-XBAR- said:
Jive Turkey said:
Jacob B said:
https://youtu.be/1UihP1wHhW4
Wow, horrible on the move.
Not very good specimen standing still either. No doubt he’s had some nice calves— his sheer volume of use has ensured that. But I will say I saw a pic of a pretty exceptional calf that was sired by a bull named Excalibur that is bred very similar to Starburst, just with the top and bottom side of pedigree inversed. May be worth looking into for your purpose grant as this calf looks a lot like how you like them at birth- coming out looking a month old
xbar, I am not sure what you mean by that. I strive for unassisted births and have for many years. My 2017 calf crop was born 100% unassisted ( including all my first calf heifers) and for many years I have had very few assists. I doubt if I have used a calf puller 5 times in the last decade over several hundred births. I don't like real big BW calves, but I also don't like real small BW calves in the Shorthorn breed as well. As I have said on here many times before, I have never had a bull in the bottom 50% of my BWs index over 100 for growth after weaning. Some other breeds have less issues with this. This is why I think we need to talk as much about calving ease as we do about birth weights.
In the past 10 years we have sold over 300 bulls with 95% of them selling to commercial producers. Recently a rancher with 1100 cows told me the Shorthorn bulls he purchased from us, gave him far less calving problems than some of the Angus bulls he used. When I asked him if he would be needing more Shorthorn bulls next spring, he said he would be, and how many he needed would depend on how many Angus bulls he decided to get rid of. He also said that his Shorthorn sired calves also weighed 38 lbs more at weaning than his Angus sired calves.( Hybrid vigor is the only free thing left in the beef business)
Here in Canada, must mature cows probably average 1450-1500 lbs, which I realize is bigger than most in Texas and most other parts in the south. IMO, if a 1450-1500 lb cow cannot have a 95-100 lb calf, you really need to change your cows and get some that can. This is not real hard to do!
We also have sold over 1800 embryos to producers in 12 countries and I have yet to have a single complaint on birth weights of the resulting calves other than one breeder from the UK said he thought some of the calves were a bit too small at birth and that they didn't have the explosive growth he was wanting. If that is the only issue I have to deal with I will be happy! I find it interesting how producers in various countries have different thoughts on production issues.
