Shorthorn x Char. crosses wanted

Hey guys anyone have any ShorthornXChar. heifers or cows they are looking to sell?  If so just let me know. 

Thanks
Matt

We have a shorthorn heifer out of a char cow that we would be willing to let go of

Finding high quality Char shorthorn cross cows is hard because so few shorthorn bulls are being used commercially.  You may have to make your own in order to ensure high quality breeding is used. The best guy to find out  what works and what does not is Lyle Bignell at Buffalo Lake Charolais and Shorthorns.  Ge may also have an idea of where some shorty char cross cows may be. His bull sale average on both Charolais and Shorthorns was over $ 4,000 gong to commercial breeders.  His catalog from his last bulls sale: http://issuu.com/pdrneepawa/docs/buffalo_lake_2013.  Note the performance and quality of the bulls being sold; not calving ease but plenty of muscle and performance,

For several years, we ran a purebred herd of 100 Charolais females along with 200+ purebred Shorthorns, and we used to breed our Charolais heifers to Shorthorn bulls. The tan heifers were beautiful and we kept almost all of them to develop and sell as bred heifers. The first year we offered these  bred heifers for sale, we sold about 20 of them to two different commercial producers. Both of these guys contacted us after they got the first calves from these heifers and they wanted more of them. They were impressed that these tan F1 heifers brought calves in at weaning that were as big as their main cow herd did. They became so popular that we started breeding some of our Shorthorn cows to Charolais bulls and some of our Char cows to Shorthorn bulls as well. Each year these heifers were the first to sell and they brought a very good premium price. The only reason we decided to stop making these F1 females  was that we decided to reduce our cow numbers and the decision was made to disperse our Charolais herd and just concentrate on the Shorthorn herd. I don't understand why more producers don't develop a program in which the produce quality F1 females as I think there are more and more people who would simply purchase their replacement females rather than have to produce their own. I think a pretty good opportunity exists here. I know if our case, we would have expanded this part of our operation if we could have found good help on the farm, as it was a good market with people waiting in line for the F1 heifers each fall... and the tan steers produced always topped the feeder market as well.

Great points, Grant. There is no substitute for the F1. With the big push towards crossbred bulls and the marketing behind them, Many of these commercial cattlemen will never see the real value of a true F1.  I ran across a website last year and all the breeder had was Shorthorn X char cross up in Canada.  I'll see if I can find the link for you, Matt.

In Australia some of the bigger breeders are aggressively pushing Shorthorn Charolais Cross bulls.  These bulls are used on Brahma shorthorn cross Aka Droughtmaster females to get a 1/4 char steer since these market they are selling into has a max 25% limit on European blood.  The do not want a bigger char cross cow in the outback hence the cross bred bull is used to get the limited char influence.
Many of these Char cross bulls are out of red factor Char bulls to get a uniform color.

I am really likeing this cross.  A good friend of mine used some Doc semen on his pb herd last year, only got 1 to stick but I think it really worked. 

A bit off topic, but I found that when a white Shorthorn bull was used on  white Charolais cows, the calves were either roans like the one you posted or solid tans. I think most of the ones I had were tans.

One question for you Shorty guys:

Do you preferr buff colored or red calves?

Mark H said:

One question for you Shorty guys:

Do you preferr buff colored or red calves?

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What's buff colored?  Most calves from this cross will be tan as chars are homozygous red. Roans would be hetero and white shortys homo white. Chars just also carry the diluter and shortys carry the roan. Both are codominant.

XBAR,

Call the color buff, tan, orange buckskin etc.  If you had a char cross calf do you want it to be dark red or something else?

Mark H said:

XBAR,

Call the color buff, tan, orange buckskin etc.  If you had a char cross calf do you want it to be dark red or something else?

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Gotcha, I call em a dun colored.  Unless your Char bull is a red factor char that doesn't carry the diluter gene, all the calves will be a diluted red, a diluted roan -like Matt pictured- a diluted red with white marks and so on.  All Char sired calves with express the diluted color. 

Me personally, I prefer the diluted roan though with that shorty x char cross, you'll get that old full blood char creme color out of the cross which looks good too.

Xbar,-

Now days a non diluter red factor Charolais bull is no big deal for commercial man to get hold of.
By the way I never had any bull buyer complain about a pinched heart girth.  The biggest complaint we had was that after 3 years of use the outside wall of his toes would curl under the hoof (skis ) -meaning he/she needed feet trimmed.  If you have 20 bull and around 500 cows that becomes a hassle to put them on the table so they always wanted better footed bulls.  That meant getting rid of some high EPD bulls and cows and not using some bloodlines but enough good footed Charolais cattle are around that you can improve your feet in y0ur herd by trimming at the knee.

I'd like to see the cross between a red factor char and a shorthorn.

* trimming at the knee - that's a good one ill have to remember that one.  (lol)

Some pictures from Wakefield of some composite bulls in working shape: http://www.wakefieldcharolais.com.au/files/Wakefield_nletter_Lres.pdf