorthorn breed. When I hear that, I think that the people saying this haven't looked real hard. There are Shorthorn bulls that calve just as easy as any other breed.

 

[aj]

It would be interesting to compare gestation lengths and pelvic measurements across breeds. I wonder what longhorn cattle would measure out pelvically? I assume is would be smaller. Tehy would have evolved through natural selection pressure(when they were running wild) after the spainards lost them and the post civil war Texans caught them up. Would the gestation of smaller cattle be generally shorter than bigger cattle nessecarily. What about lowlines?