What Simmental Bull to use?

I am looking for a black/white face PB Simmental Bull to use for my next flush. Here are my priorities for the bull. What's the best bull ever to use?

- Produces quality replacement heifers- fertility/milking
- Shorter Stature
- Produces longer body calves.
- Option of heifer sexed semen would be a bonus.

WS a Step Up probably one of my favorites right now. Built Right is also pretty good. I have seen really good calves from both. Lock and Load, and of course Meyer 734, Combustible, and Chopper also have been putting good calves on the ground.  Griswold has GCC momentum bull that I love the pedigree on but I haven't seen any calves

Broker calves are pretty good across the board...That bullseye bull from Werning cattle is good. Anything from the lock and load x kp 8543u cow is dang good!

Mr. Hoc Broker has good show ring cred and put out some good calves.  At $ 125.00 a straw he isn't for everyone.
A bull that has a 4.9 Frame does everything you want is CHERRY CREEK NYGARD 1U.  The only problrm is that he is a polled full fleck.  If you have black cows this shouldn't be a problem.

Not to go all negative but my Broker experience is that he produces nice calves but disposition is not always the best and they usually come out with high birth weights.  If you are looking to decrease size, this is not the bull for you in my opinion.  In my opinion, Grandmaster might be what you are looking for and I believe A Step Up is a grandmaster son.  Definitely not the growthiest and on the smaller stature side but phenotypically nice. 

I would look at Uproar or One Eyed Jack. Uproar will do a little more moderating that One Eyed Jack will, but they are both baldies. I don't know for sure if you can get sexed semen on Uproar but you can get sexed One Eyed Jack semen off of frozengenetic.com.

I just don't want "Leggy" cattle, growth is good. I do like One Eyed Jack. How are his daughters doing? I have thought about using Meyer 734 but don't know if its worth the money at $650 a straw. What about 3C Macho?

LKF,

Broker has high birth weight compared to what?  He has a 85 LB birth weight.  What bulls are you comparing him to?

Broker's bw epd ranks him in the bottom 10 percent in the breed with relatively high accuracy. His calving ease ranks him in the bottom 1%. I wouldn't put him on heifers.
There are some good ones out there though.

I agree I would not use Broker on a heifer-not by a long shot.  I also would not use him on birth weight problems.  This is what I mean by he is  not for everyone. That is not to say he could not be used to good effect in the right situation.  I have seen food results out of South African Fleck bulls that didn't put a calf below 100 LBs.  These bulls were used to eventually develop Fleck bulls that put calves in a 90 to 00 LB box with big time maternal power.  Animals with some traits you want to select out can be used to develop animals you want.

Mark, up here in the northeast, he was used quite a bit last year.  From conversations with others in the area, most of us were very surprised by the BW numbers out of the Broker sired calves.  We are talking consistently between 100-130 lbs.  Yes, there are other factors but compared to other bulls used, he was on the high side.  Once again, just my opinion and observations.  Maybe others haven't seen this.  Since my last posting, we had a Broker heifer born at 120 lbs. (no problems calving) from a cow that usually has 90 lbs calves.

We have had 2 so far outta of Griswold Bull called Bandwagon really nice and lots of style. B/W faces bull weight was 81 heifer 90. Both cows were Maine/Angus

PRS Blazin' Hot W192.
Used him on almost every mature cow, and a few of the heifers, in our fall calving herd, and he'll go in most of the spring calving group as well.
May not fit what the showring/clubbie folks want, but I'm hopeful that he'll do what we need in our commercial herd - and put some white/blaze faces back in the mix.

SimmLowline said:

I do like One Eyed Jack. How are his daughters doing?

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Not to say that one calf should sway a guys opinion, but the OYJ x JF Reba heifer that Blue Chip Cattle Company sold in Louisville sold me. She was the high selling open at $25,500. It looks like they also have a full sib selling in the Illinois Beef Expo.

Trennepohl's also had a bunch of really nice looking heifers in their sale, I don't recall what they brought but I remember the average being pretty high.

I'm not trying to steal this thread but with all of the One Eyed Jack comments, I was wondering what people's thoughts are as to what type of cow he works best on?  I haven't seen any in person but there are a lot of nice pics out there. 

LKF,

You comments are received and respected.  Were these calves at 120 LB outliers?  What was the average birth weight?  What was the size of the cows he wa used on?  I am asking to see if hehis birther weights and calving characteristics resemble the ols school fleck bulls used in our area.  We had bulls that never put a calf on the ground less than 100 LBs.  The breeder have a market for the big birth weight bulls ( 120 LBS and up) will hutterite colonies.  They didn't care about birth weight at all.
How did MLC Mr Justice do?

What about climax?  Meyer on a Meyer daughter?

Don't know about Climax offspring but when I saw him at stud he acted like if there was no fence between you he was going to call you lunch.  Maybe I caught him on a bad day but if heifers acted half as crappy as he did they would all be hamburger at my place, not replacements.

Used Long's Shear Pleasure (One-Eyed Jack's sire) the last two years, on older Fleckvieh-influenced SimAngus cows.  Have two really nice daughters from last spring's calving, and a yearling son that'll be doing some stopgap cleanup duty this spring.  Have 3 more LSP daughters in the fall group that look pretty decent.  Even out of cows with quite a bit of white on their face...it's been a 50/50 shot at coming up with solid black or white/blaze face.

Not sure I'd opt for OEJ over LSP, even at $50/unit(vs $25 for LSP); sure wasn't about to go there for the $100 he came out of the gate at, without even a calf on the ground.  I do like that his milk epd is considerably lower than his sire's, though...

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