twins

[aj]

With baby calves bringing 550$ at the salebarn.........will the beef industry re-think the efforts toward stacking herd genetics with cattle prone to twinning? When baby calves were worth 100$ the twinning deal seemed almost like a problem..........a deal requiring more management. But at these prices it seems like to me the deal ought to be revisited. A herd with a 50% twinning rate and management to handle this could double income?

 

[Doc]

Didn't MARC look for cows that consistently had twins to build off of ?

 

[aj]

I think they did. I know a couple breeders who were stackiing pedigrees and I was thinking they got up to 50% twins. There may be all kinds of trouble with % of cows carrying to term......retained placentas....etc etc. Seems almost like it could be a new frontier though.

 

[CJB]

Looks like MARC ended the program in 2012, and just liquidated their semen inventory in April 2014.
Breed Description http://usda.biddersauction.com/cattle/index_files/Page347.htm
Auction results http://usda.biddersauction.com/cattle/index.htm

 

[aj]

Thanks.....I wonder if there is a list that bought semen?

 

[aj]

It would be interesting if a purebred Angus or Shorthorn was developed that concentrated on the twinning aspect. Would there be a demand for this stuff 20 years from know.

 

[justintime]

For some reason, we have always had quite a few sets of twins in our herd. That is, until this year. We never had any sets of twins this year which is the first year I can ever remember not having lots of twins. I thought we must have had something in our herd genetics that promoted the twinning as we have had as many as 19 sets in a year. Usually we would have 8-12 sets of twins. In 1989, we had to re-establish our herd, and from the new set of cows we had 10 sets, so I am thinking we were not just getting twins from their genetics. Personally, I would rather have one good calf rather than two. Twins can bring lots of extra problems. We haven't had too many cows that would not accept both twins but it does happen occasionally. There seems to be a portion of cows that seem to have stillborn twins and I spoke with a researcher about this, and he said that this is fairly commonplace. Last year I had a heifer give us twins. The calves were twisted up and I had to get a vet assist as I could not get them. He managed to eventually get them out and both were dead and the vet bill was over $700. Singles anytime for me!