High index maternal bull on 100% of your cows.

Black Smoke

With the new ICBF bull classifications, would it make sense to use a high index maternal AI bull on all your cows?
I'm considering this route, in order to try to significantly improve the genetic profile of my herd!
I'm even considering using just one single bull, with a view to trying to build a herd of similar size and conformance for the future.
Might make it easier to select a suitable stock bull, if I wanted to do that!
Does that makes sense?
I suppose there would be a short term downside, in that bill calves might not be as valuable on average.

Any thoughts?

blue5000

What breed will you go for? I reckon go for a breed that isn't already in your cows so that you will have hybrid vigour in your future cows. If you are selling weanlings poorer conformation ones will hit you hard in the pocket.

Black Smoke

blue5000 wrote: »

What breed will you go for? I reckon go for a breed that isn't already in your cows so that you will have hybrid vigour in your future cows. If you are selling weanlings poorer conformation ones will hit you hard in the pocket.

I'm thinking of limousine. Cows are primarily Charolais. On average are over 80% char, with balance shorthorn in most cases.

pakalasa

One problem with using a maternal bull like this is the reliability figures are so low. Even the AI ones are low for reliability. You cound find that the bull's figures go way down in teh years to come.

Black Smoke

pakalasa wrote: »

One problem with using a maternal bull like this is the reliability figures are so low. Even the AI ones are low for reliability. You cound find that the bull's figures go way down in teh years to come.

That's my concern. Looking at Dovea, CWI has good figures, except for docility.
Given his age, he has a very low number of females on the ground, who in turn have had calves themselves. Makes me wonder how much faith we could put in his maternal traits?

pakalasa

What I try to do, is match the bull to the cow. Say if cows are poor for milk, i use bulls that are good for milk, usually Simmental. Same for docility, maternal calving etc. If you user a few bulls, you can hedge your bets a bit. Chances are most of them will turn out ok, figures wise anyway.

1chippy

we bought a limo bull this year. a lot was based on appearance though when we were picking we looked at the mother for milk and she seemed good. maternal was 5 star. terminal 3. when the new system came in the figures have changed to 4.5 stars on both. but only1 star for milk. reliability at 35%. we let him clean up a few of the late calvers so it will be good to see what they come like next year. either way if they come terminal i will be happy enough. i'm starting to think keeping your own replacements isn,t all its cracked up to be.

Bizzum

Black Smoke wrote: »

I'm thinking of limousine. Cows are primarily Charolais. On average are over 80% char, with balance shorthorn in most cases.

How would a Lim like Navarin (NVI) work? You wont be let down with muscle, but will he bring enough milk?


As regards breeding replacements from 100% of your herd. Like most herds I assume you have cows that would, for various reasons, be unsuitable to breed replacements off. So how about handpicking half of you herd to breed replacements off?

Seaba

I have to say, in my experience and in my opinion only! I put very, very little faith in this maternal testing.
I know there is more to maternal testing than milk: fertility, pelvic area size, docility etc but all these buzz words used by the different companies annoy me: Year 1 this bull is "proven" to bring "milky females" and "working dams??" for example only for the figures in Year 2 to plummet and then the following year the next big thing comes along and we start again. The Limousin bull PAM for example is nearly negative from what I can remember for milk but our AI man swears, and is probably right, that there is loads of milk in his backround??

We have given loads of maternally tested bulls (Limousin mostly) to our cows over the years and I see little difference. In fact one of the only times I did see an improvement was when we gave the Shorthorn (ALO) to a Limousin cow and milk and fertility improved.

I think unless the cow has milk, fertility, good pelvic area etc you stand little chance in getting good replacements by using maternal bulls.

Rant over

In saying that we gave FL21 (Limousin) to a cow this year in a bid to improve pelvic area! If she brings a heifer will let you know in 3-4 years!

pakalasa

The problem is with collecting the data for the Maternal traits. With the calving ease figures, for example, you can get results within 9 months for a new bull. For maternal figures, you could be waiting years.
I agree, the figures have been all over the place. Have a look at the Saler bull RIO. His Milk figures were very low and then shot up over night. How did this happen. There are a lot of bulls though, that are tested in France first. I notice all these do seem to be OK.

vanderbadger

Black Smoke wrote: »

I'm thinking of limousine. Cows are primarily Charolais. On average are over 80% char, with balance shorthorn in most cases.

in the same kinda boat myself, nearly all ch cows. got to speak to rose Goulding briefly there one evening, she recommended Lim bull Vermeil code S666

Black Smoke

vanderbadger wrote: »

in the same kinda boat myself, nearly all ch cows. got to speak to rose Goulding briefly there one evening, she recommended Lim bull Vermeil code S666

