A few pictures...

[smcgrath76]

I have posted a few pics from December 11 on our website.
That was the day we brought our older cows home off grass (onto swaths). Lots of grass left, but we were getting a bit scared they might get snowed into the coulee. We have had about 6 inches of snow since the pics were taken.
Go to www.ranchingsystems.com and choose the picture link on the left.
Our younger cows are still out on grass. Our feed tests show they should be allright and they are busy grazing and putting on weight.
We try to wean pretty early. Our oldest calves would be around 5 months old at weaning time. This lets us get dry, 2nd trimester cows onto native through the late fall and winter.

[farmers_son]

I enjoyed checking out your site and viewing the pictures. Its is always interesting to see what others are doing. I looked for a picture or two of your bulls but never saw any, do you AI?

[smcgrath76]

I haven't pictured our herdsires lately. It is a job I have been meaning to do for a while.
We AI quite a lot. Last year we AI'ed every cow. This year we did all 3 year olds and younger, as well as some selected older females. We are trying to accelerate our genetic base forward as fast as humanly possible, so we try to keep heifers out of our younger females and use AI to provide us access to genetics that are highly proven, curve bending and that we can afford.

[farmers_son]

How do you measure that you are moving in the direction you want?

[PureCountry]

To add to that, if you're keeping heifers ONLY out of younger females, how do ensure that you are breeding longevity into your cowherd? I'm sure you're wise enough to know not to chase single trait selection, I'm just curious.

[smcgrath76]

We have a few things we measure.
We keep an eye on fertility, conception rate, weaning rate, weaning weight, post weaning growth, etc. We are moving forward with selling carcasses rather than live, so are excited about learning where we are with that. This is a large part of the reason we have insisted on ultrasounded bulls and using carcass EPD. To reduce risk as we move up the chain.
The logic of using younger females is that if we are making continual improvement, then our younger females must be better than our older cows. We do select a few "special cows" to go into the replacement program. This is where AI is nice. I can use a hgihly proven bull, go look at a few hundred progeny, and then AI 50 or 100 cows to him on a single day.
We have a bit of a different cow depreciation scenario than many people due to our leasing project, but longevity is very important to us. The challenge is how much gain do you lose by waiting to prove out longevity. I don't know that we have totally sorted out the answer to that question just yet.
As far as balanced selection, vs. single trait - we use upper and lower threshold selection for BW, CE, WW, milk and YW, we use all the available selection index information available, and we are working on bending carcass genetics to have moderate yield and great marbling in the cows and high growth, yield and moderate marbling in terminal sires.
Pretty simple system all in all. As we get better financial records, I think we will develop a personal selection index.
After we look over all the numbers, we line up a few bulls and then go looking.

[smcgrath76]

Forgot to mention, we also look at mature size, fleshing ability, scrotal size, semen test results, etc.
It takes us a long time to pick a bull.