Red Angus question

[Sassy2899]

Have about 20 head of heifers that my dad and I are looking to A.I. back to a red angus bull.  The heifers are 3/4+ red angus influence.  Looking for a bull that is low birth weight, fairly good growth epd.  Also looking for a bull that is going to ad back some look and style.  I have been through the old threads about this and I do not want to use Fat Tony.  I was looking into Perfect Storm and Card Shark.  We also have a purebred red Simmental cow that we are going to breed back to a red angus bull.  I was thinking about using Firestorm and was just wondering what others thoughts were about this bull as well as the other bulls mentioned.  Red cow relocator I know this is your specialty so your advice would be exceptionally great.

 

[cowman 52]

We used a bull genex carries, viceroy.  Pedigree is good, maternal, used him for 3 seasons, have kept every heifer that hit the ground.  Good cow, average cow, not so good cow, he helped every one of them. They milk good enough, our 3 year drought has strained the grass, but the last 3 calve in 2 months. If I had the space, would use him again. Heifers are not stupid, and depending on the cow, frame is never outrageous.

 

[BTDT]

Cardshark and Perfect Storm will down size them at least 1.5 frame score. And I am not too confident on their growth.

Firestorm is new, but he was interesting enough I used a bit of him.  I think he might downsize them a bit, but still maintain some growth and style. That is my hope anyway!

Hamley will make them pretty, but they are really small framed and maybe lack a bit of power growth.  They seem to require quite a bit of feed to gain.
Most 5L and Beckton bulls will downsize, and maybe that is ok for you. That is going to depend on your cows and your market.

Not sure of what your goal is to produce, but Mission Statement, Packer, Big Iron, Crowfoot Oscar and Oly all make very attractive, cattle that will perform and make great cows down the road. 

I hope that gives you some ideas to look at and consider.

 

[bbsf]

We have a group of 3/4 Simmental 1/4 red angus heifers that we are looking to AI in November.  Saw some calves out of the Bieber Real McCoy bull and thought they were nice.  Looked at his EPDs and purchased semen.  His reg # is 1436794 or go to Bieber Red Angus and look under their bulls.  Has picture and link to his EPDs.  Calving ease and lots of growth.  Reminder he is young bull so that could change but we are going to try him based on calves we saw.  Just as FYI I do not have any ownership interest in him or the ranch that raised him.

 

[DL]

Have about 20 head of heifers that my dad and I are looking to A.I. back to a red angus bull.  The heifers are 3/4+ red angus influence.  Looking for a bull that is low birth weight, fairly good growth epd.  Also looking for a bull that is going to ad back some look and style.  I have been through the old threads about this and I do not want to use Fat Tony.  I was looking into Perfect Storm and Card Shark.  We also have a purebred red Simmental cow that we are going to breed back to a red angus bull.  I was thinking about using Firestorm and was just wondering what others thoughts were about this bull as well as the other bulls mentioned.  Red cow relocator I know this is your specialty so your advice would be exceptionally great.

The goal (IMHO) when breeding heifers is to get a live vigorous calf, a live heifers who does not suffer from calving paralysis, and a calf that grows good enough to be marketable. Breeding heifers is not the time to focus on "adding style", adding muscle", adding bone" etc but to use high accuracy calving ease bulls that give the heifer the greatest chance of success (and you not extra work). You didn't say what breed the other 1/4 of your heifers are - so in essence you are breeding crossbred heifers

Fat Tony is not a heifer bull and his EPDs are of low accuracy

Perfect Storm (1333190) has very low accuracy for CE and BW and his numbers reflect only 9 progeny (plus whatever magic is done with ancestors)

Card Sharks (1371275) CE EPD is low accuracy and even that is not in the top percentage of CE

If you are looking for replacement females Leachman Above and Beyond (1034626) has high accuracy CE and BW EPDs, he makes great mother cows with beautiful udders and the calves are aggressive, vigorous and teach that heifer what to do. They are phenotypically very pleasing to look at

Beckton Nebula is another high accuracy CE and low BW EPD bull that makes good females - he will down size

Hamley has pretty good accuracy for CE and BW but is only in the top 1/3 for these traits - not sure how well they grow

I really liked Oscar on heifers, his semen is no longer available - the calves are stylish and correct. One of my all time favorite Red Angus heifer bulls is Buffalo Creek Hobo 1961 but the semen is expensive. The females are special.

FWIW

 

[Mark H]

A calving ease red angus bul with a big BW to YW spread is VGW Oly 903: http://www.bovalink.com/cattle-semen-sale/42/vgw-oly-903-Red%20Angus
Biber's are very high on this bull and like him on hiefers.

