Simmental Bull Choice

[HCrossFarms]

Has anyone seen calves out of Triple C Bettis with Dream On daughters?

 

[Lucky_P]

Commercial outfit; no Dream On daughters, but have used a number of Hooks Shear Force 38K sons/grandsons.
Used Bettis for 2-3 seasons as the primary AI sire on heifers.  Had really poor conception rate with at least two different batches of semen purchased.  Bettis calves came small and easy... but stayed small... the 'grow' suggested by his WW epd was just not there. 
Shame... homo black, homo polled, had all 6 of the GeneStar tenderness gene markers.  I had some hopes, but none of the Bettis heifers made the cut to stay.
 
Bettis' full-sib, Triple C Singletary, on the other hand - while not a 'heifer' bull - left some really good daughters here, and the steers were scale-mashers.  Genex rep told me that Singletary was dead when he dropped out of their lineup... but that was not the case... last I knew he was walking the pastures at Wicks Cattle in Richardson ND; 'course, he'd be almost 10 now, so may not still be alive... but I'll bet they've got semen available.

 

[HCrossFarms]

How is the growth with Shear Force?

 

[Lucky_P]

Have not used Shear Force directly... I fooled around until he was off the market without buying semen... I'm sure semen can still be had, but there are good sons/grandsons out there, readily available from most of the AI studs. 
WW/YW for Shear Force himself is not all that tremendous, but he brought calving ease/birth weight, udder structure, marbling, ribeye, tenderness, API/TI to the equation - in the top 5%, and mostly in the top 1-2% for all those traits.  Led the breed in registrations for a while, so I'm guessing his offspring may have done OK in the showring, but from a commercial producer's standpoint, he did a lot of things right.

We've used Bettis, Singletary, Long's Shear Pleasure, WS All In W111, CLRS After Shock, all SF sons/grandsons; mostly over commercial Fleckvieh-influenced SimAngus cows, and a few high%SM Dikeman's Sure Bet daughters. With the exception of the Bettis calves, all have been pretty good.