Looked at his figures there. Calving difficulty for his daughters, not so good
I fancy CWI myself, but docility is his downfall. Already have a few CWI calves, and they certainly were wild as suckler calves when on the cow.
Since I weaned them, and put them in the shed, they have calmed down a lot.
His calving difficulty figures are a bit high on the ICBF system, but I have found no problem, and in fact the calves all seemed quite small at birth, but develop well fairly quickly.

vanderbadger

Black Smoke wrote: »

Looked at his figures there. Calving difficulty for his daughters, not so good
I fancy CWI myself, but docility is his downfall. Already have a few CWI calves, and they certainly were wild as suckler calves when on the cow.
Since I weaned them, and put them in the shed, they have calmed down a lot.
His calving difficulty figures are a bit high on the ICBF system, but I have found no problem, and in fact the calves all seemed quite small at birth, but develop well fairly quickly.

could be now, from what she said to me his daughters had particularly wide pelvic areas and were very suited to commercial suckler farming

49801

1st calvers do take that bit longer to go incalf the 2nd time round so if you want a tight calving pattern and not loose them the 2nd time round you should only use maternal bull for the first 30-50% of your herd.
So not much point in using maternal bull on 100% of your cows. the late calves will never fit your system unless you give them an extra year which is wastefull IMO
Only the earlier calves will be suitable for calving down at 22-24mths and will have enough time to go back incalf again to fit your calving pattern.

Our Suckers calf Jan to March and am try to shift to Dec to Feb. My strategy here is to only AI in Feb (to calf Nov-Dec)when they are in the yard and if I get a couple of home bred calves coming though to AI. Can't wait to see our first AI calves that are currently being weaned being bulled and calving down.

Every cow has a weakness docility, confirmation, milk, fertility etc. So for each cow you should be picking the bulls that will improve on that trait.

From the Simmental side of the house I like KFY, DRU and TBE and SEV

just do it

vanderbadger wrote: »

in the same kinda boat myself, nearly all ch cows. got to speak to rose Goulding briefly there one evening, she recommended Lim bull Vermeil code S666

Rose is worth listening to.

vanderbadger

just do it wrote: »

Rose is worth listening to.

ya id say that, in fairness she took a few minutes to talk to me so that was sound enough

rayzorsharpest

Ya i hear Rose is speaking at a Mart event in Gort tmw nite. She knows her stuff when it comes to bulls.

CHINBALL

pakalasa wrote: »

The problem is with collecting the data for the Maternal traits. With the calving ease figures, for example, you can get results within 9 months for a new bull. For maternal figures, you could be waiting years.
I agree, the figures have been all over the place. Have a look at the Saler bull RIO. His Milk figures were very low and then shot up over night. How did this happen. There are a lot of bulls though, that are tested in France first. I notice all these do seem to be OK.

You have to watch French figures most of these figures are from pure breeding.Irish figures come from both cross and pure breeding. Also French figures are collected by private companies and these figures are not on general release only the final figures that you see in a French catalogue.
When mixed with Irish figures they can become a little distorted.
The new maternal figures only 9% of this is made up of direct milk where 26% is carcass weight and cull cow value.

just do it

rayzorsharpest wrote: »

Ya i hear Rose is speaking at a Mart event in Gort tmw nite. She knows her stuff when it comes to bulls.

Sucra, I like to go to that but otherwise occupied:rolleyes:

just do it

CHINBALL wrote: »

The new maternal figures only 9% of this is made up of direct milk where 26% is carcass weight and cull cow value.

I must take a look at it. I'd be concerned to hear that as those of us farming marginal land are being advised to maintain medium sized milky cows.

CHINBALL

rayzorsharpest wrote: »

Ya i hear Rose is speaking at a Mart event in Gort tmw nite. She knows her stuff when it comes to bulls.

Ya Rose is a good saleswoman

Dozer1

Personally I wouldn't do it on my cows anyway, there's a balance to be struck in every decision and like sods law the cows you really want replacements from will have more bulls that heifers.

Like chippy said keeping your own replacements isn't all its cracked up to be.

I've a few calving to CWI in the Spring so we'll see how they turn out, I'm all for the medium sized cow myself, this year with me they have been easier to manage anyway.

on that point, this year I also bought two year and a half PBNR lim heifers with the hope they'll calve down next autumn at a weight that'll suit my land , rather than buying ones that'll calve at 3 years old and are too heavy.

Bizzum

Dozer1 wrote: »

this year I also bought two year and a half PBNR lim heifers with the hope they'll calve down next autumn at a weight that'll suit my land , rather than buying ones that'll calve at 3 years old and are too heavy.

