aj said:
So let me get this right. It is ok for calves to weigh 92-120 pounds at birth? We need to educate the dumb commercial guys.....the ones who are three generations deep in a ranch?
We seem to have this BW discussion every few months. As I said in my earlier post, I don't see very much difference between Shorthorn BWs and BWs of other breeds that have been born on this farm anyway. We have had purebred herds of Charolais, Simmental, Hereford, Angus and Maines, and smaller sets of a few other breeds, and we have only seen marginal differences in BWs between the breeds when they are raised together in the same management system. We are selling most of our bulls into commercial herds for many years now. In the past 3 years, we have managed to get some sold to some larger commercial operations.( 800-1200 cows). I sold 6 bulls to one rancher in 2011, and the first thing he did when he walked into the bull pen was he asked if we could sort out the bulls with BWs of 85 lbs or less. We sorted the pen and he then picked his 6 bulls with the BWs over 85 lbs. His reasoning was that he feels he loses too much performance and weaning weight when he uses bulls with smaller BWs. He was buying bulls that day to use on mature cows, and he said his cows were capable of calving 110-115 lb calves from the other breeds he was using and he had very few problems. I tend to agree with this man, in regards to the loss of performance from using low BW bulls. I have mentioned this point several times in the past, that being, that in 5 complete years of performance testing our Sun Country bulls ( from 5 herds) we have never had a bull in the bottom 50% of BWS, index over 100 ( average of the pen) for performance.Not even one!
Every bull in my bull pen right now, was born unassisted, and the heaviest BW was 105 lbs. I have several low BW bulls in this pen, and while I think they are a very good bunch of bulls, they appear to be following the same trend we have seen in the past. These bulls will be great bulls to use on heifers, but after 2 weigh periods, none of the low BW bulls ( 70-85 lbs ) are gaining as good as the bulls with BWs of 86-105 lbs. This is just what we have been seeing. I am really beginning to think thatanyone who thinks the average commercial cow cannot calve a 100 lb calf, probably doesn't weigh their calves . In the 12 years since I started banding bull calves born over 110 lbs, I have not had a single complaint about calving issues from a buyer. There was no magic about picking the 110 lb BW, I just decided I had to make a mandatory place to start and adjust accordingly, but I have not had any reason to drop it yet.
I am also convinced ( and there is lots of scientific data to back it up) that you will reduce pelvic area in females by using a few generations of low BW sires. If there is anything that may cause a major wreck in commercial cow herd in the future, it may well be too many low BW bulls being used. Herds that insist on using very low BW sires for a few generations may end up with cowherds that have problems calving a Longhorn or Jersey. This is an area where some common sense is required. IMO, the key is based in the word.. OPTIMUM. We should be promoting the use of Optimum BW bulls .. not the ones with the biggest or smallest BWs.
We have used sires from a wide range of bloodlines in our herd over the past decade and we have not been plagued with huge BWs or calving issues. I have not had a vet assisted birth in the past 3 calf crops, and the last one I had was a backwards calf in a heifer that I could not get to come up into the birth canal. I only assisted 1 birth in the 2012 caf crop, which included 28 first calf heifers. One heifer had an upside down, backwards, breach calf and of course, I had to assist it to be born, and it was 86 lbs at birth. So if the BW issue is such a huge deal in the Shorthorn breed, why am I not seeing it, like you say so many others are?? I will agree there are some BWs that are too big in the breed, but this is also happening in lots of other breeds.