Yuppiecowboy, I have to disagree with some of your statements. There are areas where Shorthorns have commercial appeal.There are lots of areas where they don't, and I maintain this is mainly caused by breeders who find it easier to sell a little fur ball steer at weaning than to bust their buns developing a market for their bulls. Yes it has been a long uphill road to achieve this but I sell all my bulls by private treaty on the farm, and I have sold every bull we have 5 of the last 6 years. One of the biggest complaints I have from my commercial bull buyers is that there is not enough bull sales within a reasonable distance for them to go to select their bulls. For that reason, we are planning to performance test about 50-60 bulls and collect every piece of data humanly possible on them, and hold a bull sale next April. I love selling bulls privately out of the yard, but I think it is time to give them some extra exposure. This year I could have sold many more Shorthorn bulls than I had.
I had a conversation with one of the main buyers for Cargill, a while ago, and he said that they love to see sets of Shorthorn and Shorthorn cross finsihed animals hit their plants. The highest premium ever paid by Cargill, for quality, was for a set of over 100 Shorthorn steers that were slaughtered there.They were custom fed in a large feedlot and the entire pen was shipped on the same day. So if the Shorthorn in your area don't have any commercial acceptance, it is mainly due to the fact that the Shorthorn breeders in your area are not trying real hard to obtain a piece of this market. And like I said earlier, it simply doesn't happen over night and it takes alot of commitment and intestinal fortitude.
Shorthorn and Shorthorn cross females have always had commercial acceptance. For many years I have received calls from guys wanting Shorthorn cross females. Last fall I had a guy wanting 150 to 170 Shorthorn X Hereford bred heifers. I called many commercial producers who were using Shorthorn bulls and got about a dozen... why? .... They all wanted to keep their Shorthorn X heifers for their own herds. For years we bred all our purebred Charolais heifers to Shorthorn bulls. I always kept the heifers and sold them as bred heifers. After I sold the first group, I had guys on a waiting list for tem the next year. It was pretty easy to sell them and sell them for a $200 to $300 premium over the going rate for commercial bred heifers.
Your next point of Shorthorns not having calving ease is also a matter of opinion. Maybe in your herd calving ease is an issue, but there are lots of bulls that calve reasonably. I hate to keep using examples from my own herd, but it is the one I know the most about. In 2007, we have had 189 cows and heifers calve. ( 42 were first calf heifers). Of these I assisted 3 head, 2 of which were backwards, and one was a heifer that I was not sure how long she had been calving when I found her, so I pulled it out.I check the cows at 11 pm and if nothing looks like they are going to calve soon, I go to bed and check them again at 6 am. We use a number of leading AI sires as well as our own herd sires. We try to keep our cows in moderate condition and WE MAKE THEM WALK whenever the weather permits. I am convinced that exercise is one of the key ingredients to eliminating calving problems. I put a band on any bull calf with a BW of more than 110 lb and I have banded a few pretty awesome calves. Since I started doing this, I have never had a complaint from a customer about our Shorthorn bulls causing calving issues. Because of this, you can get repeat customers. I sold 5 bulls to a large commercial producer 6 years ago, and I made sure he knew which bulls he should use on mature cows and which were better for heifers. This spring he bought his 16th bull from me . He also runs some pretty good Angus and Charolais bulls and he says the Shorts are consistently his best groups when he weans.When I delivered the bulls he bought this year, they were dropped into a pen beside a Black Angus bull he bought at $7800 in a local sale. Even he agreed that he should have bought another Shorthorn as there was simply no comparison in the quality of the bulls. I know I am not alone in not having any major calving issues with Shorthorns, as I know of several Shorthorn breeders who do not even own a calf puller.
I think Shorthorn breeders have in a round about way selected for bigger birth weights, as Shorthorns on average have larger pelvic openings and can therefore calve bigger calves without assistance. We have had Shorthorns on this farm for 104 years, and to my knowledge, we have never had a Shorthorn prolapse. My dad who is 82 can never remember one . I can remember 4 c- sections on Shorthorns, some of which were backwards calves that could not be brought up into the pelvis properly. That is 4 out of several thousand births. I became very familiar with prolapses with some of the other breeds we raised over the years.
I am not sure what you are saying when you say that they have bred the maternal traits out of a milking breed. There are definitely some lines that possibly will decrease milk, but these lines are definitely in the minority. I can't remember the last Shorthorn that didn't have enough milk. Over the years, we have maintained purebred herds of Horned Herford, Black Angus, Simmental, Maine, Chi,and Charolais, and have always had a sizable commercial herd as well, along with our Shorthorn herd. We now only have the Shorthorns and a commercial herd. I have often said that the best promotion the Shorthorn breed could do is convince every Shorthorn breeder to give a cattlemen in his area two Shorthorn females free. I may be sounding like a Shorthorn zelot, but believe me, I enjoy good cattle no matter what breed or color they are. We dispersed a herd of over 100 purebred Charolais cows 4 years ago. I have not had a vet assist with a birth since then... and we would have had well over 500 calves born here since. Believe me, if you want to hear some horror stories about calving problems in some other breeds, I could entertain you for more than a few hours.
Maternal to me, means more than just milking ability. It also includes the ability to care for their calf, their ability to calve, get rebred and calve again within 12 months, and it also includes docility.
I am very familiar with the old dual purpose Shorthorn cows. Yes there were some awesome females amongst them. In the early 70s I went to Ontario to see if I could buy a few Dual purpose females as I thought they be good to help increase frame size in some of our cattle. I came home with a full pot ( over 40 head) > They were big thick cows and I intentionally selected cows that were producing less that 8000 lb of milk a year ( they came from dual breeders who were milking them). You cannot find cows like them today anywheres. Only about 1/2 of them lasted any length of time as they could just adjust to our enviromental conditions ( ie: cold winters and hot summers that often were dry). The ones that did stay were so tough you probably couldn't have killed them with an axe. They were tremendous cows but today we would call them all too big for what we want our cows to be. I do not think any of us would want to have a herd made up of only these dual purpose cows that used to be the norm.
Your general comments, in my opinion, are wrong. If you want to talk about calving issues, I could tell you about my Polled Hereford neighbour who has had 11 c sections this year, or my friend with raises some very good Black Angus who had calves that weighed between 120 to 140 lbs this year.... from sires that had reported BWs of under 90 lbs themselves.
I apologize for the length of this, but I have to be honest when I say that your comments bugged me.