sackshowcattle said:
yes but this does matter in real world. Its the one thing keeping cattle as a whole on a united front. Use the hog industry for example. They have a uniform finish with sound enough movement, that they can pull a market gilt out and breed her aslong as she hasnt been fed paylean or some other stuff out there. Also results will be pretty predictable as far as genetics since everything under the sun is not in the mix. Club calves most heifers shouldn't be used for the sake of the indusrty. Either there are 6 breeds in trying to get that one great one losing all hybrid vigor in the out cross. You cant predict b.w. because some where a couple generations back a 120 pound b.w. bull is a sire, with no papers on the crosses good luck proving where that 110 pound calf came from using a proven calving ease angus bull. In quite a few instances the heifer was fed so hot to keep her fat enough for the ring good luck having any kind of breeding longgevity with all that extra pelvic fat. For people that don't see the slippery slope that show cattle are headed down they just need to look a few years back. 15 years ago showing at NWSS any heifers I took down there for the prospect show were shown as breeding heifers. It was believed that heifers should be used to breed and not eat. There was no market heifer class. We created a need for that class by only breeding for that great steer then keeping a cool looking geneticly inferior heifer to breed that we got instead. Now there is a need to get rid of the offspring of those calves and a market heifer class at all the show is one way of doing it. Thats why when you talk to big breaders your seeing a pretty big movement in using older heavy milking strong maternal sires. It nothing new been going on for years. Just look through old photos and watch the "decade shift (about how often the extremes have change). Go from one decade to the next and you will see cattle extremely over finish, tight gutted cattle, belt buckle over the back of cattle, belt buckle under the belly of cattle. As an industry show cattle cant ever seem to find a happy medium its always on extreme to the next.
Oh and one more thought on structure. I can see the point of judging as a market class ready to slaughter, but here is the other part of it. If you allow cripples to win as fats breeders with still breed the cripples. In 2000 my friend had a calf that made champion drive in denver figured he had a good shot at state fair that year. the was strait of both ends and at 975 pounds went down and couldn't get back up. Guess what that 5000 calf won back maybe 1000 in prospect shows before he got a bullet in the head cause that stressed he would have been a dark cutter for sure.
While I can understand some of what you said, the market hog industry is not united. Its actually pretty much the same. I managed a couple of big commercial farms up in MN for about 5 yrs, and I also deal with a lot of show hogs. The commercial industry has just run of the mill good carcassed, fast finishing hogs. While the show industry is looking for the more extreme muscled hogs. And to say that you can pull a Market Gilt and breed her if she hasnt been fed paylean, you can also pull a Market Heifer and breed her as long as she hasnt been implanted or fed zilmax. You can also breed a market gilt that has been fed paylean, studies show it really only affects litter size. And as a matter of fact if you want a better chance of producing that grand champion steer, breed a market heifer. She and the market gilt will have the same issue, not that they wont breed, and not that they wont have great offspring. The problem is they typically wont raise them as well, the difference is the people raising show pigs have accepted the fact that the females that produce the best market show pigs are going to have smaller litters and not do a good job raising them, so they help them out along the way and dont complain about it. In the show cattle industry we actually have an advantage over them, we can flush that market heifer type cow that will produce great steers and let a better mothering cow carry and raise her calf. We dont have that much luck with that in the pig industry. Most of these market gilts also have every breed under the sun in them as well, so they arent a very good evidence for your argument.
And if you dont like the words terminal and maternal, stay away from the pig industry. They have succeeded because they are not afraid to know that some breeds are maternal, and some will give you more meat but wont raise a pig. So run a terminal boar over a maternal sow, have her wean 30+ pigs a year that grow and have good carcasses and laugh all the way to the bank. Go to a commercial farm, unless they are producing boars to go to boar stud you wont see anything but a white sow in the barn, because the white sows are the ones that will raise babies. Go to the boar studs and you wont see much white, unless its to produce replacement gilts, because Hamps and Durocs give you the best carcasses, but arent very good at raising them. But there are exceptions to every rule out there, like someone posted earlier, I also know people that have had great success with Charolais cows, well actually more with Charolais composites. But if you go back and study the research and history on all the breeds as a whole, the British breeds are generally more like the white breeds in pigs, they typically milk better, have more maternal instinct, and lay down fat better which provides a higher quality carcass. Therefor we typically know them as the "maternal" breeds. The continental breeds typically have more power and muscle, but as a whole the breeds dont typically milk as well, though some do have great maternal instinct, thus these breeds are known as a "terminal" breed. But of course there are exceptions to every rule and if you have found something that works for you, then stick with it.
As far as the whole judging steers because of soundness because their contemporaries may end up in the herd, or because we are worried that if I happen to use one that is a little tight then somebody is going to breed unsound animals. Well here is my thoughts, if a breeder is going to go and knowingly breed an animal with soundness issues and think its ok because a judge happened to use a steer that was slightly unsound, then that person lacks either the intelligence or integrity to be a breeder in the first place. And we dont go use coarse fronted, terminal appearing heifers in the breeding show because her contemporary steers may end up in the feedlot, so then why should we judge a steer in the market show on soundness because "his contemporary heifers may end up in the herd???" If you are going to buy replacement heifers, and someone has a set of 100, pretty much same genetic heifers, and they are all sound as a cat, awesome heifers with the exception of 1 or 2 who have some structure and style issues. Are you going to buythem all including the bad ones, simply because their contemporaries were good? No you will cut those out and buy the rest. At the same time are you going to discount the entire group because there were a few that had issues? Probably not, there are flukes in every scenario. Why then are we judging animals in the show ring based on what we assume their contemporaries look like, especially when we dont know the scenario? We should be judging each individual animal on its individual merrits towards the purpose of the show ring its in. Heck that super sound and really pretty and balanced steer that you use to win because your worried about what another steers contemporaries may look like, may have been the fluke himself, he may be the only halfway decent specimen among a thousand contemporaries. This is my opinion, in a breeding ring a heifer should look like a heifer, she needs to be feminine, SOUND, and have some volume to her. A bull should look like a bull, he should be rugged, masculine, sound, have some volume and power to him. A steer should be a steer, he should be more ruggedly constructed and more powerful than a heifer, but depending on the age at which he was cut may not necessarily be as masculine and rugged as a bull. In a prospect steer show, yes he absolutely has to be sound, because he still has to keep walking and getting to the feed pan in order to finish out and become market ready. But in a market steer show where we are judging them as finished market animals, then if he is still getting around, even if its stiffly on bad legs, then he has stayed sound long enough to get the job done, now if there are sound animals with as much product and market readiness then he isnt going to win, and he probably has to to be that much better than others, but what I am saying is being a little unsound isnt going to automatically put him in the bottom for me. And I am not going to consider what his contemporaries look like, because I am not judging his contemporaries, I am judging him.
