brag on yourself about NAILE placing!

[aj]

I apologize for my tone of voice. But...THE EMPHASIS ON THE WDA IN THE SHORTHORN BREED IN THE SHOWRING HAS KILLED THE BREED. We have selected cattle over the last 20 years based on wda. It has turned into a feeding contest. We are ruining bulls and females in the process. It it not about turning low quality roughage into protein anymore...it is about selecting cattle that gain like crazy in a insane feeding contest. We have turned our cattle into big framed cattle with no natural fleshing ability. I'm not knocking the cattle but it is what it is. We have huge bwt's  and no good doing cattle anymore. We start feeding baby calves whole corn as babies and we creep and we hot barn and cold barn them and put them on drugs and run them way to hard to play the darn weight per day of age that has turned into an artificial enviroment. Would someone at the top just throw the wda deal out of the showring for a year and see what happens.

 

[Malinda]

Hey aj,

Thanks for your post. You got me to thinking and I had to redo my math.  I never weigh feed; all I do is count out x number of scoops (my scoop holds 3# of feed) when I start calves on feed and then I eyeball it. Rethinking Phenom's feed, it comes  out this way........Phenom gets fed 5 times on a 50# sack of feed. Guess that would come out to 10# per feeding and 20# per day. That any better? Sorry for the error.

I am not going to give you a long drawn out rebuttal. I will tell you I have fed out many more calves (that I have raised) than I have shown and they make me money. I have been using the same butcher for about 15 years now. He has told me that he never had a high opinion of Shorthorns until he started doing mine. He feels that the single best beef he has ever butchered was a 131/2 month old purebred, solid red Shorthorn heifer of mine. Back in the day, one of my regular beef customers was the meat inspector. So, you raise yours that you are happy with and I will raise mine. Just don't tell me how mine can't perform.

I am getting old and senile, so I read my post again. I just can't find the line where I typed: "I hope you are right and the shorthorn breed will overtake the Angus but man"the emperor has on no clothes"." Help me out and tell me where I typed that. And I have no idea what "the emperor has on no clothes" means. Please enlighten me; I don't get off the farm very often.

I'm glad your cattle are real and do great things for you. That's what beef cattle are supposed to do. Good for you.

By the way, you never took me up on my offer to provide the shovel so you could go to Texas and dig up Nobody's Fool to get her DNA. The offer still stands.

Have a good one aj and keep on doing things that work for you. Thanks again for pointing out my math error. The correct numbers do sound a lot better.


Malinda

 

[aj]

I didn't mean to attack you..you have a fine program and a good commonsense approach. You make more sense than anyone on here. I'm glad you brought up the feeding issue and I applaud your approach.

 

[Doc]

In my opinion 8 out of 10 shorthorn cattle will not make it in the real world. My god 20 # of feed is a diet?  I am developing 4 yearling bulls on a cane bale and water. I know that showcattle are different but holy cow I don't even live on the same planet I guess. 80% of the show cattle will not work in the real world. Their bwts are to high they melt away to nothing as cows, they undergo no natural environment selection. You have cows being flushed raising a 100 offspring that have no environment selection pressure on them whatso ever. I hope you are right and the shorthorn breed will overtake the Angus but man "the emperor has on no clothes!".

I'm glad to see that this is just your opinion, because I think you're way off on the 8 out of 10. 20 lbs a day on bull that size is not a lot of feed. I'm glad that you can develop bulls on cane bale(whatever that is) & if you can grow bulls out on that & sell them for a profit , then more power to you. But just because someone feeds their bull a reasonable amount of grain, doesn't mean that their bull can't survive in the pasture once they're done showing them.
I didn't know that the Shorthorn breed was trying to overtake the Angus breed.

 

[aj]

I stand corrected.

 

[Malinda]

aj,

Thanks for the apology, but no apology necessary. You are adamant about your program and your cattle. That is a good thing. I am too.

I think we may be saying the same thing, just going about it in a different way.

I was raised with the theory that a cow should maintain herself on pasture in the summer and a half a bale of hay (back in the square bale day) a day in the winter. They had a 50# block of salt and a 50# TM block in front of them all the time, were vaccinated and expected to breed easily, calve easily, milk, raise a big calf, breed back and have a short calving interval, not need to be treated for pinkeye, sore feet or anything else. The mineral program has changed since I was a kid but my selection criteria has not. I feel there are cattle out there that should be culled and out of the gene pool. But I have no control over other people's cattle. I have enough trouble taking care of my own business.

You have mentioned big birth weight several times. I can HONESTLY say I have NEVER had a cow have a c-section. Now that I have said that, I have just opened myself up for a run of c-sections. I have never bred a cow with the thought in mind of getting a show calf. Go ahead everyone and call me a liar but those of you that know me know that I talk about calving ease, performance and soundness but don't talk about raising that next great one. You just can't get tunnel vision.

Many of you have seen the ad I ran in the August Shorthorn Country. What did I stress? Calving ease. We do need to work on calving ease with Shorthorns. And aj, if we (everyone, not you) stop worrying about raising that next great one and work on other things we can get rid of the calving ease issue.

I do not put a lot of stock in EPD's. They are numbers and anyone can manipulate numbers. I own a set of scales and make my decisions based on those.  But I do put a lot of emphasis on how much MY cattle are gaining per day. It is afterall the beef business. All it boils down to is that rate of gain. Very few beef cattle end up on a halter. They are raised to be eaten or produce the ones we eat.

aj, i have enjoyed our discussion but need my rest. I would love to sit down one on one and talk beef cattle with you. You might be surprised how much we would agree on.

Have a good evening.

Malinda

 

[OH Breeder]

I have had the opportunity to see Malinda operation and I was impressed. I think there is one thing that I took away from our afternoon of conversation. It is really all about doing what works for you and your operation. I really respect what Malinda has done with her operation and hope that I can in some ways emulate it with even half of the success.

 

[cowz]

Like I said before, I am usually down in the barn, but I got to watch the entire Shorty show from start to finish.  The political tone started with the senior bull classes and reached a crecendo by the end of the day.  (Sometimes old college livestock coaches butter their bread with the places that feed their teams a steak dinner)  Nuff said, harumph!

Malinda's bull was a pleasant change from the norm.  Goose fronted, clean lines and SOUND!  Was he the biggest, no, smallest, no.  I think he could have stood the test of a larger class.  Overall, I was impressed.  Great Job Malinda.

Stumpy, I also think you got cheesed.  I liked the Gus bull and thought he should have been placed better than he did.

Somewhere in all this insanity, we need to start using moderate, sound and easy fleshing seedstock.  I worry that the Shorthorn breed is headed the same way the Charolais breed did 10-15 years ago.  By this I mean, bigger becomes massive, more bone becomes COARSEness, BW's get out of hand.....and before you know it nobody wants to use the breed because they are scared to calve them.  I hope I never have to feed 70+ pounds of feed a day.

Keep up the hard work guys and someday common sense may prevail.