How to AI?

[Limiman12]

Dont worry about show quality until you have corrected those faults. You are just aiming for the best cow that you can make and once you get there you can start breeding for show steers. If you jump right into maines you are going to lose years. Go to our webpage, look at "red" and then follow the lineage. Red is a p.o.s. show cow . But she has the biggest calves every year, which works for our operation. We bred her to simmental, got betty (who produced an awesome angus heifer this year), bred her structure and now have a really cool cow that I can breed to anything I want, she's clean so I'm not limited. Red was also a twin, bottle calf and is about 16 with every single tooth attached so I can't harp on her too bad. She had a pretty cool dirty harry calf, one year, but I was just experimenting and got lucky. I look at it as this, the show world is sketchy, the trends change, but there will always be a demand for beef, so I want my cows to be able to produce pounds and good show calves but in case one fails I need a back up plan, and buyers dont want colored calves they want pens of black or red.

If you have any p.o.s. show cows like red, I would gladly save you the trouble of looking at them ;D. She sounds like a hell of a cow.  (clapping) (clapping)

 

[GKE Cattle]

`Showsteer gal,,I have been trying to post on here for somne time but !!  I see that this post is up to three pages now, and it is all possitive from what I have read.  You want to start to say AI is GREAT, we can not see how to work a cow herd with out ilt,,,my family has been AI ing since the late 60"s and my wifes family has been using it since the early 60's ,,,FYI they had the first Maine calves born in the US!!!  But back to you,, your Dad is not all that into this program,,so you have to prove it to him.  I saw that you want to sell show calves from your program and get into that business.
  First and formost,,,,,,you will not hit a HOMERUN in your first year of breeding,,,sorry!!!  Yes you see all the sale reports from hundereds of sales on  here and names like Lautners, Kroups, Rogers, Glovers, Gyers, Cores, Bushey Prarks,, and there are sooooooo many more.  You acan tend to get wrapped up in all off this.  These and so many operations like them. have been in this business for years. These guys have build cow herds using AI but, they do not always use what is popular!!!!!!!  They use some bulls who will give them show steers  but hey ues a whole lot more of the bulls who will give them great momma's.    The cattle business in not an over night thing,,,you have to have a long term dedication to it.  First off not only will you have set of mice replament females that will make you dad happy ,, you will give him a set of sters to sell that will be better than what he has had.  BE smart start at the bottom and build up run your herd as a commercial herd and some morning you will wake up and go out to look at your cows and say OMG!!!        All the best to you young lady

 

[ChristaCheatham]

Thanks GKE Cattle for the eye opener! I never saw it that way! Witht that being said, what bulls would you breed to create better quality animals? In dew Time and G13 structure? Or is there another one?

 

[oakie]

Dont worry about show quality until you have corrected those faults. You are just aiming for the best cow that you can make and once you get there you can start breeding for show steers. If you jump right into maines you are going to lose years. Go to our webpage, look at "red" and then follow the lineage. Red is a p.o.s. show cow . But she has the biggest calves every year, which works for our operation. We bred her to simmental, got betty (who produced an awesome angus heifer this year), bred her structure and now have a really cool cow that I can breed to anything I want, she's clean so I'm not limited. Red was also a twin, bottle calf and is about 16 with every single tooth attached so I can't harp on her too bad. She had a pretty cool dirty harry calf, one year, but I was just experimenting and got lucky. I look at it as this, the show world is sketchy, the trends change, but there will always be a demand for beef, so I want my cows to be able to produce pounds and good show calves but in case one fails I need a back up plan, and buyers dont want colored calves they want pens of black or red.

If you have any p.o.s. show cows like red, I would gladly save you the trouble of looking at them ;D. She sounds like a hell of a cow.  (clapping) (clapping)

lol, thank you. I think she's our oldest cow, we run over 250. Really ugly but has all her teeth. Her structure grandaughter raised twins this year so she gets points for that too. She has beat the prom queens every year, has had some show champions.  She's a 50/50 limmy simmy so I wasn't really sure what to do with that. Just run her with the Angus bull and she does good.  I heard alot of bad things about structure, after I used him, siring (sp) larger calves and I concluded that they came out of fat cows. A 1300 lbs cow isn't going to make a 60 lbs calf.  I could be wrong and there are exceptions, but I have had two calves out of him and dad thought the cow sneezed and the calf popped out. I have a heifer I purchased out of him and she was also a small calf. So I'm not afraid to use him and leave for the weekend. That has been my luck and we only feed rained on hay that we made.  My dad likes to rub it in when my AI misses so I do my best not to miss. The heatwave wreck, years ago, is something I think he will remember until he's 90 and likes to bring it up. But he's the first one to want to buy my replacement heifers or my version of "junk" heifers, lol, so I must be doing something right

 

[oakie]

`Showsteer gal,,I have been trying to post on here for somne time but !!   I see that this post is up to three pages now, and it is all possitive from what I have read.  You want to start to say AI is GREAT, we can not see how to work a cow herd with out ilt,,,my family has been AI ing since the late 60"s and my wifes family has been using it since the early 60's ,,,FYI they had the first Maine calves born in the US!!!  But back to you,, your Dad is not all that into this program,,so you have to prove it to him.   I saw that you want to sell show calves from your program and get into that business.
   First and formost,,,,,,you will not hit a HOMERUN in your first year of breeding,,,sorry!!!   Yes you see all the sale reports from hundereds of sales on  here and names like Lautners, Kroups, Rogers, Glovers, Gyers, Cores, Bushey Prarks,, and there are sooooooo many more.  You acan tend to get wrapped up in all off this.   These and so many operations like them. have been in this business for years. These guys have build cow herds using AI but, they do not always use what is popular!!!!!!!   They use some bulls who will give them show steers  but hey ues a whole lot more of the bulls who will give them great momma's.    The cattle business in not an over night thing,,,you have to have a long term dedication to it.  First off not only will you have set of mice replament females that will make you dad happy ,, you will give him a set of sters to sell that will be better than what he has had.  BE smart start at the bottom and build up run your herd as a commercial herd and some morning you will wake up and go out to look at your cows and say OMG!!!         All the best to you young lady

Well said. It's up to you on the bulls you want to use. You need to improve your cows, so look for bulls that will add flex, depth or rib, femeninity, etc. You have to be able to be very critical of your own cows to improve them. Photos don't show everything, you know what you like/hate, focus on fixing the hate end and you'll have some better cows. Structure and dew time worked on mine (we'll find out about dew time) but may not on yours. I wanted to add depth to my cow and a cleaner front end, so I went with the advice of my friend and tried structure. He worked well for me. He wasn't my first choice though. The company sent the seman to the wrong distributer so when the heifer was in the chute I called out Tc Freedom, and he wasn't in the tank. So structure was a take my word for it bull and it worked. Now almost everything is related to him, lol. I will say, stay away from anything EXT, run away from anything EXT. I have beautiful cows out of him but their calves are too spooky to sell, so they go on the truck. Beautiful cows, great ww's but horrible attitudes. And now I have to replace them.  Just something to think on, attitudes are a highly heritable trait. That is something you should look into also, what traits are highly herritable so you know what to expect when you breed a black to a roan or a polled to a horned, etc. I think you're on the right track, and you will do great, it's just a learning process.

 

[ChristaCheatham]

Thanks Oakie! Well, I have done a lot more research today, and have asked breeders on here.  Right now I'm thinking on breeding the heifer to Duff New Edition, and the cow to Grandmaster the simmy. Have any of you heard good things.bad things about using them? Let me know your thoughts!