Calving Ease

the best way to do this is teach yourself.  call people up, have an opinion, find the people who will actually tell you you have your head up your tuckus and quiz them some more.  the best thing i have fun with is talking with people who have opposite opinions about the same animal, like say irish whiskey, and not about his PHA status.  it's really amazing the comments you hear about some bulls you "think" are complete and the comments totally make sense, and why this breed is such an enigma.  i think people havn't tried enough of their own theories about where the phenotype they desire comes from. more and more, i think some of the defect traits have enough diversity in them other than the defect themselves to warrant line breeding to sort out the different phenotypes.  here's a short list.

tubiness
hard vs soft
long hipped, long sided, long fronted versus balanced
softness out of hard cattle
muscle vs maternal and balance of the two in a breeding vs terminal sire product
bone versus marbling
arthritis
rolling hips
walking in tracks and keeping them there

i think the next 20 years are going to be one of thee most exciting times in purebred breeding of all breeds. the deck has been shuffled and will reward those play their own hand rather than someone elses.  this is the only way to confirm one's convictions.  from what i gather, it takes a minimum breeder life beyond 7 years.  i'm one year old and ignorant.  the most rewarding thing about talking with maine breeders is that they are trying things where enigma's exist and are researching opportunities by being more informed as to the numbers that are required to screen and are doing it.  it's really amazing the pedigrees of some of the cows that are out there now and just how fast people are moving.  a little over a year or so, i wouldn't have believed it possible how fast people are moving.

It's been a while, but while doing research in school, it became very clear that the most important factor in making money in beef cattle was the ability of a cow to have as large a calf as possible without problems. Maternal calving ease was the biggest factor in making a profit. The larger calf a cow had, without trouble, the more profit was made. Obviously if she had trouble and was difficult to get bred back quickly or had vet bills or extra management needed, or lost  the calf the larger calf caused a loss. On the other hand the small calf who weighed 50 lbs less at weaning left money that could have been made if he grew faster.  These were purebred and commercial cattle. Easiest calving group were 1/2 Brahman, sometimes the calf could walk right out, lol.

Another interesting find, which I'm sure most know by now, was that the so called "curve benders",( low BW, high growth) are IN GENERAL, only bending the curve on paper. Mostly they were just low BW bulls.

One other interesting find was that first calf heifers out of first calf heifers and by "calving ease bulls" had a lot of calving difficulty even though they had very low BW and CE EPD's.  And the farther down the line with this, the more the difficulty even thought the EPD's got higher and higher.  They had the EPD's  for small BW, but not the physical ability to have the calf.

In clubby cattle it seems important to me that cows have the ability to calve easily because of the shape (that of a concrete block) that we have bred into them. And with these mixed up bulls you get BW all over the place.

I have a friend in Alberta who sells about 200 bulls a year. In the bull sale catalog, they express BW as a percentage of cow mature weight. 7-8% of mature weight being an average BW. Since they have bigger cows, many 1800 lbs or more, that cows average weight calf might be 130 lbs. The son of that cow who had a BW of 105 would be sold as a low BW bull. Something we would generally think to be absurd. But they have been doing it for 40 years so they must know what they are doing.

The point to all this is to agree with the poster that many factors go into a cows ability to have a calf with out trouble. Some cows can have big calves without problems and some cows can't have small calves without problems.

Dusty said:

garybob said:

Dusty said:

I think as a general rule when you are talking about traits of cattle(calving ease, YW, REA, etc) there is as much a degree of difference within a breed as there is between breeds. So an Angus is not necessarily calving ease or Limousin is not necessarily heavy muscled anymore.  And as a side note the term "purebred" is kind of a joke anymore if you ask me.  I have yet to still figure out how a calf sired by a Fullblood Maine can be a purebred shorthorn????  I would love for one of the shorthorn breeders to enlighten me on this....

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Full-blood, French Maine-Anjous are the product of crossing an extinct draft breed (Mancelle) with solid-Red English Beef Shorthorns, during a time when Mechanical technology replaced Draft Animals in France. This is reported in several Bovine history books, as well as the French Maine-Anjou Association. By blood type, a Full-French Maine is, I think, 73-point-something-percent Shorthorn. Hence, entry-level 3/4-blood status for Maine Bulls (as long as they're red, not black).

Hope this answers your question.

GB

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Thanks for the history lesson.  Pretty soon we won't even be able to associate breeds with any traits at all.  I think instead we will have "families" of cattle lines, and they will each have their respective traits.

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Actually, Dusty, a calf sired by a Full Blood Maine Bull, even out of an Asterisk-free cow, can only be registered as a 7/8 calf. Don't mean they can't show as a Shorthorn, though.

GB

How are angus related to Chianina and Holstein?....and do they bloodtype similarly?

How are angus related to Chianina and Holstein?....and do they bloodtype similarly?]