I have never found that calving down heifers at 24 to 27 mths prevents them from reaching their ultimate mature weight. It just takes a bit longer!

Dozer1

fair point Bizzum, just trying to improve the cows on the farm at the moment, alot of HE and AA cows and not getting the weanling weights I'd like.
Just trying something different and we'll see how it works out.

Bizzum

Dozer1 wrote: »

just trying to improve the cows on the farm at the moment, alot of HE and AA cows and not getting the weanling weights I'd like.

Sounds like what we started doing a good few years back. It's interesting when I think about it now, we have no AA or HE cows at the present. My thoughts now about the better cows we have are that all of the cows that breed the best calves have AI breeding, or some double muscle in their background, (usually BA in our case, but the odd BB). It does take time to get the cow you want, you can be lucky and buy her in, but I'd much rather breed her from a good cow that has produced the goods herself and an AI bull. Even going down this route is no guarantee of producing what you want I can tell you!

johnpawl

Bizzum wrote: »

Sounds like what we started doing a good few years back. It's interesting when I think about it now, we have no AA or HE cows at the present. My thoughts now about the better cows we have are that all of the cows that breed the best calves have AI breeding, or some double muscle in their background, (usually BA in our case, but the odd BB). It does take time to get the cow you want, you can be lucky and buy her in, but I'd much rather breed her from a good cow that has produced the goods herself and an AI bull. Even going down this route is no guarantee of producing what you want I can tell you!

I must say I am a fan of the AA off brfr cows. We ran a ch bull with ours and all threw white and yellow calves and made good money, made good weights driven by good milk(bulls 490 kg at 11 months off small cows made e1100 last year) Intend buying a few aa off brfr calves next year to keep as cows.. Calves might not be as fancy but there's nothing wrong with them either. Am thinking of trying AI ch on them this year (OZS last year)

Bizzum

johnpawl wrote: »

I must say I am a fan of the AA off brfr cows. We ran a ch bull with ours and all threw white and yellow calves and made good money, made good weights driven by good milk(bulls 490 kg at 11 months off small cows made e1100 last year) Intend buying a few aa off brfr calves next year to keep as cows.. Calves might not be as fancy but there's nothing wrong with them either. Am thinking of trying AI ch on them this year (OZS last year)

If it's working well for you that's all you want. We all can't doing the exact same thing!
Them OZS heifers off the black cows could make good cows. Will you bull any of them?

tanko

There's an interesting article in the journal this week about a farmer who uses AI to breed his own replacements. He has been using bulls like Navarin, FL21 and APZ this year.

I think that if you go down this route, the cows you breed off need to have a decent amount of milk. A maternal bull isn't going to breed a heifer with lots of milk, if there isn't already milk in the cows you start off with.

There are bulls out there that should improve maternal traits and also throw good quality bull calves.

GoodMan55985

Tanko you used a fair bit of HCA on your heifers from previous posts. Will you be keeping these on for replacements. I know HCA is meant to be very good for milk

tanko

HCA has good milk figures and is very easy calving - good for heifers but his calves are a bit butty. Have 3 heifers off him this year, one is off a highlander 2nd calver,think i'll keep her on. Have other heifer calves off NSQ, FL21, FL22 and one off OZS which i hope will make decent cows. Most of my cows are in calf to OZS so am hoping for lots of heifers next spring.

limo_100

tanko wrote: »

HCA has good milk figures and is very easy calving - good for heifers but his calves are a bit butty. Have 3 heifers off him this year, one is off a highlander 2nd calver,think i'll keep her on. Have other heifer calves off NSQ, FL21, FL22 and one off OZS which i hope will make decent cows. Most of my cows are in calf to OZS so am hoping for lots of heifers next spring.

What is the OZS calf like that you have tanko?? Did you finds the calves off him to be better quality than fl21 and so on??

pakalasa

What about Ardlea Dan (ADX)?
Not recomended , not yet anyway, for replacements in the Munster AI catalogue, but he has it all. He has milk, maternal calving, docility.

johnpawl

Bizzum wrote: »

If it's working well for you that's all you want. We all can't doing the exact same thing!
Them OZS heifers off the black cows could make good cows. Will you bull any of them?

Well they'll be calving to ozs in the spring, so hoping for heifers. Put part on the same aa cows last year hoping for heifers, but got all bulls. Knowing my luck I'll get all bulls again this year. I reckon a part/limo heifer off those cows would make a good breeding heifer.

CHINBALL

blue5000 wrote: »

What breed will you go for? I reckon go for a breed that isn't already in your cows so that you will have hybrid vigour in your future cows. If you are selling weanlings poorer conformation ones will hit you hard in the pocket.

