Okotoks said:
librarian said:
Well, I was hoping to avoid that by not playing with fire
The thing is, I saw Charolaise bulls all over the place this summer, from Montana to Pennsylvania. To offer something relevant to the commercial producer as a way to introduce Shorthorn cross replacements from his angus based cows, they need to have the ability to calve out Charolaise or Simmental terminal cross calves.
If Shorthorn gets all hung up on low birth weight to save us, it might ruin the cows for the greedy world out there.
However, I heard you and will use the 80 lb rule when I save bull calves for my program. It explains a lot about preventing cow size from creeping up in retained heifers. Select for performance second and weight range first.
That is a little weird to me because that is single trait selection disregarding pelvic size and maternal calving ease. The only thing you will know for sure is that they can have 80 lb calves. What about commercial herds that want your british based cows to use in a terminal program using bulls that will give them maximum pounds at weaning? Will they want cows that are selected for 80 lbs maximum birth weights ?
I think the 80lb threshold is a bit low but not by much. You know there's going to be a normal distribution of birth weights and when you start pushing the MEAN birth weight over 85-90lbs, this is when the commercial guy is going to start running into trouble. It's not the average calf that causes the problem; its the outlier 125lb calf out of cow that's used to having 85lbers that lays down and dies on you-- that's the one you really remember. As to avoid this, the producers I personally know select bulls where even the top 1% of their bw's will still fall within an acceptable (meaning zero assistance as they'll certainly be unobserved) birth weight range.
http://www.m6ranch.com/catalogs/bullsale.html
I looked through the M6 Charolais sale catalog prolly 40 times but went through it again just to confirm what I thought -- Out of all the bulls they sale, there is NOT ONE over 100lb birth weight. I saw one bull in there w/ a 99lb and one w/ a 95 but, without doing the math, Id say the average bw of the Char bulls offered was under 88lbs. What you see here is Char bulls with not only more growth, but also bulls with lower birth weights, and as is the case with many of these bulls, bulls that are every bit as maternal as the common SH bull.
Now I understand the SH breed isn't at the point of luxury the Char breed is where we can just go out and choose at will bulls with the type of performance spreads these bulls do, but this doesn't mean we should stop continually striving to attain these standards. And it sure doesn't mean we should just discard the genetics of bulls who can't be entrusted to calve entire calf crops unassisted. IMO- it just means these are bulls aren't IMPROVED (via evolution =>I've seen Angus pedigrees that have literally twice as many generations since 1980 as do some SH pedigrees and astute selection pressure) enough to present to the commercial market yet. They have characteristics that are absolutely viable and beneficial to the industry but UNTIL improvements are achieved and an overall level attained, it's best they not be released to the commercial market.
At the point of progression the SH breed currently is in, progressive purebred breeders should be and are using bulls as
breeding pieces that are more specialized in a particular area (but not well rounded enough overall) to really be applicable in the commercial mkt. You see this in quote unquote "heifer bulls"-- most times if it weren't for their supreme calving use, they wouldn't be used at all. The opposite end of the spectrum is just as valid. Phenotypical excellence,, but in a 120lb bw package. To me, neither of these lines should be discarded but rather the duty placed upon the pure bred breeder to merge the qualities of the 2 lines into 1 superior specimen.. BEFORE they're released.
I think the true merit of a breeder should be evaluated by the level of progression (in relationship to the breed in general) his sale cattle exhibit. Anybody can go out, purchase cattle and start breeding 70lb low bw SH bulls that wean 475lb calves on Texas pasture. Just as easily accomplished is having 95lb bw SH bulls that wean 650lbs on Texas pasture (I have both this year). But by INDUSTRY STANDARDS, neither of these margins are desirable. Restraint needs to be shown by purebred breeders to wait and only promote bulls that are genuinely competitive with individuals in other breeds. If the Angus breed has high calving ease bulls that still have the performance to hit 700lb weaning weights, well then making noise about a SH bull w/ high calving ease that weans 500lb is silly. Just seems big fish in a small bowl-like. To me, this individual should be regarded as a breeding piece; a tool for the purebred breeders to utilize but not as a complete package worthy of being released into the Beef Industry under the Shorthorn name. There's tremendous upside in the SH breed and endless room for improvement, we just have to be realistic. There's many different avenues a breeder can take to achieve results, even to achieve the same results-- but whatever path is chosen, I just hope its one that continue to close the gap between INDUSTRY leaders and the SH breed.
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