traits for a heifer bull?

[dfarms11]

What do you all look at when picking a
bull for heifers? Do you go for the smallest birthweight possible or just anything under 80lb? I am a simmental- charolais man myself, but I think I am going to go red angus for the vigour. Any thoughts?

[per]

The Angus bull doesn't guarantee a easy birth. I look at how easy the sires calves are to calve both with epds and observation and history on the dams side. The Angus out cross would sure work good on those mature Continental cows. Most of my heifer bulls come out of my own herd or are the second year of using a purchased bull that the calves squirted out particularly easy. As f_s pointed out in an earlier thread an 80lb bull out of a 1600lb cow is small but an 80lb calf out of a 1050lb cow is an elephant.

Having said all of that some years I get if right and some I get it wrong like this year. I used a composite Sim x Angus x Hereford and a pure Red Angus. Pulled more than my fair share. Right shape but wrong size. Always trying to push the edge because those hfs calves need to be of the same standard as the rest.

[kato]

We have mainly Charolais with a few Simmentals we picked up at bred cow sales over the past three years just to make it interesting.

We thought about Red Angus, but use Limo instead. Crossed with both Char and Simmental, the calves are very much alike. Mainly tan, with some blaze faces. I guess it depends on what style of calf you want. This cross gets you a nice calf from both breeds of cows, and they are pretty uniform. The buyers seem to like them a lot.

There are a ton of easy calving Limo bulls out there, but we choose by birthweight mainly, with an emphasis on how he's put together. Smooth shoulders and all that usual stuff.....

[grassfarmer]

Well personally I look for a Luing bull for heifers....
I'm not a big fan of judging a bull by his birthweight as that can so obviously be influenced by the owners feeding program and his honesty as to the actual weight. Birth weight of a particular calf in one year can be very little reflection on his genetic potential. Very often you see bulls touted as "heifer bulls" in the sale catalog when in fact they are the exact same genetic make up as the high birthweight bulls. It's often just a way to market a poor bull that didn't grow very well.

As Per stated using Angus does not guarantee easy calving - not since they started selecting for cattle that grew at 4lbs a day and got into 100lb birth weights as a result (although the papers still shows a 75lb birthweight) I wouldn't be using a crossbred bull on heifers Per - the lack of genetic predictability will give you problems.

As Kato says, and in my own experience, the Limo can make a good choice on heifers as they tend to be fine boned - expect about 5% that will have exceptionally wide hips especially if your heifers have some exotic blood in them. Too wild and brainless cattle though I'll never use Limos again.

Kato you're still coming up with the old chesnut of selecting for "Smooth shoulders and all that usual stuff....."
despite it being proven as total nonsense. How many calving difficulties do buffalo have?? good job the natives didn't cull out all the big shouldered bulls LOL.
I feel this misconception that using a bull with a fine shoulder etc costs more than all the calving problems the farmer might have. Using a cow headed, narrow shouldered bull will not necessarily make them calve easier but it will ensure you are selecting a sub-fertile weak bull that will not cover many females and will breed replacements that are also sub-fertile. I'm not surprised then at the "industry standard" advice of breeding twice as many heifers as you need as there will be 30% come up open.

Our open heifer rate runs about 2% although I'm still disappointed that another 8% don't get bred until the third cycle. I've started to cull them out automatically as they very rarely come forward from a late calving as a heifer.

[per]

You are right grassfarmer, A Bull should look like a Bull. Yes the crossbred is a risk however we have had success with a three or more way cross. Also I know what lines they all came from. It is fun sometimes to push the limits of what others say you shouldn't do. (sometimes their dead right) As far a fertility goes, all of our females only get two cycles and the heifers 30 days. The infertile ones don't exist long and the next generation always came from the fertile ones.

[per]

You are right grassfarmer, A Bull should look like a Bull. Yes the crossbred is a risk however we have had success with a three or more way cross. Also I know what lines they all came from. It is fun sometimes to push the limits of what others say you shouldn't do. (sometimes they are dead right) As far a fertility goes, all of our females only get two cycles and the heifers 30 days. The infertile ones don't exist long and the next generation always came from the fertile ones.

[smcgrath76]

No right or wrong. We use a lot of AI on everything 3 years of age and younger. We look for very high accuracy, high calving ease, good growth and carcass quality (marbling) EPD. Once a bull has a few thousand calves on the ground, he becomes a pretty good AI candidate for us to use. In the clean up bulls we look for sires with the same EPD profile as our AI bulls. We keep pretty well all of our replacement heifers out of this younger group of cows, although we usually throw a few specific older cows in this group as well. We don't keep our own bulls as we don't weigh anything at birth, and don't plan to start. Not knowing birthweight is too much risk for us.

[cswilson]

smc I don't weight too many calves-somethging about a calf scale clankling on your saddle makes horses buck. I just wrire S,M,L in the calf book to give me an idea. If I'm really hot on a calf out of a good cow I might make a special effort to get a weight on him. On our A'I bulls or any bull for that matter I like a low birthweight, low Bw EPD and a high calving ease E.P.D-if a heifer has trouble calving once the cows hit the bush she's on her own so we try and guard against it. I hate Steery looking bulls had some pretty well muscled bulls calve like a dream.

[smcgrath76]

csw, pretty close to our philosophy. Just because of how grass works out, the first half of the heifers calve near the house (within 1/2 mile or so). The second half are a ways away and get checked when we change gates on the rotational grazing system.
For us, I would rather spend my time all winter indoors picking bulls, than spend all spring checking heifers.

[farmers_son]

I agree with cswilson that the appearance of the bull is no indicator of calving ease. Some of our best heifer bulls were big, long and heavy muscled themselves but the heifers calved easy. It is not just the weight of the calf but the shape of the calf.

I do not use EPDs and we use natural breeding. I like to use a bull on older cows first and if he consistently demonstrates easy calving results he becomes the heifer bull. A good heifer bull is a real asset.

[kato]

A bull can be smooth and still look like a bull. Honest he can!

We've found through experience that the bulls with the big round wide heads, and front legs that are set real wide when you look at them from the front will not be the easier calvers. That doesn't mean they aren't the best bulls though, because the ones we've had that looked like that were the ones that put the performance in the calves. It's what most of our favourite bulls over the years have looked like. They just aren't what we'd pick for a heifer.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. LOL

[exnaboe]

I think that per put his finger on the real criterion for easy calving. It is not the birthweight of the bull itself, but the ratio of his birthweight to his mother. A ratio of about 5 to 5 1/2 % suggests a potentially easy calving sire.

[grassfarmer]

So how do you compensate for year to year differences in a cows calves? The 1350lb cow I mentioned in another thread that had a 50lb heifer calf last year had an 80lb one today. Same sire and the cow was in better condition and heavier fed last year than this year.

[grassfarmer]

Meant to add that they were 3.7% and 5.9% respectively. If they were bulls which would be likely to sire smaller calves?