Hybrid vigour only works in the first cross, that's crossing one pure breed with another the more you cross after that the less impact hybrid vigour has.so if you cross a Limousin cow with an Angus bull then the offspring will have hybrid vigour, cross this calf with another breed then little or no hybrid vigour.

blue5000

You will still get hybrid vigour from the third breed on the cross bred AA lim.

Bizzum

CHINBALL wrote: »

Hybrid vigour only works in the first cross, that's crossing one pure breed with another the more you cross after that the less impact hybrid vigour has.so if you cross a Limousin cow with an Angus bull then the offspring will have hybrid vigour, cross this calf with another breed then little or no hybrid vigour.

If you cross for example a Lim X Ch is the result not an xbreed as opposed to a hybrid?

If you cross for example an Ass X Pony is the result not a hybrid eg a mule?

CHINBALL

Bizzum wrote: »

If you cross for example a Lim X Ch is the result not an xbreed as opposed to a hybrid?

If you cross for example an Ass X Pony is the result not a hybrid eg a mule?

Hybrid vigour is the crossing of breed traits. crossing a traditional breed with a continental breed may give you better growth rate or better confirmation.

If you have a pure LM cow and you use a Pure CH bull the calf say a heifer is 50% lim and 50% ch giving you a mix of both breed traits. If you then use a pure AA bull the resulting calf becomes 50% AA, 25% Lim and 25% CH. diluting down the breed traits and no hybrid vigour.
When you look into the genetic make up of any breed you will find traces of other breeds, take the Charolais you will find shorthorn blood in them and other breeds are the same. this is the main reason why only the first cross will give you Hybrid Vigour. The only breeds that are almost pure are the Salers and the Hereford.

Kevin1150

Is vigour not maximised with a half bred dam crossed with terminal sire?

CHINBALL

Kevin1150 wrote: »

Is vigour not maximised with a half bred dam crossed with terminal sire?

You use the hybrid vigour in the first cross to improve the calves on the second cross.
You cant keep trying to use a different bull to put order on your cows it will not work that way.

blue5000

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/an165

Worth a look, first cross between two purebreds can give 25% more weight at weaning than purebreds.

pakalasa

There's also the issue of disease and general hardiness. Crosbreds are hardier.

SoJoMo

tanko wrote: »

HCA has good milk figures and is very easy calving - good for heifers but his calves are a bit butty. Have 3 heifers off him this year, one is off a highlander 2nd calver,think i'll keep her on. Have other heifer calves off NSQ, FL21, FL22 and one off OZS which i hope will make decent cows. Most of my cows are in calf to OZS so am hoping for lots of heifers next spring.

tankodid you have a lot of repeats with HCA? I got 5 heifers done with him, 4 repeated and 3 of them didnt keep at all. Out of same batch of heifers 4 others were done with Saler LZR and one repeated which did keep.

tanko

SoJoMo wrote: »

tankodid you have a lot of repeats with HCA? I got 5 heifers done with him, 4 repeated and 3 of them didnt keep at all. Out of same batch of heifers 4 others were done with Saler LZR and one repeated which did keep.

No problems like that. Last year 7 out of 9 held first time, the other two held the second time. This year all 6 heifers held first time to him so was very happy with that.

tanko

pakalasa wrote: »

What about Ardlea Dan (ADX)?
Not recomended , not yet anyway, for replacements in the Munster AI catalogue, but he has it all. He has milk, maternal calving, docility.

A couple of weeks ago i asked my vet if there was a limo bull that farmers were using which was causing calving problems. ADX is a bull he mentioned. He said that he can breed a calf which has larger shoulders than normal and he can be hard calved for a limo.

He looks more of a beef bull rather than a bull to breed replacements to me. Have never used him tho. For what its worth, he said NHL is easier calved and is a better bull.

tanko

limo_100 wrote: »

What is the OZS calf like that you have tanko?? Did you finds the calves off him to be better quality than fl21 and so on??

Only have one calf off FL21, a nice square heifer. I think both OZS and FL21 are well worth using. Both seem easy calved and calves are quiet. NSQ is easy calved and breeds good growthy calves, but they can be stone mad - wont be using him again.

just do it

tanko wrote: »

A couple of weeks ago i asked my vet if there was a limo bull that farmers were using which was causing calving problems. ADX is a bull he mentioned. He said that he can breed a calf which has larger shoulders than normal and he can be hard calved for a limo.

He looks more of a beef bull rather than a bull to breed replacements to me. Have never used him tho. For what its worth, he said NHL is easier calved and is a better bull.

Interesting to look at NHL on icbf. He has it all except docility. Looking at previous evaluations this started off good and has deteriorated over time. On the other hand his milk and daughter calving were poor to start with and are now good.