 

[feeder duck]

For calving ease with some grow and maternal value added back Above and Beyond. For some show ring appeal try Huckleberry through Brylor semen sales. Hamely will work on bigger females and will add power. Pictured is our Hamely son out of a Mulberry dam. 58 lb birth weight. Packer might be one to look at as well.

Jeff
Cornell Shorthorns and Red Angus
www.showsteers.com/cornell

 

[Red Cow Relocators]

I'm a little late getting here on this one, it's sale and catalog building season on top of travel. We have a few bulls in our lineup that might fit what you need. Some are older proven bulls but alot are younger bulls that don't have really high acuracies yet. If you would like to view them you can go to www.redcowrelocators.com and click on the Private Stock Semen Sales page to see the directory and new bulls that we have added since the last print. I personally used the Walkerton 10W bull and the Towaw Integrity bull on all of our virgin heifers this year. RCR

 

[Mark H]

What are the accuracies on the EPDs for Walkerton 10W  and  Towaw Integrity? Some numbers you might want to add to your catalogue.

 

[Red Cow Relocators]

That is something that we may look into when we print the next edition of our sire summary. I personally don't put alot of emphasis on the numbers whether they be EPD's or accuracies, there is way too much inaccurate data turned in on too many animals for me to base my decisions on them alone. I put much more emphasis on the shape and design of the calf when it is presented than I do what a computer says might happen. Indecently, the only 2 calves that we touched last year were out of a "proven" heifer bull who was a -4.6 Birth EPD with high accuracies. We had 5 heifers bred to him and pulled 2 of the 5 with the heaviest being 89 pounds and the lightest being 79 pounds. Don't get me wrong, I do not have an issue with the birth weights as my heifers should and do have those calves unassisted, but the shape of the calves at presentation was not desirable for me. I do not want a 65 to 75 pound calf even out of heifers, my ideal birth weight for heifers is 80 to 84 pounds. Everybody has their own ideas, these are just a few of mine, RCR

 

[DL]

That is something that we may look into when we print the next edition of our sire summary. I personally don't put alot of emphasis on the numbers whether they be EPD's or accuracies, there is way too much inaccurate data turned in on too many animals for me to base my decisions on them alone. I put much more emphasis on the shape and design of the calf when it is presented than I do what a computer says might happen. Indecently, the only 2 calves that we touched last year were out of a "proven" heifer bull who was a -4.6 Birth EPD with high accuracies. We had 5 heifers bred to him and pulled 2 of the 5 with the heaviest being 89 pounds and the lightest being 79 pounds. Don't get me wrong, I do not have an issue with the birth weights as my heifers should and do have those calves unassisted, but the shape of the calves at presentation was not desirable for me. I do not want a 65 to 75 pound calf even out of heifers, my ideal birth weight for heifers is 80 to 84 pounds. Everybody has their own ideas, these are just a few of mine, RCR

Interesting comments RW esp when you are promoting a breed that believes in objective tests, performance measures, assessment of economically important traits, basically created WHR and has been very successful 

“The policy of the (Red Angus) Association
is to discourage the more artificial practices
in purebred cattle production and to place its
faith instead in objective tests, consisting for
the most part of comparisons within herds of
factors of known economic importance and
known heritability... By making this an integral
part of the registration system, Red
Angus breeders feel that even faster progress
can be made toward the ultimate goal of
more efficient beef production.” Waldo Forbes 1954

btw do you have a pdf of your catalog? it is a painful experience with non high speed internet

 

[Red Cow Relocators]

That is something that we may look into when we print the next edition of our sire summary. I personally don't put alot of emphasis on the numbers whether they be EPD's or accuracies, there is way too much inaccurate data turned in on too many animals for me to base my decisions on them alone. I put much more emphasis on the shape and design of the calf when it is presented than I do what a computer says might happen. Indecently, the only 2 calves that we touched last year were out of a "proven" heifer bull who was a -4.6 Birth EPD with high accuracies. We had 5 heifers bred to him and pulled 2 of the 5 with the heaviest being 89 pounds and the lightest being 79 pounds. Don't get me wrong, I do not have an issue with the birth weights as my heifers should and do have those calves unassisted, but the shape of the calves at presentation was not desirable for me. I do not want a 65 to 75 pound calf even out of heifers, my ideal birth weight for heifers is 80 to 84 pounds. Everybody has their own ideas, these are just a few of mine, RCR

Interesting comments RW esp when you are promoting a breed that believes in objective tests, performance measures, assessment of economically important traits, basically created WHR and has been very successful 

“The policy of the (Red Angus) Association
is to discourage the more artificial practices
in purebred cattle production and to place its
faith instead in objective tests, consisting for
the most part of comparisons within herds of
factors of known economic importance and
known heritability... By making this an integral
part of the registration system, Red
Angus breeders feel that even faster progress
can be made toward the ultimate goal of
more efficient beef production.” Waldo Forbes 1954

btw do you have a pdf of your catalog? it is a painful experience with non high speed internet

