Suggestion for choice of bull breed?

Farmer Dan

Hello All

I started a small suckler herd last year with 15 black white head heifers & I ran a Angus bull with them. All calved perfectly without any problem. Kept the same bull again for this year & they are due to calve again next month. I was thinking of changing the bull this year. What breed of bull would suit them best or should i stay with the angus. I plan on selling the calves when they are about 18 months old. I like the white head cows as they are quite, have good milk & keep condition easily.

What are people putting these types of cows in calf too & what are the calves like.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

simx

Farmer Dan wrote: »

Hello All

I started a small suckler herd last year with 15 black white head heifers & I ran a Angus bull with them. All calved perfectly without any problem. Kept the same bull again for this year & they are due to calve again next month. I was thinking of changing the bull this year. What breed of bull would suit them best or should i stay with the angus. I plan on selling the calves when they are about 18 months old. I like the white head cows as they are quite, have good milk & keep condition easily.

What are people putting these types of cows in calf too & what are the calves like.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

If it was me id be going Ch, are you selling.as.weanlings? Do you work full time?

blue5000

Some food for thought here, ever hear of black baldy cows?

http://awards.fwi.co.uk/2012/07/beef-farmer-award-shortlist-robert-parker/

Farmer Pudsey

Are you around when the cows calf if not you require an easy calving bull Angus or Limousin is the best option. If you want to continue to sell as year and a half old bullocks I go for the Limousin and consider keeping the some of the heifers as replacments.
You will get loads of different opinions Charleys are grand but you may have to be around more often than with either the Limousin or Angus for two reason first you can have calving difficulty and secondly the calf's are not as hardy as the AA or LM. However if around they do sell better however one extra live calf should make up the difference. I always founf that the Black Whitehead Limousin bull out preformed them all when finishing

Farmer Dan

Thanks for all info.

I usually sell calves at 18 months.
I work from home so i do be around at calving,
Just wanted to see what other peoples were using for white head cows
& how they were getting on & what they would recommened.

redzerologhlen

Farmer Dan wrote: »

Thanks for all info.

I usually sell calves at 18 months.
I work from home so i do be around at calving,
Just wanted to see what other peoples were using for white head cows
& how they were getting on & what they would recommened.

I would go with a limo on them before Charolais mainly because the charolais bulls go rough looking out of them very young and come a dirty colour which buyers don't like a lot of the time. We have a few black whitehead cows here and the have crossed well with the limo for us with about 50/50 red and black calves. If you do get a limo make sure you go for one that has good docility figures because we had a few nutcase's out of old bull which would never quiten. I have a few pics of the calves out of them that I will post up later.

Bizzum

We had the odd B/WH cow over the years, I found the Lim worked well on them, and as said above a heifer from them will make a great replacement. I tried a couple of BB bulls too and found they bred some good stock but probably a little inconsistantly. Charolais bred good stuff too but the colour can be an issue at sale if you're not finishing them.
So, if the gun was to my head..............Lim.

Lastin

Join the Angus scheme and stay as you are.There is a lot to be said for easy calving and easy finishing cattle.

mikeoh

Lastin wrote: »

Join the Angus scheme ..............how much does it cost?

1chippy

I know a lad who bought 30 heifers with similar back breeding for a batch calving, he has them a couple of years now and last year put his 3 bulls with them, limo, char and simmental all three threw good calves and i was extremely impressed with how the simmental crossed with them. Some sims can be a bit of a pull though.
I dont think it is really going to matter what breed you cross with them once the bull is good enough, you will find that each different cross will have its niche however i doubt they would be suitable for pushing towards an export grade calf so wouldnt even bother with a blue but i may be proven wrong.

disclaimer: i didnt include dexters, belted galloways or highland cattle in my above thoughts.

Bizzum

Lastin wrote: »

Join the Angus scheme and stay as you are.There is a lot to be said for easy calving and easy finishing cattle.

Is there any advantage in joining if the cattle are being sold live?

blue5000

Bizzum wrote: »

Is there any advantage in joining if the cattle are being sold live?

Haven't found it yet, might change though as feeders work out that using a tonne of meal to finish a charolais bull is not economic anymore.

porter shark

ch all the way with b/w/h cows.

49801

porter shark wrote: »

ch all the way with b/w/h cows.

He wants lively calves not calves that would prefer to lay down and die

Def go limosine. Sorry we did not do it years ago. And now that we're selling the all our cattle to go contract rearing the lim bull I bought only 12 months ago hast to go too.

blue5000

49801 wrote: »

He wants lively calves not calves that would prefer to lay down and die

Def go limosine. Sorry we did not do it years ago. And now that we're selling the all our cattle to go contract rearing the lim bull I bought only 12 months ago hast to go too.

Judging by this weeks comic, p38-39 you won't be the only one. I wonder what will happen when milk quotas go? Dairying is high profit, look at the thread on profit monitor, if they can milk off every ha they can make 3-4k / ha.

I think suckling and sheep will be left on marginal land like what has happened in NZ over the past20 yrs. How much would you have to get to move from suckling to contract rearing/ finishing screwy hol/jersey bulls?

Does the minister have a policy for(proper) beef, if so what is it?

