Charolais bulls on club calf cows to raise a smoke

[hevmando]

My daughter has been bugging me to breed her cow(s) and attempt to get a smoke colored calf.  In our very short history in this project, I have witnessed personally, and been told on here by others, that there is merit to only having the dam or the sire be clubby bred with the other being a purebred or half blood to try to maintain some type of consistency in the breeding.  Not sure if that is true, but our experience has been clubby x clubby = really good or below average.  Whereas the clubby x purebred or high % results in good to very good calves, but rarely/never trainwrecks.  So with that being said, we may experiment with putting some clubby bulls on purebred cow(s), and putting purebred bulls on clubby cows.  The clubby cows we are looking for smokeys out of are a mother/daughter pair that i have posted on here before and talked about in other posts.  Mother is a Golden Child X Mossy Oak, her daughter is sired by a Northern Improvement linebred bull from Smurf on this forum.  Both are th carriers, but ph free.  I will post pics if desired, but my questions are this.  Am I wacked in my thinking above?  If not, who would I talk to or what type of Charolais bull should I consider?  Has anyone done this before?  What can I risk?  Are rattails a concern?  I know nothing about that trait.

 

[sizzler14]

troubadour

 

[Mark H]

The best answer is to use the bull with the best documented traits in his calves (performance, calving ease, and confirmation) that you can afford in order to reach your goals.
Generally this means using a purebred AI bull as they have the most (and best) performance information.
I can't recommend a bull on the information given.
How big are the females?  Their age?  Calving history?
Do you want to improve maternal traits?
Do you want to produce show steers only?
Who is around at calving time?
Just some questions to think about and answer.

 

[hevmando]

The top picture is the Golden Child x Mossy Oak 5 yr old cow.  She probably weighs about 1400-1500 lbs.  Fairly tall and long, not very deep in body.  Has calved unassisted each time.  Bred 2x to the Northern Improvement line bred bull and 1x to I-80.  Bred to calve in April to Rumor Mill.  Been a good cow, milks adequately, lots of muscle, hair, pretty structurally sound IMO. 

Bottom picture is the first calf out of the above cow and Northern Improvement line bred bull.  3 yr old, weighs about 1300 lbs.  Shorter in length and height than her dam, less power, but very correct, sound female IMO.  Raised a nice calf this past year, calved unassisted bred to Mercedes Benz last year, bred the same way this year.

As we are hoping for smokes, not really looking to improve maternal traits, hoping for show steers or market heifers and will show them ourselves.  Not sure what we'd do with the heifers after showing/breeding.  Do not think we'd keep them, probably sell them as breds if maternal enough but more likely just put in the freezer unless someone tells me they should be kept back?

My job is fairly flexible and only work 10 minutes from the farm so would have someone around to check on them at calving all the time.

Does this cover what you were looking for Mark?  Anything else that would be helpful?  Thanks for your input.

 

[rackranch]

I think this bull either makes them really good or average.  I've fed out two of them and neither one put on enough hip or lower third to get them to the top of their class.

Go to Brandon Horns web page and look at a bull named Lovin The Business.  He is a Yellow Jacket X Shamrock and is TH/PHA free.

Also look at a bull on Bovine Elite site under Charolais line up at LT Bluegrass 4017.  Very impressive pure bred bull. G-Luck

troubadour

 

[ZZCATLE]

DENVER

 

[Mill Iron A]

The consistency issue is something that bothers me as well.  We have been striving to do what you are and in doing so we picked up a charolais bull ourselves.  His registered name is Keys Tenacious 86X.  If you look at Mill Iron A Livestock on facebook there are a few videos and pictures of him there.  I will try to attach a picture here as well.  And there are progeny pics as well.

 

[Davidsonranch]

I also want to give LT Bluegrass 4017 a try.

 

[Davidsonranch]

The consistency issue is something that bothers me as well.  We have been striving to do what you are and in doing so we picked up a charolais bull ourselves.  His registered name is Keys Tenacious 86X.  If you look at Mill Iron A Livestock on facebook there are a few videos and pictures of him there.  I will try to attach a picture here as well.  And there are progeny pics as well.

