c-section effect flushing?

[JSchroeder]

Based on?

 

[aj]

I have no data other than anedotal evidence. I agree that there are alot of purebred people that ET. They do it to produce show cattle.

 

[JSchroeder]

There's no hope.

 

[aj]

Jeff do you think todays show steer is the optimum for todays industry(includining the nations cowherd?). I believe you once stated that the commercial industry was willing to accept th and pha carriers in a earlier post. Do th cattle grade well in general?

 

[JSchroeder]

I did say at one time that there are commercial cattlemen who are willing to use defect carrier bulls because you falsely claimed that it would never happen although it does.  I also called you out on that absolutely ignorant ET statement in this thread.

I never commented on grading of TH cattle and I never commented on whether show steers are optimum for today's herd.  Go pick that fight with somebody else, it’s the only reason you come to this site any way.

AJ, seriously, if you are just going to make stuff up to support your argument, why should a person waste time discussing something with you?

 

[aj]

Cowboy would have a handle on this deal in his ET operation. I think it would be interesting to know how the thing would break down as far as %. I know ET went from the surgical method to todays modern methods. Technology is amazing. You can clone a calf for 20,000$ and you ET pretty cheap anymore as I understand it. I would think that freezing embryos is about as cheap as it will ever get its just kind of a pain to implant them. Would it become economical to identify the perfect beast and then mass produce a clone of the thing. Would it cheap enough for say the evil commercial guy to buy the product in mass at a volume discount kind of pricing.

 

[JSchroeder]

The fact that you think one ET operation is indicative of ET in general is exactly what I'm speaking of.

Ask one and virtually all ET work is done for club calves.  Ask another and the only people who do ET work are Angus breeders.  Ask another and half of ET work done today is for rough stock.  Ask another and it's all ET work in South America.

The 'beef industry' you so like to speak for is much larger than you realize.

 

[aj]

Is there like a association of ET'ers or some thing similar to this. They may have some data or breakdowns. I would think that someone wanting to start a ET service would want to have a business plan with a type of client in mind. It probably vary from state to state.

 

[DTW]

I did say at one time that there are commercial cattlemen who are willing to use defect carrier bulls because you falsely claimed that it would never happen although it does.  I also called you out on that absolutely ignorant ET statement in this thread.

I never commented on grading of TH cattle and I never commented on whether show steers are optimum for today's herd.  Go pick that fight with somebody else, it’s the only reason you come to this site any way.

AJ, seriously, if you are just going to make stuff up to support your argument, why should a person waste time discussing something with you?

The base of my cow heard came from Montana 17 years ago and were already carrying the PHA birth defect.  and this was just a commercial operation.  So to these birthdefects were around before they were in show cattle.  So commercial cattlemen were already dealing with this birth defect. 

 

[vet tech]

ET is huge with dairy farmers also.

 

[aj]

It is cool technology. I guess my point was that this is an insane business model. Take a cow that routinely has big calves. ET her to a cow killer bull that throws 120# defect carrier calves.  Put them into commercial cows that have to be c-sectioned to get the calf out. I suppose a  nurse cow is then supplied to feed the calf after the 2nd cow dies from the c-sect. |It just seems like it isn't animal husbandry. It is more like a video game. I guess if the resulting calf is sold for 10,000$ it works. Just seems kinda goofy. And you have to do this to compete?

 

[Jill]

I'm not sure where you come up with your senarios, I have never had to do a c-section on a recip.  The beauty of ET is you can then put those embryo's into a cow that can have anything. 
I would consider it good animal husbandry, Gardiner's flush at the same embryo center I use and they seem to be doing ok with it, and while they may sell females the bull sale they are advertising right now has 325 bulls, the 2010 production sale had 297 bulls that averaged 5871 for a total of 1,743,750, so while it may seem goofy to you, it seems pretty profitable to me.

 

[justintime]

I agree with Jill, I have never had a c- section on a recip either. I do have a very good cow that I have thought of flushing, but have decided to not try her right now, simply because she had a twisted uterus when she was a two year old, and we had to c- section her to get the calf out. Since then she has had two more calves that were unassisted at birth, so I can relate to what the original question asked in this thread. I expect that my female may flush just fine, and some day I will probably try her, but I understand that there could be some issues with scar tissue and I don't know if this could be a detriment or not.