Let us not forget that where there is money to be made by "tweaking" the data, there are those who will do it. Another thing that bothers me is the fact that if you don't turn in a birth weight the association assigns that calf "breed Average" BW EPD. I'm not sure how that can possibly make the rest of the data submitted valuable. Shoot me an email to [email protected] and I'll send a pdf file to you. RCR

 

[BTDT]

Seems like most of your bulls come from two or three breeders. If I didn't trust their information, I certainly would not carry their bulls in my "private collection" semen sales.  That says a lot about the crowd you do business with. If you do not believe in the premise of the entire red angus breed, I question why you're in the breed.
Accuracies are more important than the actual number, as it "proves" the number. I am always leary of numbers that are backed up by only the owners or promoters of a bull, as those are subject to "variation". Once a bull is widely used, the numbers and accuracy tend to be verified (or not so much). I think we can both remember a bull years back that went from a +1 up to a +6.5 in BW EPD, due to the fact the "owners" were using him exclusively in the beginning.  But again, that goes back to doing business with who you know and who you trust. I didn't trust the owners and so I didn't use the bull, even when everyone else was drinking the Kool-Aid and hype from Denver.


As a breeder of red angus, I have always turned in BW's, so I am not sure of your statement that if you do not turn them in they are assigned an EPD. In fact, if you do not turn in information, the registration is on hold, which means it can not be transferred or offspring registered from that animal. It also can not show.  I am not sure on embryo calves, but I have always turned those in also and they are recorded in the registration information.

As for pulling calves from a calving easy bull; remember, the bull is less than half of the equation. You have to consider management and heifer retention. Maybe instead of the bull being to blame, maybe it was the heifer that wasn't shaped right or wasn't big enough (calving ease bred heifers do not always make calving ease momma cows), or maybe management wasn't correct. I am not blaming you, because we all have had instances where genetics play games with us, but wanted to point out the equation to a successful calving is more than just bull selection.

 

[aj]

I was going to say........that it was only a matter of time before the "Show Ring" screws up the Red Angus.

 

[DL]

Let us not forget that where there is money to be made by "tweaking" the data, there are those who will do it. Another thing that bothers me is the fact that if you don't turn in a birth weight the association assigns that calf "breed Average" BW EPD. I'm not sure how that can possibly make the rest of the data submitted valuable. Shoot me an email to [email protected] and I'll send a pdf file to you. RCR

Really? In what world is that? An who is doing the tweaking? I am with BTDT on this one -

Just looking at a couple of Red Angus bulls I like on the RAAA web site - Buffalo Creek Hobo 1961 CE 12 with an accuracy of 96% in the top 8% for this trait - numbers from almost 4000 head from 1894 different groups or Leachman Heavenly 8141 with a CE of 15, 90% accuracy and top 4% - data from 4287 head and 1680 groups. These data suggest that not only are these calves born easy but that they work in a wide variety of farms and ranches (ie # of head and # of groups reported).

With large numbers "tweaking" does not change the total one bit. Besides, CE is actually a measure of the shape of the calf and the calf is either born unassisted or not  - I think your notions are way off base here. Like BTBW I turn in data on all my Red Angus sired calves

Compare that to RED TOWAW INTEGRITY 17M who has a CE of 8, with an accuracy of 72% in the top 23% for this trait - BUT this data is from 3 reported progeny and 3 groups suggesting that he may not work in other situations than the 3 reported. (he does however have more progeny reported in the CAA -258 where he was used by more breeders that in the US)

I can't really comment onthe bulls in your catalog as I can get it to open so I look forward to a pdf

 

[Red Cow Relocators]

Seems like most of your bulls come from two or three breeders. If I didn't trust their information, I certainly would not carry their bulls in my "private collection" semen sales.  That says a lot about the crowd you do business with. If you do not believe in the premise of the entire red angus breed, I question why you're in the breed.
Accuracies are more important than the actual number, as it "proves" the number. I am always leary of numbers that are backed up by only the owners or promoters of a bull, as those are subject to "variation". Once a bull is widely used, the numbers and accuracy tend to be verified (or not so much). I think we can both remember a bull years back that went from a +1 up to a +6.5 in BW EPD, due to the fact the "owners" were using him exclusively in the beginning.  But again, that goes back to doing business with who you know and who you trust. I didn't trust the owners and so I didn't use the bull, even when everyone else was drinking the Kool-Aid and hype from Denver.


