Breeding on XBAR's LED bull

[librarian]

XBAR's bull is built kind of like my bull.  What is the reg# on LED, I'd like to see the breeding.
I'm not trying to say my bull is comparable, just that they seem to have some similarities.

 

[mark tenenbaum]

They look very similar in type-Xbars bull doesnt seem as filled in the heart girth as your bull-but it may be the picture O0

 

[RyanChandler]

Amos is a great looking bull too.  He is especially good in his depth of chest.  Some of the other pics on your website show his depth even better.  I especially like him in this pic I've attached.  Great length and built like a bull should be.  What kind of growth have you been getting out of his calves? There's been a lot of discussion regarding the usefulness of the older genetics and I think Amos - being a Remitall Choice Mint son- is a testament to their value. The blue roan heifers you have pictured look pretty sharp too.  It's hard to judge by pictures but  I think the biggest difference in our two bulls-well, besides Led being a Charolais- is just their overall size.  Led is well over a ton and while I don't know his exact weight- I packed a Gelbvieh bull back in the spring that weighed 1830 - that Led just dwarfed.  My guess would be a frame 5.5 at most and ~2250lbs.  I've attached his pedigree if you're still interested. 

 

[Barry Farms]

XBAR what kind of coloration do you get when a roan or white shorthorn cow gets bred to your charolais bull?

 

[RyanChandler]

I've never bred him to any shorthorns but as a universal rule, a char bull will just simply dilute the color the cow throws. If the shorthorn cow was white (meaning she was homozygous for the roaning gene), everyone of the calves would be diluted red roans- they could also "appear" white but, genotypically, they'd be roan.  If the shorthorn cow was roan, the calf would either be a diluted red roan or a diluted red (buckskin or straw) color.  If the shorthorn cow arrows the spitting gene, they'll appear straw colored w/ white spots. I've pictured examples of all three below:

 

[librarian]

Well, gosh, I finally saw a Shorthorn bull that reminded me of Amos and it was a Charolais.
Smokies are getting really popular out here.  I have a friend in his 80's who has been raising Charolais forever.  He brought a first calf heifer and her bull calf to Farm Days and it was sure a nice calf.  He was all of 15 inches across the back with hind quarters to match, at about 5 months old.  The mother was out of a Canadian bull, BUD'S MY DAD,  and the sire was SOLUTION.  The cow was very moderate, really deep bodied and had a beautiful udder.  She was so calm she would hardly get up so we could admire her.  I don't know anything about it, but it seems like that BUD'S MY DAD is good stuff. Something he had been saving, I guess.  I'd like to go over and see the dam of that cow, now that I remember it.

Anyway, here is a picture of me trying to measure Amos with a high tech measuring tool.  I got a lousy reading, putting him at frame score 3. something like 52" at shoulder and hip and 54" shoulder to pins, although I think that is really about an inch short on the height and 2 inches short of the real length.Maybe you can get your architectural rule out and figure his proportions for me.

Amos' calves have all grown well, the Angus crosses showing faster growth than the straight bred ones, but not much.
I don't have weaning weights.  I did breed him back to one of his daughters and this calf is showing less growth, must be reverting to the average for the older genetics.  The first cross, (figuring going back to the old genetics is more or less a complete outcross) naturally does great, it's the second cross that starts to get more informative.  The thing that is really coming through with his calves is length and depth, pretty uniformly across different breed crosses--so I will attribute that to some kind of prepotency he has going on that trait.  I have noticed that the one daughter of his that I have in production is holding her condition better than any of the other heifers, with a late calf still on her and a so-so grass hay diet. This is the red and white cow in the picture with the white calf.

 

[librarian]

If you are curious what he is throwing, here are some of the calves from this year, heifer pictures taken a week or so ago. The bull calf was turning 5 months old when the picture was taken.

What I said about a complete outcross is not really correct in this case. Amos is pretty closely related on the bottom side to the mothers of my straight Shorthorn calves. The white one is out of HHFS Sudden Dream and the roan is out of her daughter, Minnesota Dream. So the prepotency for length is probably coming from those genetics.
Ralph Larson's bull, Coalpit Creek Leader is also pretty long, and his dam is the foundation cow of the same Dream family, from Roy Lovaas.
Or that's how it looks to me right now. There's always lots to learn.
The main point is I sure like your LED bull.