Castleview Gringo Advice

squinn2912

Hi all -  I'm a bit new to this forum. I'm looking for some advice on this bull GWO. Considering buying a son to run with our suckler herd. There are mixed reports about him on here which concerns me a bit so a bit of help in decision making would be appreciated. On the face of it it looks like his sons do very well at the bull sales. He seems excellent for terminal and not especially hard to calve. But weanlings don't do very well and forget about him for producing your own replacements (this has been our strong point over the last 10 years or so). 
Do I have it right? I'd like to hear your thoughts on him.

kay 9

We've used what I think is his brother castlview casino (cwi) to good effect. Very even good quality calves with quality shape.
May be worth consideration too, however, if I had to fault him, it'd be his front shoulder maybe and most definitely I wouldn't keep replacements as they tend to be hypersensitive.

FeelTheBern

My uncle has a stockbull off GWO on his sucklers. Some of that bulls traits will obviously come from dam but he is bringing great muscled calves. Cows are calving themselves generally but NOT suitable for heifers - we'd 4 heifers in calf to him, one a serious pull that was a miracle that calf and heifer were ok and three good pulls with the others. These heifers were 2 yo calving but not over fat. So my view would be probably a good bull for cows for terminal but wouldn't use on heifers first year at least.

patsy_mccabe

GWO is by Wilodge Vantastic who has sired nearly every pedigree limousin show winner over the last few years. Vantastic is hard calving and very poor for milk. Surprising GWO is reasonable for calving.

squinn2912

Thanks lads hard to know what to do. We have a bull on his 10th season and he was doing both jobs well. The original plan was to switch breeds but then this bull came with a recommendation so I thought I'd check him out. With Vantastic on one side and Ferry on the other Gringo has a lot behind him. I would have misgivings about unsuitability for heifers and poor milk scores so I'll take a look at the dam side of this bull and go from there. Repeats among maiden heifers are already something of an issue for us so improving that would be a priority.

squinn2912

Any thoughts on Haltcliffe Underwriter? I see a good bit on here about the Haltcliffe herd but not Underwriter - S553. I've been told that there's a good bit of milk to his calves but more a terminal bull as well.