GONEWEST said:
My next door neighbors (Baird's) had about 200 cows of "that breed" & they weaned mostly 700 - 800 lb. calves every fall, they even had one that approached 1,000 that made the one in my pic look puny. My dad also has "that breed" & while that calf is certainly one of the bigger one's, it wasn't our biggest ever. Actually, I've still got several pics of multiple cows with calves over 60% of their body weight, they just aren't digital. Pretty sure that OFS has seen some of them. The biggest reason why I have that particular pic in a digital format is because it was my own cow that I bought at a sale in Virginia & I used it in advertising back in the day. BTW, Kit Pharo has lots of pics of smaller cows with calves that weaned 60+% of their body weight. Weaning 60+% of a cows body weight isn't really all that uncommon. This fall I'll go shoot you several pics from one of my dad's herds.
yeah.........ok. So hwy do you think it is that Tarentaise aren't the number one breed on the planet? I remember they were brought in the same time as Simmentals, Blondes, Normandy's, Limousin's, etc. Why haven't they florished if they are so efficient.
Again, to me, % of a cows body weight weaned is a poor measure of efficiency. If a 700 pound cow weans a 450 pound calf, what's the big deal in that?
That's easy to answer... because efficiency wasn't considered "sexy" during the 80's... frame size & extreme growth was. However, most of the Tarentaise cattle were moderate framed, so the "high dollar rollers" weren't as interested in investing in them as they were in the "bigger stuff". Nobody wanted 1,700-1,800 lb. bulls (like many Tarentaise were), they wanted 2,500+ lb. bulls! Tarentaise Cattle came over at the wrong time & were promoted at the wrong time. Moderate frame size wasn't cool in the late 70's & during the 1980's... just look that the pics of any champion steer for proof.
Also, many Tarentaise breeders tried to change the breed to make them bigger. I suspect & I have heard rumors that Gelbveih & Simmental were slipped into the Tarentaise breed in an effort to increase frame size & growth. Making matters worse, black was the color of choice & the Tarentaise breed as a whole, was dead set against black. Tarentaise were almost Jersey colored & that hurt them probably more than anything else! It wasn't until the late 1990's until black cattle were allowed to show in the Tarentaise shows. Not allowing black cattle to show, caused many of the top breeders to get out of the breed because the commercial guys wanted black, but the top breeders also wanted to show. Right or wrong, in the 80's & 90's, the vast majority of buyers wanted black cattle. Red & other colors are much more acceptable now, but there is still a basis towards black cattle & Jersey colored cattle are automatically behind the 8 ball. Leachman's once wrote something like this about a pen of Tarentaise composites that they were selling in their sale... (paraphased from memory) "How long will you let prejudice & tradition stand in your way of progess & profit?". I think that they nailed your answer.
Actually they have flourished more than you probably know, it's just that they have flourished in composite combinations, not as purebreds. 3 years in a row, Tarentaise X Angus females were the high selling commercial pen of females in the Yards at Denver. 2 times they were Grand Champion pen of 10 & the other year they were Res. Grand Champion pen. Leachman's used Tarentaise in some of their composites, Oregon Country Beef/Hatfield's High Desert Ranch used them in all of their composites (I think that they have 20,000+ Tarentaise composite cows in their alliance right now), Kit Pharo used them in his composites, also, Padlock Ranch bought semen from us to use in their composite program. Galen Fink (sat in front of him at a Tarentaise sale in Bismark, North Dakota where he bought a few head in the 1990's) used Tarentaise on a limited basis in a composite program. My uncle, Dale Lovell, who was a former President of the KY Beef Cattle Association & who ran the UK Ag Farm for several years, has used Tarentaise for years in his commercial herd. Those are some pretty big names in the commercial beef industry & they live all over the USA. I suspect that a lot of cattle have Tarentaise influence & many people either don't know it or don't admit to it.
In the 1990's there were probably 1,000+ head of Tarentaise females in our county alone (and we are considered to be apart of the corn belt where pasture is hard to find). The Baird's (actually it's just Phillip Baird now) still have a lot of Tarentaise influence, but they are also using Angus & now have more of a Angus X Tarentaise composite herd. Ankenman Ranch in OK still has several hundred Tarentaise cows. Hat Ranch Alliance in Iowa, still has a bunch of Tarentaise in their Angus & Tarentaise composite alliance of coop herds. Tarentaise are awful good cattle in a composite program. 1/4 - 1/2 Tarentaise makes a super mother cow, so most of the Tarentaise are composite cattle. There aren't many Tarentaise breeders left, but their are lots of commercial breeders using Tarentaise influenced females in their herds.
However, this issue isn't about Tarentaise... it's all about cow size & efficiency. Tarentaise are just one of several examples. Lots of 1,000 lb. cows wean 600 - 700 lb. calves. That's the bottom line & you don't have to have Tarentaise genetics in order to do that. All you need is an efficient cow that can milk enough to raise that weight of calf, not get super thin doing it, breed back on time & live a long productive life doing it.
