trevorgreycattleco said:
When you look in general, most cows that are donors, more than likely should not be. The big operations I am talking about are trying to use ET to expidite their elite genetics for the commercial guy. Look at Wehrmann Angus in Virginia. They took GAR Precision 2536 and generated over 5 million dollars in revenue on her and NONE of the offspring were tearing up the tan bark. 2536 flat out produced cattle that grew and graded. She turned out to be a carrier and only a couple sons are still around. I can see why a commercial guy would want flush brothers for their herd. Makes the next breeding decisions easier when they need to be replaced. Still too many cows that don't qualify for donors sure are being put there.
I would agree that, in my opinion, there are cows being flushed that I think should not have been. I have probably flushed a few myself that should not have been. I am always amazed how differently people see cattle, and what works for one person, may not work for another. The same thing goes when a person is selling bulls. On many different occasions, my pick of the entire bull pen is still standing there after several bulls have sold. I have never had a production sale when I wasn't totally surprised by how high a price some animals sold for, and how little some others sold for as well. That is why, I have not concerned myself with that too much, because the most important number at the end of the day was the amount of money generated from the sale. The same thing goes for producing embryos. I am oftentimes, amazed which genetic combinations people want to buy from my embryo inventory. And people from different parts of the world or different regions of Canada and the US, want different types of cattle. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this.
This is the stuff that makes this business so great. Each one of us do what we do to try to produce some better cattle. I don't know many people who do this simply for the enjoyment and aren't concerned( at some point in time) about losing money. Even the wealthiest people in the business seldom do this year after year and lose money. If they are losing money, there is an ulterior motive, such as doing this to rob the tax man. I do not see that as being a wrong motive, as they are truly stimulated the economy in the beef industry.... and when someone else has a great sale, or sells some cattle for excellent dollars, there is always a trickle down affect to the others in the beef industry. It is no different than a major business building a plant in your town and they hire many local people to work there. The entire town does better. So each and every one of us are in the beef industry for our own set of reasons. My reasons may be completely different than yours, but that does not make either of us wrong. If someone wants to buy a heifer for their kid to show for say $25,000, why is that wrong? If they went and bought the kid a new car or truck at much more than this, no one would think anything about this. It is their business... and in doing what they do, someone in the beef industry is benefiting from it. That is only good. You or I may never be able to do this, but we still benefit somewhere down the road. Success breeds success and failure breeds failure.
ET is just another tool we can use to promote and sell our product.In international sales of genetics, embryos and semen are almost exclusively the method of choice. ET is not for everyone, and I have seen the use of ET get some people in serious financial trouble. It does not sound like it is going to cost much to flush a cow, but the bills can get pretty big fairly fast.Selling embryos is no different that selling live cattle. It is supply and demand and is also dependent on a person's marketing skills as well. If ET is used by some to produce cattle for the show ring, what exactly is wrong with that? Whether we like shows or not, cattle shows are a major component of this business. They always have been and always will. If you are against showing cattle, you don't have to go near one. That said, if someone else gets enjoyment from showing, or if showing cattle promotes families working together, and families having fun together, what exactly is wrong with that? I would be the first to agree that some of the things that the show ring promotes has little to do with the rest of the beef industry, but I do not say that no animals that have had successful show careers have anything to offer for the real world cattlemen. Some do, and some don't... and that is the way it has been since the first cattle show was held.
I sometimes think that some of the debates we have on SP, are basically just debates about the differences in our own operations. There can be no winners as we all try to do what is best for our operations with the environments we have to deal with, the management we have available, the facilities we have and the money we have in our bank accounts. There is room in this business for absolutely everyone who wants to be in it and for whatever reason they want to be in it for. If someone thinks they can flush a cow in an attempt to produce some show cattle, more power to them. My original post was just to comment that, where I live, ET is seldomly used just to try to produce show cattle. Here, it is mostly cattlemen trying to propogate their best genetics to supply better bulls for their bull sales and females for their replacement pens, and I see nothing wrong with that either. We are all free to chose what we want to do, to improve our herds,and our livlihoods.
go chase parked cars!!!
