Maternal Index Values for Breeding

Dampintheattic

I'm wondering what people are now doing, when deciding to either purchase a heifer or keep one from own herd, for beef breeding purposes.

1. Do you aim to purchase or retain only 5 star maternal heifers.
2. If you don't have any, or indeed have enough of your own with good stars,
would you retain a heifer with lower maternal star values.

For example, I have two Lim x Char cows, out of Lim bull UBN.
He has only 0.5 stars for both Maternal and Terminal, on ICBF.
What the fkuk, they are selling his straws for, I can't understand, if he is so low in both indces:(

Thing is, both UBN cross cows are delivering and rearing good quality calves.

Now, both have very nice char heifers this year off of Dovea CXY.

CXY is 4.5 stars for terminal, but just 1.5 for maternal.

If I decided based on the ICBF figures, I would not keep these heifers for breeding.
BUT, their mothers according to ICBF, should not have been kept for breeding. Yet they are breeding well.

I'm confused

pakalasa

It's really down to how the figures are put together. Calving difficulty is now heavily weighed so it drags down the maternal and terminal figures a lot.
At the end of the day, if you have 'good' cows bred from 'good' cows in your own herd, it's hard to go wrong with these. The reliability is very low for commercial cows anyway, so nobody knows your own cows like you do. I always look at the individual figures and and pick a bull to correct any faults the cow may have, such as poor milk, poor docility etc.

Milk now only makes up 11% of the Maternal Index. You could have a cow with 5* for Maternal Index but seriously lacking in milk. A cow like this is useless. So you really do have to look at the individual figures.

LivInt20

You should aim to use both the €urostars and visual assessment/knowledge of your own stock.

Also remember to use the reliability figures as many animals have low reliability figures which may mean €urostars change over time for that individual animal.

Overall though five star animals should deliver more profit than one star animals. Research to date has shown this to be true.


www.icbf.com/publications/files/EuroStars_Explanatory_leaflet_140313.pdf

blue5000

Yeah it's getting harder to make these decisions alright. If the cows have milk then I think you will be ok.

Best way to find this out is weigh the calves before mealing them, then work out what their average daily gain from birth was. Think you allow 50kg for a bull at birth and 45kg for a heifer.

I haven't looked at UBN on icbf but you can check the bulls in his pedigree by clicking on them, there might be some hard calving/fertility issues there which as paks said would be dragging his figures down.

reilig

+1 on the info above.

It's also important to examine your prices for calves over a few years. Your lowest star cow could produce the best priced weanling year on year. On the other hand, your best star cow may have produced the heaviest calf up to before meal feeding, but the calf may not have achieved the highest price because of colour or quality.

At our last BTAP meeting, people argued that at the end of the day, it's all about KG's out the gate. But it's not!! Quality can add as much value to an animal as weight. A combination of the 2 are the key!

Dampintheattic

reilig wrote: »

+1 on the info above.

It's also important to examine your prices for calves over a few years. Your lowest star cow could produce the best priced weanling year on year. On the other hand, your best star cow may have produced the heaviest calf up to before meal feeding, but the calf may not have achieved the highest price because of colour or quality.

At our last BTAP meeting, people argued that at the end of the day, it's all about KG's out the gate. But it's not!! Quality can add as much value to an animal as weight. A combination of the 2 are the key!

Pic here is one of the two heifers. Born Mar 23. Not over heavy, but nice quality. Just staarted on creep, about 1o days ago. I suppose, looks more of a beef heifer than a replacment type, but I think I'm going to give her a spin. :cool:

LivInt20

Dampintheattic wrote: »

Pic here is one of the two heifers. Born Mar 23. Not over heavy, but nice quality. Just staarted on creep, about 1o days ago. I suppose, looks more of a beef heifer than a replacment type, but I think I'm going to give her a spin. :cool:

Looks like a heifer for Beef.

The reason CXY has low maternal figures is his calving difficulty at 10.70%

You can't put weight on a dead calf!!

UBN daughters do not have much milk going by €urostar figures. You mention above that the heifer in the picture is "Not over heavy,"

Would it be a case that the mother - UBN cow, is not a great milker?

Therefore if the mother has not much milk, and it's a Charolais heifer, that would not be expected to have much milk, I would beef the heifer and find a replacement that is going to be a good milker to put the weight on the calf.

I think that is how to use the €urostar Maternal figures.

Bizzum

reilig wrote: »

At our last BTAP meeting, people argued that at the end of the day, it's all about KG's out the gate. But it's not!! Quality can add as much value to an animal as weight. A combination of the 2 are the key!

This is it in a nutshell. What I would regard as our better cows would be the cows that breed weight and quality in the offspring.
Back in calf handy and gets on with calving would be good too.