I really wonder where aj comes up with some of these thoughts. For example, " I would say that 85% of ET is done for the show ring". Another comment of his is " very seldom is ET even related to the beef industry". I use two ET centers for my flushing, and it would be my estimate that the majority of the flushing on beef cattle that is done by these two major ET centres is done on females owned by producers who have large commercially oriented bull sales. I know of a several large Angus, Simmental and Charolais outfits that will implant over 100 embryos every year. The show ring is the last thing they are thinking about when they do this. As for me, I have yet to do a flush based on trying to produce for the show ring.  That is not to say that I would not show an ET calf if I thought it was good enough, but there is a big difference between breeding show stock and showing breeding stock.

 

[DL]

Poor aj - everybody jumps all over him without looking for the kernel of truth in what he says...

According to the USDA in 2007 (last figures available) of all the cows bred
94.2% were bull bred only
(doing the math that means 5.8% were AI'ed)
Of those cows AI bred ONLY 1.1% were not subsequently exposed to a bull

At least some replacement heifers and cows were bred only by bulls on nearly all operations (95.7 percent).

Most heifers were only exposed to a bull (79.2%). Of those heifers bred AI only 3.9% were only bred AI and not exposed to a bull

Now of course one might do ET after natural breeding and one might flush heifers but of all the cows in the USA - all 97 million - less than 6% were AI'ed. This suggests that AI is not mainstream in the beef business and further that ET is less mainstream.

The danger with extrapolating to what we see next door is that it often does not represent the whole picture

 

[Jill]

I wasn't arguing whether or not it was mainstream, what aj is saying is that is that it is used primarily in the show cattle industry, I would venture to say that Dairy would be your #1  industry for AI and Cloning with purebred breeders as #2, club calf breeders are a very small minority of the people using technology.

 

[DL]

I wasn't arguing whether or not it was mainstream, what aj is saying is that is that it is used primarily in the show cattle industry, I would venture to say that Dairy would be your #1  industry for AI and Cloning with purebred breeders as #2, club calf breeders are a very small minority of the people using technology.

do you have any evidence for these statements or are they opinions?

 

[JSchroeder]

DL, I don't think you understood the context of the disagreement with what AJ said.  Your numbers don't conflict with anything I or others said.

 

[chambero]

Everyone I know in my home county that did AI prior to about 10 years ago was exclusively dairies.

Everyone I know in my county that fools with ET does it for commercial Angus cattle sales - no show intent whatsoever.  Both Three Trees and the former Horton Angus Ranch had very large Recip only herds in within about 10 miles of us. 

We've bred for show steers since 1996 and have never had a C-section yet (knocking very loudly on wood).  I honestly can count on one hand the number of truly large calves we've had in that time period that might should have been (we delivered them all with assistance - but lost the calves doing so). 

I've posted data from our herd and from our Texas major shows multiple times that shows that show steers - plenty of whom are probably TH positive - grade much better than average high-end commercial feed lot cattle.  Nobody has ever shown me data to support conclusions to the opposite.

If we truly talk about "most" - I'm guessing most cattle herds however have bulls thrown out with them year round with no defined calving season and no real breeding strategy whatsoever. 

 

[OH Breeder]

Great article. I was surprised Angus in 2000 surpassed the number of Holstein ET reg cattle.

The current status and future of commercial embryo transfer in cattle
John F. Hasler∗
Em Tran, Inc., 197 Bossler Road, Elizabethtown, PA 17022, USA


In 2000

Holstein Reg   ET Reg                      Angus Reg    ET Reg
311383           17055 head               260907       18456 head


So roughly 8% of Angus reg cattle were ET. That was 10 years ago. They say that the amount of ET work has grown at a rapid rate. Fair amount in one breed I would say. Like VCR's as technology becomes more prominent they more likely to reduce the cost. If it is cheaper it affords more folks doing it on a regularly basis with successful results.

 

[Show Heifer]

Silly me.... I actually CALLED two ET facilities and actually ASK the famous question. Without running numbers, both said 90% were purebred or clubbie operations that showed. 10% were purebred guys trying to multiply a famous female in a hurry.  Image that.
None of them knew of any "commercial cattleman" that flushed a cow. 

Never is a long time.

I certainly wouldn't call gardiners "good for the breed, successful cattleman". Nope. Not in a long shot.

I agree AJ, I do not call it "animal/livestock husbandry" when you take high bw animals that are one inch from being a cripple and breed them to the same thing. I also do not call it "husbandry" when you breed defect carriers to defect carriers, but it is all in the name of the "purple banner" so it is ok. (We have all heard the difference between a purple and just a calf is one inch in stride)

Yep ET might have grown in popularity, but I have seen many cows that were being flushed because they are "open and ready to flush"  or "held open to flush"  (I chuckle when I read those in a catalog!! Really.... how funny!)
They were not flushed due to their superior calf raising skills - in fact, sometimes just the opposite - they are flushed because they can not raise their own calf!  EEEKKK.