butte Lee Leader 63rd pic

[knabe]

only shorthorn in the catalog. polled bull. looks wasty fronted, short spined. sorta like many shorthorns i remember in feedlot trials and carcass review for 3 years from back then. not all were like that, as i saw a few dividend cattle back then.

 

[GM]

What year was this?  I get the push for easier doing cattle, but 800# yearling weights on feed is so inefficient, can’t see a place for that.

 

[knabe]

What year was this? 

1974 it says on inside front page. not trying to promote or not anything. 


It's the Carnation Genetics catalog.

 

[GM]

Yep, certainly interesting!

 

[librarian]

only shorthorn in the catalog. polled bull. looks wasty fronted, short spined. sorta like many shorthorns i remember in feedlot trials and carcass review for 3 years from back then. not all were like that, as i saw a few dividend cattle back then.

Thanks for posting this. My Cat 30 bull seems destined to mature into a very similar type.  Did this type get sloppy fat?

 

[knabe]

The briskety shorthorns never gained and had small ribeyes and large fleck marbling that was not much. 

No one in their right mind would pick out a steak to eat like that.

Longhorns had a ribeye about same size but had even textured more abundant marbling and looked good for smaller portion eating.

 

[knabe]

Since all the steers were fullbloods at those trials for three years, the continentals had low marbling but big ribeyes. There were no fullblood Maines.

Plrr egg nut of Limousin, gelbvieh, simmental, shorthorn, longhorn, Hereford, angus, brangus, charolais, tarentais, pinzgauer, and a few others I don’t recall

As mentioned on other posts I took pictures of them all when they arrived, and their ribeye.

 

[oakview]

I guess I would take issue with the statement that the "briskety Shorthorns never gained..."  800 pound weaning weight?  Mighty be "inefficient", but certainly showed an ability to gain.  We had a bull back then, Nugget's Max, that sired a bull that gained over 4 lbs./day at the IBIA testing station.  You can find lots of ads back in the late 60s and early 70s of test station Shorthorns that gained extremely well and were consistently above the average of their contemporaries of other breeds.  We used the Leader lines extensively back then and they were far superior in growth than most of the other lines available at that time.  They weren't perfect, but they did tend to have more growth.  That's why they were so popular.  We fed truck load after truck load of Shorthorn calves and the packers loved them.  We always sold grade and yield and made quite a bit extra that way.  We fed a few blacks back then, but once or twice was enough of them.  It was hard to find an outlet for cattle that plateaued at 800 pounds.  We usually bought Shorthorn calves and Hereford yearlings.  The Herefords were a lot better in the feedlot than the Angus, but were always a few steps behind the Shorthorns on the grade and yield basis. 

 

[beebe]

I can't see everything I would like to from the picture but he looks like he could work for grass finished beef.

 

[knabe]

I guess I would take issue with the statement that the "briskety Shorthorns never gained..."  800 pound weaning weight?

822lb yearling weight.

 

[mark tenenbaum]

Then how did he end up a little over 2000 LBS? O0

 

[GM]

The image attached by original poster literally says there were 10 progeny that averaged 490 weaning weight and 822 yearling weight.  I assume the yearling weights were while on feed.  Where’s the modern economic value there. 

 

[knabe]

Then how did he end up a little over 2000 LBS? O0

Time and fat?

 

[oakview]

If his progeny had those kinds of weights back then, they were actually quite good for the era.  I've got ABS, Curtiss, Carnation, etc., bull directories from back then and most of the progeny tested bulls would sire calves with weaning and yearling weights less than that.  Lots of the bulls that they advertised semen for had personal weaning weights of barely 500 pounds and mature weights of 1,600.  There's a reason why the Continentals came over.  A ton British bull back then was quite noteworthy.  I remember several big shots of all breeds saying they were more interested the second 1,000 pounds a bull put on than the first one.  The first year I showed at the county fair, there was only 1 steer in the whole show that weighed 1,000 pounds.  Minimum weight was 850 and the 900 - 950 pounds calves were the most common.  Our county fair was one of the first in Iowa to implement weigh ins and calculate ADG.  The first year we did that, the champion steer, an Angus, had an ADG of 1.67.  Trying to compare cattle over the decades is kind of similar to comparing Babe Ruth to Henry Aaron to Barry Bonds.   

 

[knabe]

Don Cardey was bucking the trend back in the day.