I think most successful producers in the club calf world are doing it by having a few good donor cows and placing embryos in most of their cows and clean up by cleaning up with AI or a Clubby clean up bull. If you look at most sales there are several sets of full sibs in the sale. You need cows that can push out a big calf, Sim-Angus are a good start. To start out you can go 2 ways: buy cows with donor potential and breed them to Clubby bulls and see what works and then flush mating's that produced quality calves, or you can purchase embryos and place them in your cows to try and get quality calves and work from there. I think by just breeding cows to clubby bulls and expecting to have all good calves is un realistic, you are probably going to get a few real good calves, some middle of the road county fair type and then some train wrecks, but I believe that is probably true with embryos to some extent as well, even when a cow and bull click you get the great, good and the bad. I would really do your home work on the bulls, what type of cow they click with and strive to just get good calves that you can sell, and go from there. Have good vet that you can depend on during calving time.
