half cross vrs three quarter

Looney1

At the moment we are farming 50 sucklers made up of simmental and limousin cross with bf. We sell as wealings from bb bulls and are reasonably happy with them. However some have advised to change to 3/4 beef cows. Should i start ai ing cows with simmental/ limousin and keeping heifers and culling 1/2 breds. Cant really increase herd size. do u need 3/4 cows for export market?

blue5000

Looney1 wrote: »

At the moment we are farming 50 sucklers made up of simmental and limousin cross with bf. We sell as wealings from bb bulls and are reasonably happy with them. However some have advised to change to 3/4 beef cows. Should i start ai ing cows with simmental/ limousin and keeping heifers and culling 1/2 breds. Cant really increase herd size. do u need 3/4 cows for export market?

I'm in a sort of similiar situation, except it's mostly angus x fresian cows I keep, and use a blonde as a terminal sire. I don't breed from the blonde heifers, same way as you don't breed from bb heifers. I suppose you could go over and back between the Lim and sims. By that I mean select the best 25 cows and use a maternal lim bull on the sim x fr and sim bull on the lim x fr cows. This should give you 12 replacement heifers a year. The important thing to do is get a policy now and stick to it, otherwise you will end up with a zoo.

There is a farmer in Scotland, Robert Parker, who goes over and back with angus and Hereford, if you google 'Nuffield scholar+ Robert Parker', you should be able to find his research paper.

pakalasa

I started with mostly 1/2 breds too, mainly Limousin and a few Simmentals. The plan was to cross breed, i.e go two generations Lim and then one generation Simmental. That would keep milk and docility in the mix and add some hydrid vigour aswell.
The few lim calves from the simmentals though are bringing the white face, something I'd prefer not to have, in the bulls anyway.

You will find a huge lift in calf quality with BB from 3/4 bred compared to 1/2 bred Lim cows. This especially with the easy calving BB bulls that tend to be, not be as muscley as the harder calving ones. Milk will drop a bit, but creep feeding will keep the calf weights up.

Looney1

Thanks for yer comments. The only thing that was stopping me was that the recent derrypatrick research farm concluded that milk was everything and that the 1/2 bred limousin outpreformed the 3/4 bred from a wealing point of view

foundation10

All my suckler cows have either been sim/bb/lm/aa/hd from friesans some are from brit fr. I have held onto some of their lm offspring as replacements. The reason for this was that I was finding that some of the weanlings were bringing a lot of the FR traits with them ie tall and narrow even though had a good bull with them. On the 3/4 breds what I find is that they do have a better shaped calf but are a way back on milk. I am willing to sacrifce the milk side for a better calf though. Its a learning process and there are no right or wrong answers but to cull those cows that are not producing your requirements

johnpawl

blue5000 wrote: »

I'm in a sort of similiar situation, except it's mostly angus x fresian cows I keep, and use a blonde as a terminal sire. I don't breed from the blonde heifers, same way as you don't breed from bb heifers. I suppose you could go over and back between the Lim and sims. By that I mean select the best 25 cows and use a maternal lim bull on the sim x fr and sim bull on the lim x fr cows. This should give you 12 replacement heifers a year. The important thing to do is get a policy now and stick to it, otherwise you will end up with a zoo.

What are the blonde calves like off these cows? I have some of the same type cows and they are in calf to a part bull. Thanks,

blue5000

Hi Johnpawl,
first of the blonde calves were born last year, I'm selling them by hand out of the yard, bulls are all gone, I reckon they would'nt be good enough to export, but would be grading 75% U, 25% R. There is a good topline and good hind quarter on them. Must try stick up a photo of the yearling heifers. They are just sold to a neighbour who will serve them to a limo.

I'm finding any angus x cow with a bit of lim in her is giving me a red calf, rest are either black or mousey brown from the fresian x angus. Not suitable for export, but I like to sleep at night:p not be up half the night pulling calves.