What breed of cattle do you raise?

I was going to do this as a poll but too many breeds to list!
What breed do you raise? You can list all or just your primary.

We raise mostly high % Maines. Have a few Mainetainers.

The farm is cross & most of the calves are 50 % Maine.

Red

PB herd is Simmental. 

Commercial herd is cross but likely at least 50% simmental.   

We are split between Shorthorn and shorthorn plus, and club calf production. Clubbie herd is getting smaller but higher quality, still about 60 strong with them. We register calves from the clubbies with what ever their pedigrees let them be (Chi, Maine/Mainetainer, Char). And yes Red, we do keep track of genetic defects and are trying to not only be careful but be as claen as we can while still breeding terminal show cattle .

stumpy said:

And yes Red, we do keep track of genetic defects and are trying to not only be careful but be as claen as we can while still breeding terminal show cattle .

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That's a good point Stumpy. We might have a new herd bull that could be a PHA carrier. Will send in blood work before then. But since all calves will be feedlot wondering if that's a concern. My biggest worry is that a cow might be a carrier & then we'd have trouble. It's one of those things we need to ponder.

Red

Well, we've got a little of a whole lot of things here... A couple of Shorthorns, a few Herefords, some Simmi's, a little shot of Chi here and there. But most of ours are lower percentage (1/4 - 5/8)  Maine/Angus. We raise club calves, and after we AI, we clean up with with Angus or low percentage Maine/Angus or Simmi/Angus bulls. Our cows, though they vary in breed, are very similiar in size and type across the board, so the calf crop ends up a whole lot more uniform than you might expect. I know it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to be running so many different breeds, but we really like to raise what we show (when we can), and with 3 kids, I prefer to try and spread it out some.

We have herefords, hereford cross angus and then a couple of smoky charolais x simmental x angus with the people I keep with. I have Ai'd before but am just now getting the guy I keep with to try on it.
I always showed maintaintainer and chi steers, and then commercial and a couple of limousin heifers.

Gelbvieh, Angus and Simmental and any combination of those.

Fluffer

i have 5 high percentage maine cows, with fullblood envy.  every day i go outside to see them and wish they were fullbloods, i wonder if they can see through me.  when i feel they can, i call telos for therapy.

shorthorn pb herd.
Cross / mix on commercial herd mostly black.

Red Angus - started out as a commercial herd 30 years ago, the last of the commercials left about 10 years ago.

mostly maine/angus cows, but that is changing as the old cows start to weed themelves out.  seem to be replacing with more sim/angus and char/ang cows.  I am a sucker for baldies, reds and smokes so that is where my herd is tending to go.  i have some purebred simmis, angus and a token shorthorn.  Cows are bred for clubbies or carry eggs.

We have mostly papered cattle, many of the Maine and Maintainers are also papered Shorthorn+ or Chi
16 Maine
19 Maintainer
3 Shorthorn
8 Angus
1 Simmental
4 Cross

Shorthorn and ShorthornPlus with one ShorthornPlus/Mainetainer cow, and one 1/2 Lowline heifer.  In the next few years, I bet that most of our calves will be ShorthornPlus/Mainetainer.  I finally got dad to let me have an Appendix heifer a few years back, and now it seems that we show more of them than we do PB's.
Bulls we're using this year: Perfect Timing, PB Kryptonite, Major's Money Man, DMS Magic Man (bull we bought from Dooling1), and quite possibly Gigolo Joe.

For breeding I have 5 PB black simmental heifers right now and 4 commercial females (1 holstein that could be registered but isn't, 1 jersey x angus, 1 simmental x charolais, and 1 simme x angus x charolais). I also have a fat lazy angus x hereford who is 5 years old and doesn't have calves... she's a "dog" or a "horse" I assume. lol

All the calves born here have simmental in them. I'm using a com. simangus bull on the crossbreds and a PB Ameritrade son on my PB heifers (who are all half sisters  )

Registered Simmentals since 1979. But it has gotten more and more urban here and less rural. Difficult to sell bulls of any breed. We were selling bulls for $1500 at 17 -24 mos. So three years ago I started going more clubby and now we sell those male calves at 6 mos for at least what we were selling the two year olds for. Now we've got a little of everything. I need to add shorthorn and Charolais and I'll have something for everyone,lol.

Actually, I'm not raising much of anything. It's been the driest 2 years on record here and I'm down to 1/3 as many (22) momma cows as I had two years ago. Didn't have enough calves for the customers this year and with transportation costs like they are, it prohibited me bringing more in. So probably lost a few customers. May not be raising anything before  long, lol.

Love those reds!  We've raised Red Angus for 23 years and my family had reds before then.  We traded a bull for 2 reg SH heifers last year & have really enjoyed playing with them (they do stick out in the herd).  Now we're toying with Durham Reds to see what we get.  BUT we just enjoy cattle in general and as I've said before -- there are good things about ALL breeds!

We've got Shorthorns--2 donors, 6 cows and 3 yearling heifers, as well as 3 Shorthorn Plus cows,  4 Xbred clubby mommas, and 1 PB Maine 1st calf heifer that's hitting the road real soon.    Nothing against Maines, this particular one decide not to only ignore her calf after it was born but try to kill it.  We will definitely be reducing our herd this year--just too many to handle when I'm traveling every week.

Kids got us into the Charolais when they started showing and happened to have a great breeder locally.  Consequently we have gone predominately PB Charolais with a few of the better commercial cows being bred up to Maines.

Commercial Red Angus...Dad has about 150, sister has about 120.  We had used a lot of Maine in the past, so some cows still have 1/8 or 1/16 in them.  My sister bought her 20 foundation females from my Dad, and I work in both herds a lot so that is why i include them.  My cows are both at Dads, and the Sisters as well.
Together we have about 60 Registered RA also.
This year I am breeding 5 or 6 of my cows to Ebonys Trademark to stoughten them up and add a little bit of bone, thickness, and power.  I dont have the $$, nor do I want to go buy better females, so I am using my cows, and breeding cattle that simply get better and better every year.  The females that I get out of this mating will probably be bred to Sunseeker, and the results will be either "club calf" foundation females, or just shown and sold as prospects.
"When I grow up", I plan to keep about 30 elite females, and use embryo transfer, and AI to keep my herd up to date.  I am one of those who appreciates quality over quantity.  I say "when I grow up" because I am stuck living in town until we can afford to purchase land, and build a new house, barn, and cattle fascilities.  Oh, so excited for those days to come! (clapping)

I've raised Shorthorns since 1970. I do have 1 Htskr x Shortie cross & 1 Cal. Black Impact x Shortie , Beef Friesean cross. I try to AI or stick an egg in everything at least one time before I turn the bull in.