Holy Moly! I have been trying to find you guys!  Kids ended up with calf #52 this year.  Is he out of Tenacious bull?  Excellent calf

 

[Mark H]

After looking at both cows I want to power them up and add muscle-with out dumping alot of frame into the picture.  Their are plenty of Purebred Charolais bulls that would work here for what you want to do.  I am going to stick to easy to get bulls from Genex and ABS.

Genex has a strong Charolais line up:
I like Keys Allstate for his mix of conformation, calving ease, and muscle.  If calving ease is an issue here is your bull.
Fire Water would be a good choice if you don't mind some lower calving ease number (not hard calving).  A show bull renown the likely choice if calving ease is acceptable.
An unproven show bull that would also likely work is  CORNERVIEW XCALIBRE 27X.  He has loads of performance and style

ABS:
Firemaker is very good bull and has calving ease a little harder than Fire Water but with more performance.  Can produce show winners
DCR Solution A spread bull with good phenotype and performance. This bull is designed to work on simangus and angus cows.
Note each of these bulls has the ability to produce excellent females and will not hurt your maternal traits but improve them.  A herd sire in the Charolais breed must come froma good cow to be taken seriously.

 

[hevmando]

Thanks Mark and others for the replies.  We have our inventory with Genex and am sure I could get ABS semen.  Will run this by my daughter and take a pick.  Jeff

 

[hevmando]

After all the input we ended up breeding the Golden Child x Mossy Oak cow to LT Bluegrass.  Here is her heifer calf about 17 hours old.  Weighed 90 lbs, up and nursing in less than 30 minutes.  Thinking Cornerview Xcalibre this year?  Not the best pic, but calf was pretty spunky this morning and wanted to jump and run.    Mom is the cow behind the calf.

 

[Freddy]

Very nice cow you are using , you need to use something a little showier and not so big IMO ,GOT TO HAVE REAL CLEAN FRONTED BULL ...hoodoo bulls are in the right direction and the Texas boy's know what to more use than the northerners ...  I'm sure there are some Firewater SON'S THAT are a better pick..... There is a POWER
BULL IN Missouri that should work ....he is a firewater son ....

 

[chambero]

Pb Charolais bulls generally work better on smaller clubby cows.  Some of the best can be found from Kris Black, but none are really head and shoulders above the rest.

On your type of cow, you likely would get the best steer out of a halfblood bull.  Check out some of Brandon Horns bulls.  Some of those are clean.

 

[Freddy]

Found the bull I was thinking of but he wasn't bred at all right for clubby breeding .....I did find a very attractive PB Charolais bull that  might work on your cow for 35 .00 dollars a unit in the Bovine Elite web site ...The bull is minus on yearling growth and has a HOODOO pedigree and is raised I think by LEDDY CHAROLAIS -----his name is
LEDDY HOODOO 365Y ..Probably had some calves around last year and there was a phone number to call and talk to owner ......To get a calf like what you want it will take a different and special type Charolais bull to do this ....
SEK GENETICS might have this bull also and some relatives to him ....

 

[crystalcreek]

EM811391 LEDDYHOODOO 325Y sired this little jewel....I bet he'd make some nice smokes....

Aces Wild Ranch has him....he is listed under their sires tab on their website.

 

[crystalcreek]

Genesource in Texas is a distributor of Rapid Rewards.  He sired this year's Grand Champion steer at Houston, out of a Heatwave, I believe....His sire, Hef, was the sire of the Res Champion in San Antonio this year, also out of a Heatwave.  I hope I remembered all that right.....

I believe you can still try to get Hef from Airhart.....there was a whole other thread trying to track down the elusive "Hef" lol!  Showstopper95 solved that dilemna for all of us by spending a day going through old magazines.

 

[crystalcreek]

Here's one that seemed to sell well in recent sales... semen available at Bovine Elite  ..."Smokin Bob"

 

[Telos]

A bunch of good ideas to select from. I too like Korky Wise's bull, Rapid Reward. He's a beast and should work well on the type cows you're talking about.

 

[chambero]

Any of Dan Leddy's charolais bulls are good.  Almost all of my Char-x cows go back to an old bull of his called Troy