CAB said:
Like I said B4, a good one's, a good one. Congrats on your steer.
Did any of you happen to catch Jirl Buck & company on the Cattle Show last evening? There was some ref. made to the effect that the club world & the commercial world headed in the same direction.Anyway, it was nice to put a face on Jirl for me. I happened to graduate from the same HS as Dave Steen. His youngest brother was a classmate of mine. Trivia for some of you that run across Dave Steen. He was drafted by the NY Yankees as a pitcher, but didn't make it out of their minor leagues. He could throw hard.
finally saw this. a little folksy, but then i haven't seen any of the other programs, so i don't have any context there. someone, maybe nelson, mentioned maines did good on the feed efficiency scores and 6 out of 6 stars. there are 8 stars, so this was probably a misspeak. could have been edited out. also, tenderness scores were mentioned. here there are 6 stars. it was mentioned that a lot of maines scored "really well". 2 out of 6 is not really well, particularly compared to angus, which admittedly have more animals, but there are some outstanding maine bulls that are at least heterozygous for all 3 tenderness genes and some are actually homo other than for T1. T2 is the rarest. the breed should publicize this and bull owners should post their results. there must be a reason they don't, common sense?
i am disappointed that these results are not publicly available. there is more information available via sales catalogs than there is on bovigen's site. no marbling or QG stars were mentioned, but it was mentioned carcasses were grading well, as well as being in the 1's and 2's, as well as scanning the ribeyes. admittedly, the corrolation between the stars and scanned ribeye IM is in it's infancy.
kept hearing functional and adaptable to different climates but not what they meant and how it was measured. thought it was good they were emphasizing the heterosis factor, especially as the cowherd changes to angus. also mentioned was a herd bull with BW's in the 70 range. the breed needs more than a herd bull with low BW's, all though it's obvious ali has been used extensively in commercial operations just on that alone.
also mentioned was that the cattle do good in rough country, but none of the video looked like either the country or the cattle were having a hard time. and obviously, it's hard to not want to use cattle that are clipped or totally slicked out, which is a good thing to show.
all in all, i guess it was ok. a little more editing sophistication changing camera angles that react quicker to the person doing the talking instead of watching someone eat. steen did a good job of lead in questions. they could have had a customer on as well that had tried the breed in a commercial setting.
came away with a reasonablly good feeling about the show. good job AMAA.