Tipp Man

blue5000 wrote: »

Some food for thought here, ever hear of black baldy cows?

http://awards.fwi.co.uk/2012/07/beef-farmer-award-shortlist-robert-parker/

Ah black baldies

Fantastic animals

There really should be more of them in this country

funny man

have seen Saler X hereford calves in the US and was mighty impressed. Easy calved and grow a big frame.

yellow50HX

Well you should match your bull to your cows. The cows you have bred are AAX/HFX which means they have an easy calving gene already. We bred in AAX into our herd a few years back. I'm a big fan of them. We have them crossed with Fr and Lims. The AAxFR cow we find to be very good, they are excellent milkers in fact we have to double suckler some of them, are great mothers, and are easy calving. Now they are not huge animals but as we have an old cubicle shed so bigger cows like sims or chars wouldn't fit. Now that said I'd be wary putting a big char or sim bull with them. we have been using a Lim bull with them for a few years now and have been getting great calves, got a new bull last year so we'll see what he throws. We also had a blonde with them for a bit too. We had an another Angus bull a while back but found that too much Angus left us it fine hardy calves, with good condition but they just didn't weight well.

pakalasa

Canadian black baldie bulls. Simmental x AA.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MO_tS3CIUk

johnpawl

yellow50HX wrote: »

Well you should match your bull to your cows. The cows you have bred are AAX/HFX which means they have an easy calving gene already. We bred in AAX into our herd a few years back. I'm a big fan of them. We have them crossed with Fr and Lims. The AAxFR cow we find to be very good, they are excellent milkers in fact we have to double suckler some of them, are great mothers, and are easy calving. Now they are not huge animals but as we have an old cubicle shed so bigger cows like sims or chars wouldn't fit. Now that said I'd be wary putting a big char or sim bull with them. we have been using a Lim bull with them for a few years now and have been getting great calves, got a new bull last year so we'll see what he throws. We also had a blonde with them for a bit too. We had an another Angus bull a while back but found that too much Angus left us it fine hardy calves, with good condition but they just didn't weight well.

I put a ch bull on my aaxfr cows 2years ago and got great calves. Put parth on them last year and again very good calves. Am buying another few aaxfr heifers this spring.

moy83

pakalasa wrote: »

Canadian black baldie bulls. Simmental x AA.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MO_tS3CIUk

Was that lad selling those as breeding bulls pak ? Smashing looking cattle.
I wonder were they putting them on angus cows again or any type of cow

pakalasa

moy83 wrote: »

Was that lad selling those as breeding bulls pak ? Smashing looking cattle.
I wonder were they putting them on angus cows again or any type of cow

Smashing cattle is right. Ya, says under 'more info' that he was selling them alright. Don't know what kind of cows they breed them on.

Farmer Pudsey

moy83 wrote: »

Was that lad selling those as breeding bulls pak ? Smashing looking cattle.
I wonder were they putting them on angus cows again or any type of cow

They were to be crossed to Black baldy cows he said on the video saw this one after watching the Black baldy's

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_zH7Jd38uI

Even though in Ireland we are big into hybrid vigour we never really have a breeding system in place to identify the one that suit the country. With the way the price of ration is going maybe we should be thinking along the lines of a Traditional breed/Contenintal cross cow bred back to a traditional breed to provide an easy finishing animal that could be killed at 18-24 months with little ration in the diet. The beauty of the cattle above is that you can have the desired colours.

For instance the Hereford/Simental crossed cows would give a super cross to a limousin Bull or a charley bull and either of the Hybrid cows could be crossed with an AA or HE to give a good scopy but easily finished AA or HE cross animal for there respective schemes.

moy83

Yup its definitely the way I would like to go , low maintenance all the way

himwdah

there are as many variations within a breed as there are between breeds, best advice i got.

we are black balsie based with some shorthorn cross too and still the parent stock of he/fr cows to breed replacements from, next beef bull to be limo, we did have charlois up to this but dont like the idea of charlois to black baldie, even if our last ch was very easy calve. current aa is very hard to calve and is to be replaced with a he to keep the black baldie going, as a once every so often we will use a shorthorn to open the replacment breed pool if u know what i mean.

we are sort of focused on a replacemnt herd and beef breed herd to try and improve the cows and breed what suits our ground, lengh and depth mean weight to us not the length of their legs

limo gets my vote as too much of one breed isnt good from what i see.

blue5000

himwdah wrote: »

there are as many variations within a breed as there are between breeds, best advice i got.

we are black balsie based with some shorthorn cross too and still the parent stock of he/fr cows to breed replacements from, next beef bull to be limo, we did have charlois up to this but dont like the idea of charlois to black baldie, even if our last ch was very easy calve. current aa is very hard to calve and is to be replaced with a he to keep the black baldie going, as a once every so often we will use a shorthorn to open the replacment breed pool if u know what i mean.

we are sort of focused on a replacemnt herd and beef breed herd to try and improve the cows and breed what suits our ground, lengh and depth mean weight to us not the length of their legs

limo gets my vote as too much of one breed isnt good from what i see.

What breeding is in your AA bull, LWF by any chance? It sounds like you'll have fantastic cows after him.

himwdah

blue5000 wrote: »

What breeding is in your AA bull, LWF by any chance? It sounds like you'll have fantastic cows after him.

dont know to be honest, he throws mighty fleshing and well shaped calves, few hiefers kept so time will tell.