Red Angus Maternal Calving ease

Just got done pelvic measuring, bangs vaccinating and etc a group of heifers. The vet was saying that the Red Angus cattle.......as he saw things were in general......were smaller pelvic cattle. He mentioned the Brown Premier bull(ABS) was a real good bull because he was both direct ease and maternal calving ease excellent. I had 3 failed pelvic measurements, one disposition cull out of 20 some head. Its kind of mind boggling.......to think about making across the board genetic progress in a herd if you are concerned about even only 5 traits. You almost end up culling off the bottom 20% instead of selecting for the top 80%.

For the 35+ years that I have been involved with Red Angus cattle, they have been known as a calving ease/maternal breed. In the past several years it has become fashionable in no small part thanks to the major AI studs and the association to pursue and promote extreme calving ease. It seems like a suicide mission to me to take a breed already known for it's calving ease and chase that trait to extreme. With every generation of compiled calving ease sires that is stacked on top of each other you will sacrifice pelvic area. I see people bragging about having 60 - 65 pound calves out of their heifers and the "chosen" bull and wonder why? Why would you want a 60 pound calf. They as a general rule are behind their whole lives, finer boned and consequently smaller pelviced. I am also hearing and seeing calves that are being born at 40, 45 to 50 pounds, in my mind they are throw away calves assuming they live if it happens to be -10 degrees below 0 when they are calved. I expect my heifers to be able to calve atleast 8% of their body weight, ie 1000 pound heifer should have an 80 pound calf unassisted. As many of you know, with our travel schedule we can't baby sit heifers. When we are at home we check cows 3 times a day and unless we see one that is in the process of calving we don't check them any other time. It's been over 5 years since we have pulled a calf because it was too big for the cow/heifer to have. I think that people need to look at how the bulls that they are using are made and not what the paper says. RW

The entire calving ease "cure" has been hooked to the theory that the calf is or was too big.  Never think that a short necked, open shouldered, wide fronted sire might have been a factor, oh god no.    Birth shape is a heck of a lot more important than birth weight.

Then the next cure was heifers that were numbered right but not once was the width of the pin bones or how high they were set.  Then while breeding heifers for several years for a "big red operation",  there  were a lot of heifers with a ridge in the bottom of the pelvis, usually about as big as  my middle finger.  When I went back to calve those same heifers, nearly every problem was one of those heifers.  And instead of going down the road with them,  they were kept, concentrated, the bulls out of these same heifers and cows probably had the same condition, and here we go,  we bred ourselves in to a problem that there isn't a solution to except ditch a bunch of calving ease theories, and start looking for some genetics that have some maternal and calving ease from reputation and practical observations and less of that minus number that associations just go bonkers over.

We had one heifer that the vet said had a key hole shaped pelvis. Wasn't Cherokee Canyon's daughters the one with the odd shaped pelvises?

I agree for the commercial man shape of calf is important ,but for the purebred guy it isn't that simple, not a very big cow can have a 100 lb. well shaped calf , but how many 100 ib. bulls do you think you will sell , an if you do it will be on the very lowest on your price scale ...some PEOPLE in the CHAROLAIS commercial end just beg you to raise 100 lb. + bull calves and will buy them as cheap as he can because of it...!!

Seems like the "stayability" index would have pelvic shape and area figured into it. Granted the big problem is how a female gets by her first calf but how a cow gets through say the next 8 calves would matter also.

With the cattle markets as they are, I'm surely not promoting 100 pound calves, but I sure do remember the poor prices of the 70's.  Angus calves, heck any calf was doing well to bring 350. I hope to no end we don't get back to that but,  the idea of sending some calf to town and just the simple fact he didn't weigh enough to bring me a price that would keep me in business sure does weigh in on this calf size deal.  Associations have pushed, prodded, and done every thing except beg for us to raise cattle that were higher in carcass value.  These same calves tend to be a little more compact in statue and just don't pound out.  The chi's saved a lot of people from going out of the business once,  were the calves any good, not really but they mashed on the scales.  Thats how 90 percent of us get paid.  The difference in a good calf and a fair calf at the sale barn might be 2 or 3 cents. 50 lbs  makes me more dollars.

I think pounds weaned per acre or per pasture makes a better measurement. But even that doesn't figure dead calves if one culls cows that lose calves.