How low is too low when selecting low birth weight bulls? from Cattle Business

An interesting article from The Cattle Business Weekly

http://cattlebusinessweekly.com/Content/Headlines/-Cattle-Management/Article/How-low-is-too-low-when-selecting-low-birth-weight-bulls-/1/456/7773?platform=hootsuite

It would be nice if we could corilate objective measurements on adult cattle to calving ease.  I think Gerald Fry has a good start with linear measuring.  I like that seeds tick producers are realizing that moderation is better than extremes.  Oneven thing I never see people talk about is how we all are waiting for the next great one to come along and fix everything yet, we are all at different places with our breeding cattle.  Good article thanks for posting.

Really good article.  Thanks for posting.
A couple things I would like to add.  It talks about mature cows size and when we discuss this we all talk about specific weights.  I would like to think that most of us realize that what is the ideal mature weight for our cows will probably not be the ideal mature weight for someone who runs cows in a different environment.  If your cows are able to calve, rebreed, and raise a good calf every 365 days in addition to maintaining her body condition on a year round diet of forage that your ranch grows then that is the right size of cow for your ranch.
The other thing about calf size is directly related to cow size.  I feel that a cow should be able to calve unassisted with a calf that is 7% of her body weight.  That is exactly why you use different bulls for heifers than you do cows.
Once again, thanks for posting a good article.

turning grass into beef said:

  I would like to think that most of us realize that what is the ideal mature weight for our cows will probably not be the ideal mature weight for someone who runs cows in a different environment.  If your cows are able to calve, rebreed, and raise a good calf every 365 days in addition to maintaining her body condition on a year round diet of forage that your ranch grows then that is the right size of cow for your ranch.

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Do you give no consideration to weaning weight percentage? My personal goal is to breed a herd that can consistently wean 50% of their body weight.  Thus far, my cows that are on the lighter side of 1200lbs have come much closer than the few I have that are 1400+.

Weaning weights are important to a degree.  For example; I would rather have a cow that weans 45% of her body weight stays in good condition on forage alone and does this every 365 days for 12 years than have a cow that weans 50% of her body weight and REQUIRES grain or other high priced supplementation in order to do that.  I would also rather have the first cow than a cow that weans 50% of her body weight and is not able to maintain her body condition and thus comes home open as a 4 year old.
All this being said, yes I would like my cows to wean 50% (or more) of their body weight, but more important is profitability (and longevity is part of profitability).

Weaning weights also have a lot to do with the sire as well.  When we choose which breed of sire to use we ask ourselves "What is our objective?"  If your objective is to wean the heaviest calf possible then some breeds are better at this than others.  If your objective is to raise the best commercial females that you can, there are some breeds that do this better than others as well.  When we choose to use the breed that we feel makes the best commercial females, we are not as concerned about weaning weights as when we choose to use sires of other breeds (what I would call terminal breeds)

All measurements of performance are meaningless without the context of a contemporary group.If all the cows are in the same environment,managed the same, bred to bulls of the same type and genetics, and all the inputs can be averaged equally across the group,Calving interval and %body weight weaned are 2 important measures of efficiency.

I had a neighbor that was very stubborn. Conservative, I guess you could say- and he still calved his heifers as 3 year olds. He fed nothing but hay because they had never done it any other way. He had a hundred head of 1400 lb straight Angus cows that calved on pasture in May and weaned 650 lb calves in November. He never implanted. He hated "steer headed" calving ease bulls.  No one could persuade him (or try, he was immune to persuasion) that he was losing money by letting the heifers wait to calve at 3. He would ship open cows in the fall but they were aged cows, rarely young ones. He said, "What good is an orphan calf or a dead heifer?"

Another neighbor was a banker with a commercial Angus and Angus X herd of 200 head.
He squeezed every cent from every animal. He used calving ease bulls on the heifers ( calving at 2) and got 65 lb calves that got squashed or frozen all the time and then shipped the heifer for losing the calf. He shipped heifers that rejected their calves and then bottle fed the calves. He weaned light calves from heifers that he then shipped for breeding back late, and eventually cursed the replacements he kept from the calving ease sires for requiring calving ease bulls as cows. He implanted his heifers to increase pelvic size and implanted all the calves at 3 months before going on pasture. He had 1250 lb cows that calved in the barn in February and weaned 650 lb calves in October. He fed corn silage all winter.
I guess the banker came out ahead because he got paid for all the failures he shipped? Plus his corn subsidy?
All that said, if the stubborn farmer hadn't been too stubborn to borrow my Shorthorn bull (imagining my bull was red) he could have had 700 lb weaning weights and a comparable BW (85-90 lbs) to the growthy Angus bulls he used.

