justintime
Well-known member
I sold my last bull I had for sale yesterday. That makes 38 sold this spring, so it has been a good year for bull sales. The fellow I sold this bull to, ranches in Western Saskatchewan close to the Alberta border. He runs 450 cows and they are Horned Hereford base. He phoned and asked me if I had any horned bulls left that were for sale? I told him that the only bull I had left was horned, so we discussed him and he said he would buy him. He said that he would have come to see him but, they had over 7 inches of rain the night before, and all the roads to his place were washed out. In our discussion, he said that he would never use a polled bull. I asked him why he thought that, and he said that he had tried some polled bulls in the past, both Angus and Hereford, and the daughters just were not as hardy as his females sired by horned bulls. He also said that the offspring from the cows sired by polled bulls were never as good as his calves from straight horned bloodlines. This is not the first time I have heard this, and I have wondered about it a lot. In this case, I felt that the buyer is always right, so I did not try to convince him otherwise.
I know in my herd, I don't mind having some horned genetics close up in the pedigree as I have always felt that my best calves are either horned themselves or come from parents that have horned breeding in the first two generations. I don't have anything to back this up, other than it seems that my best calves are always horned. I just thought it might be Mother Nature's way to get back at me for something. Now this long time rancher, who makes his entire living from his cows, has made me wonder about this again.
The main reason I started this thread, was in regards to another comment this man said. He said that his cow herd was entirely Horned Hereford bloodlines, then he said," well there is some Shorthorn in their background." He said " many of my cows are roans with white faces. ( he also said he had sold all the cows that were sired by the polled bulls he tried, as he did not think they could handle his conditions). I asked him when he had used a Shorthorn bull, and he said that his father had used a white horned Shorthorn bull over 50 years previously, and the roan color is still showing up". He said that he will even get some calves that are lighter roan than their mother's are, from his Hereford bulls. He said that if the lighter roan calves are heifers, he knows he has a future replacement female, as they always make his best cows. This was the main reason he was wanting to try a Shorthorn bull again in his herd. This man certainly sounded knowledgeable and he sounded like he knew what he wanted from his cows.
This conversation took my mind back to a neighbor's herd when I was growing up. This man had a herd of 50-60 cows that were almost all roans with white faces. I can remember this herd as being a tremendous set of females, with tremendous thickness and volume, and they always had huge calves on them by fall. I remember asking my dad, when this man had used a Shorthorn bull, and dad telling me, that this herd had been roan for as long as he could remember, and that he could not remember a Shorthorn bull being used in at least 40 years.
I have a good basic understanding of how the roan color is transmitted, but I guess I would think that it would eventually be eliminated from use of several generations of Hereford bulls. With my Angus cows, I have seen solid white calves in two generations from purebred Angus cows, by using roan or white Shorthorn bulls. I had one last year, and I have another this year. They would pass as purebred Shorthorn by color, but they are still 25% Angus genetics. I was wondering if some of the genetic wizards on SP could explain to me, how this roan color continues to show up in these herds. Is it simply a case of the owner selecting the roans as replacements when he gets one?
I know in my herd, I don't mind having some horned genetics close up in the pedigree as I have always felt that my best calves are either horned themselves or come from parents that have horned breeding in the first two generations. I don't have anything to back this up, other than it seems that my best calves are always horned. I just thought it might be Mother Nature's way to get back at me for something. Now this long time rancher, who makes his entire living from his cows, has made me wonder about this again.
The main reason I started this thread, was in regards to another comment this man said. He said that his cow herd was entirely Horned Hereford bloodlines, then he said," well there is some Shorthorn in their background." He said " many of my cows are roans with white faces. ( he also said he had sold all the cows that were sired by the polled bulls he tried, as he did not think they could handle his conditions). I asked him when he had used a Shorthorn bull, and he said that his father had used a white horned Shorthorn bull over 50 years previously, and the roan color is still showing up". He said that he will even get some calves that are lighter roan than their mother's are, from his Hereford bulls. He said that if the lighter roan calves are heifers, he knows he has a future replacement female, as they always make his best cows. This was the main reason he was wanting to try a Shorthorn bull again in his herd. This man certainly sounded knowledgeable and he sounded like he knew what he wanted from his cows.
This conversation took my mind back to a neighbor's herd when I was growing up. This man had a herd of 50-60 cows that were almost all roans with white faces. I can remember this herd as being a tremendous set of females, with tremendous thickness and volume, and they always had huge calves on them by fall. I remember asking my dad, when this man had used a Shorthorn bull, and dad telling me, that this herd had been roan for as long as he could remember, and that he could not remember a Shorthorn bull being used in at least 40 years.
I have a good basic understanding of how the roan color is transmitted, but I guess I would think that it would eventually be eliminated from use of several generations of Hereford bulls. With my Angus cows, I have seen solid white calves in two generations from purebred Angus cows, by using roan or white Shorthorn bulls. I had one last year, and I have another this year. They would pass as purebred Shorthorn by color, but they are still 25% Angus genetics. I was wondering if some of the genetic wizards on SP could explain to me, how this roan color continues to show up in these herds. Is it simply a case of the owner selecting the roans as replacements when he gets one?