As a breeder of red angus, I have always turned in BW's, so I am not sure of your statement that if you do not turn them in they are assigned an EPD. In fact, if you do not turn in information, the registration is on hold, which means it can not be transferred or offspring registered from that animal. It also can not show.  I am not sure on embryo calves, but I have always turned those in also and they are recorded in the registration information.

As for pulling calves from a calving easy bull; remember, the bull is less than half of the equation. You have to consider management and heifer retention. Maybe instead of the bull being to blame, maybe it was the heifer that wasn't shaped right or wasn't big enough (calving ease bred heifers do not always make calving ease momma cows), or maybe management wasn't correct. I am not blaming you, because we all have had instances where genetics play games with us, but wanted to point out the equation to a successful calving is more than just bull selection.

I am pretty carefull who I deal with when I add a bull to our listing. I deal with breeders that I know and trust. I have rejected bulls from some individuals that I don't trust simply for that reason.
The premise that the breed was based on is good, it's the tainted information that has made the data less than reliable in my opinion.
If you do not turn a BW in the calf will be assigned breed average EPD's and register the calf. If you do not turn in a WW, they will "preregister" the calf but it will become a cat II if the data is not completed.
In the past 30+ years that I have been around the breed I have seen several bulls numbers change drastically. Some were BW EPDs and some were MILK EPDs. Recently a fairly popular bulls MILK numbers took a serious drop. This was a 7 year old bull with accuracies in the high 60's. Makes me go Hmmmmm.
As far as my experience with my heifers and having to assist the calves, the heifers were all 1/2 to 3/4 sibs, all managed the same. They were all AI bred to 3 different bulls and then cleaned up with one of the bulls that was also one of the AI sires. 2 out of 22 required assistance. Maybe they would have needed help bred to one of the other bulls as well but I found it odd that they were both out of the same AI sire and were the only ones that needed assistance. Maybe a coincidence, but I will probably not use those genetics again in my herd to find out.

 

[Mill Iron A]

DL, BTDT, and Red Cow Relocators all have excellent points here.  Buf Crk Hobo 1961 is a highly proven bull and its his widely used exposure that has gotten him here.  The one thing to think about for me is contemporary groups.  I don't care how many progeny are born, if they are born into 2-3 head groups that doesn't mean a lot to me. On the flip side if you do have big groups and lots of progeny I think that is a testimant to the breeding ability of the bull.  I also agree with what RCR is saying because data is only good as the people who enter.  I would suggest a compromise into what everyone is saying here.  I follow numbers from breeders who I trust with high accuracy and I also pay attention to their MANAGEMENT! If they aren't calving the same time, in the same general geographical area, or have the basic same feed resources then the data will be skewed.  I also have to agree with RCR that there are a lot of traits that can be seen more readily visually.  Take for example the stayability epd. How many pb breeders push their cattle hard enough for this to be relevant? I can tell way more with how they are put together in their skeleton than that epd could ever tell me.  And as usual aj is way off in left field. The showring has never ruined any breed. Crooked and misinformed breeders that "chase" ribbons rather than simply going to show off what they have raised is what has "ruined" breeds.  The showring is just a tool if used properly.  Don't be afraid of what you don't understand.  To answer the original posters questions I would use TR epic st618.  Really nice cattle that take just a tic longer to come into their own but def ce cattle with good production cappabilities and even some nice appeal to them.

 

[Show Dad]

Oh my how did we get to an EPD discussion (and on a show cattle site to boot)?

Sassy I would listen to what Feeder Duck (AKA: The Great JC) said.

SD
<alien>

 

[frostback]

When a bulls heifers start producing themselves, does that info go into his calving ease EPD? Or is it only his BWs and if they need assistance?

 

[Red Cow Relocators]

I am not trying to tell anyone that that the bulls I have listed are a cure all for everyone in the breed. I am telling you that these bulls are carefully selected from breeders whom I trust. If DL chooses to use bulls that are 30+ years old with high accuracies, that is her choice. I would like to think that the breed as a whole has made some progress genetically in the last 30 years. The sad part of the deal is that many bulls are long since dead and gone before they are used enough to generate the kind of data that people like DL require. Some bulls never get that type of use and are lost in the cracks, it is not easy to get a bull used in a variety of herds unless he is highly promoted and in this breed most people don't spend the money to promote a bull to the general public. I am 100% sure that what may have been the greatest Red Angus bull in the breed was never known to the public and was sent to kill when his usefulness in whatever herd he was in was over. As someone who has been around the breed for over 30 years and maintained my own cow herd for 20+ years, I can tell you that there is manipulation of data that is submitted on a much larger scale than most of us would like to believe. People are people and there are good and bad in every group, politics and personal agendas will always be around as long as there is money to be made. In the end you as a breeder have to decide what bull you like, from a program you trust and use him. RCR