As I understand it there are some Angus bulls all ready that have 75 pound calves......their calves grow like weeds......and their daughters have adequate calving ability. They are curve benders. Seems like the last 15 years or so I have heard some shorthorn breeders with the following attitude. The commercial people are stupid for using low bwt bulls. Unquote.....so instead of lowering bwts on cattle........produce cattle that fit the needs and wants of a commercial industry.......their attitude is we need to educate the dumbass commercial people to use big bwt bulls. I know areas of the country are different but that seems like the wrong attitude to me.

aj said:

As I understand it there are some Angus bulls all ready that have 75 pound calves......their calves grow like weeds......and their daughters have adequate calving ability. They are curve benders. Seems like the last 15 years or so I have heard some shorthorn breeders with the following attitude. The commercial people are stupid for using low bwt bulls. Unquote.....so instead of lowering bwts on cattle........produce cattle that fit the needs and wants of a commercial industry.......their attitude is we need to educate the dumbass commercial people to use big bwt bulls. I know areas of the country are different but that seems like the wrong attitude to me.

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I agree AJ. I believe Spangler was one of our speakers in Kansas City. It was very clear at the Shorthorn conference in Kansas City that our birthweights need to come down dramatically. If we don't do that and do that now we will be barely surviving as a breed in 10 years in my opinion. Our EPD's in the Shorthorn breed are not accurate enough because the bulls that have accuracy have been used by people who have been using EPD's for years and that brings the birth weight down dramatically over time on some bulls that may be consistently calving calves at 90-110 lbs. You really have to look at the context in which the low birth weight bulls have been used and look at the actual weights of the calves. Also, I believe the Shorthorn breed must first get birthweights consistently below 90 lbs. and then we can have this conversation about 75-90 lb. calves compared to 60-75 lb. calves. In my opinion we need to be finding bulls that will retain maternal calving ease and calving ease direct while bringing down birthweights on these mature cows into the 80-85 lb. area.

Whatever happened to the across-breed EPD's between Shorthorn, Red Angus, Gelbvieh and Simmentals? If they are still in place,not enough emphasis is placed on them!
This BW issue still confounds me, my stockmen seem to assist more lower BW calves due to other issues like leg back than bigger calves coming in the correct position.
My BW's went up, on average, by about 10kg (22lbs) when I moved to my current property seven years ago, I don't think we have more assisted calvings either. In fact, not one calf was lost at birth or within a week of birth during my 2015 calvings, starting 06 August until 10 October, the first pulled calf was 11 September, other than a set of twins on 17 August.
Other than the the twins, the four assisted calves ranged from 32kg(70lbs) to 52kg(114lbs), and were amongst the last eight calves born for the season. Seems to me like gestation length is more important than we think!
The Australians have a Shorthorn BreedPlan gestation length EBV which may be something to look into!

Duncraggan said:

Whatever happened to the across-breed EPD's between Shorthorn, Red Angus, Gelbvieh and Simmentals? If they are still in place,not enough emphasis is placed on them!
This BW issue still confounds me, my stockmen seem to assist more lower BW calves due to other issues like leg back than bigger calves coming in the correct position.
My BW's went up, on average, by about 10kg (22lbs) when I moved to my current property seven years ago, I don't think we have more assisted calvings either. In fact, not one calf was lost at birth or within a week of birth during my 2015 calvings, starting 06 August until 10 October, the first pulled calf was 11 September, other than a set of twins on 17 August.
Other than the the twins, the four assisted calves ranged from 32kg(70lbs) to 52kg(114lbs), and were amongst the last eight calves born for the season. Seems to me like gestation length is more important than we think!
The Australians have a Shorthorn BreedPlan gestation length EBV which may be something to look into!

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I totally believe that gestation length is a huge problem in Shorthorns here in the U.S.. My early genetic decisions caused me to see many 295-300 day gestation lengths. These cows would end up having 115 -120lb. bull calves most of the time. These bulls we would call "big dumb bull calves" because you almost always had to help them find a teat and sometimes they couldn't stand up for 90 minutes or more. A lot of times we ended up having to assist with supplementary colostrum. I don't think gestation length is the whole of the problem here though. I think heavy bone and high mature cow weights are all correlated with our high birthweights. Add in huge udders that breakdown quickly and hoof problems. All of these correlate in my experience. Straight from the commercial buyers and ranchers mouths, "birthweight is not an issue as long as they are below 90 lbs.".