recip candidates

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JbarL

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what are you alls opinions of recip cows?  are there any certain crosses that "seem" to have more specific success/ failures?  ie angus/herford.....beef X dairy? i have a pb angus cow who was et'd and did a good job.....but i bred her back angus last month to see what kind of influences my bull adds/or subtracts from her and 2 other cows...any info would be greatly appreciated....wasnt sure of any age/frame/  or cross bred combinations that work better  for recip candidates. ( was planning on using her for angus/maine/simmental f1 calves)  .... thanks jbarl
 

red

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I heard once from a herdsman at deRouchey's that holstein recips can produced too much milk & the calf scours. I've also send a really fat recip that just didn't milk well for the calf & was a terrible mother. Calf never had a good start.

Red
 

mp

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I have heard the 1/2 brahman thing too. But we have a hard time syncronizing heat on some of our cows that have alot of american in them.
 

stumpy

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We use a little bit everything. I really like the cows that can still have a nice calf if they miss their egg and the herd bull breeds them. As far as breed composition goes some of my favorite recips are Red Angus/Gelbvieh cross. They are exteemly rugged, easy doing, and gentle.
 

kanshow

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I really like the cows that can still have a nice calf if they miss their egg and the herd bull breeds them
  That's what we aim for.  We pull a group of cows from the commercial herd that have calved in the right time frame and use them.  They are just nice Simmi cross cows. 
 

GONEWEST

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First time we did ET work in 1988, we used 10 Holstein heifers, what a train wreck that was! They wouldn't try to have the calves, then some didn't want them, then they looked like skeletons, you couldn't feed them enough.

The Brahman X Holstein cross was a good idea if you're down south. It gives you the milk plus the ability to have a large calf without assistance. But like another poster mentioned, htey might be more difficult to sync and the disposition problems might not be so good. When I went to Central America with my ET guy in the early 90's they were milking Brahman X Holsteins, by hand in dairies. They were losing a milk hand or two a day, lol.

I'm sure it also depends on what kind of calves you're raising. If it were jerseys or maybe angus it might not matter about the size of the recip. But we have raised Simmi's and club calves so it matters a bunch to me that a cow can have a large calf. I've got a couple of 1800 recips. They are awesome. One had a 130 lb calf in 20 minutes. For me I would like to have as much Simmi or Gelbveih in my recips as possible and not as much angus or hereford simply because they can have larger calves and they milk so well. I only know one Simmi bull who's relatives have a particularly hard time calving and we stay away from those.

To me, fertility, milk, disposition, and the ability to calve unassisted are what we look for in a recip.
 

kanshow

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Does anyone pay much attention to recip age?    We look at those between 4 & 7 years of age.. seems like those are the best fertility & calf raising years.

 

Jill

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Our recip ages range from 4-10, we use purebred cattle from our own herd.  We went the coop herd route and weren't really happy with that so what we started doing was we shoot for March 1st calves so anything that falls into the right calving range we will be set up and they get sync'd for recips, the embryo's are generally our best calves so they get 1st input, the cows that don't meet those dates or don't come in in the right time frame get AI'd.
 

garybob

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stumpy said:
We use a little bit everything. I really like the cows that can still have a nice calf if they miss their egg and the herd bull breeds them. As far as breed composition goes some of my favorite recips are Red Angus/Gelbvieh cross. They are exteemly rugged, easy doing, and gentle.
It'd be interesting, to me, if "Gus" bred one of those "Red Balancer" cows, because, I think he's a good bull, even though he's NOT red. Judging by your Denver Pics, he wasn't overly hairy (had real-world winter hair, not "cool-box wool), overly fat, and was masculine, with big-enough feet.

GB
 

simtal

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Something I can't stand: when people use cows that didn't breed in the springl, thinking that those cows are recip canadates in the fall.  Here at good ol U of I they did that,  got something like under 20 pregnancies with around 200 cows.  Stupid. :mad: :)))
 

shortdawg

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GB, They were good commercial type Shorthorn females with good bags and a nice healthy calf at side. Doc and one of his friends bought 2 or 3 of them and plan to use them as recips and the others I can't remember where they went off the top of my head. They were definitely capable of raising a good market calf and will be great in the role they are planning to use them in. Some people think down when they think of a recip but they need to be as capable of raising a calf as any other.
 

shortyisqueen

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Alberta, Canada
We breed and sell cows specifically to be recips. They are Hereford Shorthorn crosses that we normally sell or start putting eggs in at age three, which seems to be a great age for this. We like the Hereford Shorthorn cross because they have the milking ability from the Shorthorns in a tidy Hereford udder (no muss at calving time), are moderate framed (frame 5, although I'm sure a little larger would be OK, but this works for us) and efficient (so you don't have to spend all you made on the embryo calf feeding its mom), good feet and legs, lots of pelvic room, and are docile from both sides. The vets always come prepared with their bottles of Atravet and are so suprised when they never half to even pull out the syringe. Disposition is a pretty important thing when choosing your recips, as if your recipe is nuts, she can pass it on to your calf and that is certainly not good!!!

The ones with high fertility are good choices, ie, some commercial cows that always stick on their first cycle. We've always had the best luck when the recip is on a good feeding program when we implant the eggs. In the past, we have always had over 85% of the eggs we've implanted stick (last year we got lucky with 100%)...
 

justintime

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I just set up 35 recips and 5 donors  today. We flushed 5 others last week with good results    22. 19. 18, 10 and 6 grade 1 embryos. The 22 embryos came from a donor who has been flushed every 2 months for over 5 years straight. Her previous flush resulted in 18 grade 1 embryos  We use British or British cross females for recips. Some are purebred Shorthorns from the  herd. Also some purebred Angus and some Maine/Angus cross. We try to use cows that are at least 3 years old. We have never had much luck with first calf heifers. I am trying a few heifers this time, as I have some embryos that should be safe for heifers.
We pick recips that are good mothers, who milk, who have good udders and who have decent temperments. Temperment of the recip is very important. I don't mind recips that have a little life, but I would never put an embryo in any cow that is goofy, as the calf will most likely be just as goofy as the recip by weaning.

If our next few flushes produce good embryo numbers, we may be looking for some co-operator herds to use for recips on a share basis. If anyone is interested, drop me a note
 

Doc

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Except for a Black Impact dtr(who is a 1/4 Shortie) & a black cow from a  pregnancy I bought , I use all reg. Shortie females. Depending on the female & the time of the year I will try them with 1 or 2 eggs then kick them with the bull. If I buy a pregnancy from someone & it's in a cow other than a Shortie ,I will try them with 2 eggs & if they don't hold it , then they get bred to the bull & sold to a neighbor with a commercial herd. I seem to have less disposition problems this way . Ideal canditate for me is like those  I bought over at the Blue Ridge sale, hfrs nursing their 1st calf with a nice udder, good disposition, & on an upward plane of gain (& if I'm buying them , getting them bought worth the money  ;) ).
 
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