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When Frame Score 7 + was the 'in' thing, there was some chi & stein influence added to some Angus. 

With my cross-bred cows and heifers the birth-weights are literally just all over the place, no matter what the claims of the bull are.  However....  In over 10 years of breeding just for pure-bred Limousin, I never had a calf where size was an issue (most weigh about 65 - 75 pounds), never had to pull a calf, and they hit the ground running.  AND, they grow well.

Then I had kids and started in the club calf stuff.  Its fun, but way more expensive and unpredictable. 

I am getting into this discussion a little late and there have been some very good comments in regards to calving ease. One thing that I think is never considered enough is gestation length. There are major differences between sires, and i find that many of today's most influential bulls are in the high end of gestation length. This has a major affect on borth weights and on calving ease. Personally, I think much more has to be done to identify sires that can shorten gestation length. I have also found that some of

While I think the sire is a major contributor to this trait, I also think that some other factors can affect this. In my herd, I know that some cows will consistently have longer gestation length when bred to a bull ... than other cows will have. This leads me to think that the genetics in the female also have a role in the gestation length and therefore also have a role in the birth weight. I also feel that the genetics coming from both sides, can also greatly influence the birth weights from calves that have had exactly the same gestation length.

In my herd, I have a bull that I have used on my heifers for the past two years. I have not touched a calf born from this sire in two years, and his calves also have the shortest gestation lengths of any sire I have ever used. I will continue to use him on heifers for this reason, as I feel it is extremely important to have an unassisted birth from your heifers, whenever it is possible, as it almost always charts the  females future as a brood cow. Heifers that calve unassisted, get rebred faster, and some studies have shown that they rebreed as much as 3 weeks earlier than heifers that required assistance. Heifers that have calved unassisted have less chance of damage ( such as adhesions)to the reproductive organs , which also has an affect on how many problems this female will have in her future in your herd.

I used to have a neighbour who had very good herds of purebred Simmentals and also Limousin cattle.  His herds were dispersed after his death a few years ago. He used a longhorn bull on all his purebred  heifers from both breeds, and he was convinced that this was one of the most important management tools he used. All his heifers calves unassisted and as a result they rebred much earlier and had a chance to move into the cowherd without a bunch of " issues" that resulted from them simply having trouble their first calf. He  told me many times that  his Longhorn cross calves from these heifers, on average were 50 - 60 lb less at weaning than the calves from his mature cows, and they sold at the auction at weaning for 5 to 8  cents/lb less than his calves . He felt that he was still ahead of the game, as every heifer had a calf at weaning.... he had no vet bills associated with his heifers first calves.... his first calf heifers were all rebred early. I believe that this man made some very good points.

I think that most of us, get a little impatient and we want our first calf heifers to become instant brood cows. It is very true that many great calves come from a first calf heifer, but I often wonder if we were to consider every calf from our heifers, we probably would be start to just try for a small calf that has had an unassisted birth. One or two dead calves, or a couple c- sections or a few heifers that don't rebreed on time due to a hard birth, often times are not considered  by the owner. If these things were all considered, I think  many would start to see the benifits of just getting a live calf that is born uneventfully from their first calf heifers. You would be doing your heifers ... and yourself a big favour.

Good that you mentioned the longhorn thing.  I too, know someone who calved out several hundred heifers every year, and uses longhorn bulls.  You are very right about being behind at the auction, but ahead of the vet bills.  Not to mention all that extra time spent drinking coffee in the house cause you dont have to babysit heifers.  (clapping). 

i have a belief that the first calves are the best because they have the most intact dna from the mother.  mother's have all their eggs stored with more protection than sperm, which is protected from mutation by turnover and very strong repair mechanisms.  since all the dna in the egg in the ovary is being "stored" for future use, it is subject to mutation from cosmic rays and other mutagens which is mostly ignored as a potential source of variation.

one of my dream experiments is to fully sequence the dna from an egg at 1 year versus an egg at say 15 years and do this for say like 384 pairs or some other molecular biology convenient number, more now with dna chips, and see the differences and where they are.  are they random, similar, what.

would like to do the same with sperm.  with sperm, we already know there can be differences, as with the polled gene, older bulls can generate polled offspring, where earlier, they could only pass the horned allele.  this one is probably repair oriented rather than mutated oriented as the telomeres shorten and something gets messed up.

So is this similar to bulls who produce heavier calves one year over the other.  Say two different years, exact same rations, managment, and winter weather....but birthweights of calves are on average 5-10 lbs heavier.  This is happening with my sisters herd.  She is getting 90lb calves out of first calvers, and last year (with the same bull) the calves were probably 80 lbs.  Typically, in Canada, if the winter is cold, the birthweights are higher, but I would say that this winter was much warmer than the last.  Are bulls known to do things like this?