Big M Show Cattle said:
For you Red Angus breeders, anyone had any calves out of Majestic Lightning? If so how have they turned out and how big at birth? Do you think he is heifer safe? I have some clubby heifers and a couple of straws of Majestic Lightning that I was thinking of using on them. They are both Maine Paddy Omally heifers that have a good build (bone size) so far. I know red angus are suppose to be one of the easiest calving breeds and I know Majestic Lightning's EPD's for this year is a calving ease of 5 and a -0.4 birth weight, so he should be an average red angus bull for birth weight. Cause if I don't use him on the heifers, I will use Northern Improvement (black angus) but I have a couple straws of him that I thought I could use. Also I don't know how all that coloring stuff with bulls work, with both heifers being all black, what is that chances of the calf being red or black?
I would not use this bull on heifers, especially clubby heifers (remember the dam contributes to the size, shape,bone and weight of the calf). His EPDs suggest that he is not a calving ease bull although the accuracy of the EPDs is low.
For heifers I use high accuracy (>80%) CE Red Angus bulls - I really like the old bull Buffalo Creek Hobo 1961, but ABS is sold out of him. They do have Oscar, Nebula, Above and Beyond etc. For CE you want a high positive number and BW a negative number with high accuracy and top 10% of the breed or better. There isn't much better than a heifer having a calf unassisted and that calf gets up and nurses and bounces -
re the numbers - trust the RAAA way over cattle visions or bull barn or whoever - they determine the numbers based on calving reports - the numbers on the cattle vision site are almost the opposite of the RAAA
Re color - if you breed to a Red Angus (homozygous red), if you heifers are homozygous black the calf will be black and carry the red gene (black is dominant; red recessive). If your heifers are heterozygous black (carry both the black and red gene) then there is a 50% chance the calf will be red.
