Quality starts here?

[15444]

Cowman, the breeds that get discriminated against are the ones you mentioned. Straightbred Herefords, Shorthorns (pure or cross), Straightbred Simmentals and any poor looking Heinz 57. Not sure on the crossbred Simmentals, some buyers really discount them and some don't. Hairy ones don't seem to deter the buyers. But as expected, they go wild for anything that is black or blonde. Angus (pure and cross), Char (pure and cross) and Limousin (pure and cross) get the buyers really riled up, especially in the bigger lots.

Colour still rules the yards. We ship one or two calves almost every year that are black baldie-looking calves, except they are Holstein-Hereford crosses. Beautiful calves in the fall, glossy and shining all over...but they scare the hell out you when you see them as yearlings. Turn into big, overgrown, thin brutes. Had those calves taken on a Holstein pattern, we would have been discounted hard and deep. But because the look like baldies, they fetch us a premium over anything else we take. Makes me wonder how guys ever did if they crossed the traditional Simmentals with Angus. Bunch of Holstien patterned calves in the fall I would suspect.

[kato]

The way a preconditioning program will help is if the buyer recognizes that your calves are the ones that don't land in the sick pen at the feedlot. We've bought calves to background where every one with a particular matching eartag will end up sick. If we can figure out who's they were, that's who's avoided next year.

Buyers who ship cattle off to a customer won't know, but I bet the ones who buy to feed themselves will sure know who's done their homework on their calves. In our local market that can hurt you bad. These guys will recognize a man's cattle, and even though they look just fine in the ring, they are going for a lot less than other similar looking calves. If you see that happen you can bet there's a history behind the herd.

The pigs in Manitoba already have a Quality Assurance program. It involves an on farm inspection every three years, and an office visit to review the operation once a year. There is a 5 dollar discount on any market hog that goes through the marketing board without having come from a CQA herd. (I have no idea where it goes.)For the big operators who ship a few hundred a week, that's a good amount of money, so the sign up rate is high. For pigs it's more a matter of not being discounted rather than being rewarded for the extra work. Legalized ransom?

Most of the quality assurance things they are asking for are already being done on most operations. For those, it's just more paperwork, and won't change the way they run their herds one little bit. For the poorer managers, well, that's a different story....

[grassfarmer]

15444, don't know about Canada but they resolved that one about 1972 in the UK. As the first imports there were used on dairy as well as beef cattle they quickly learnt that red bred black and white whereas yellow bred brown calves. The predominate purebred Simmental colour in the UK is definately yellow and white. Apart from the purebreds you very rarely get yellow and white offspring - they breed brown on blacks/ black and white cows and red/red and white on red colour cows.

[grassfarmer]

grassfarmer I think that the predominant color for Simi and Simi cross here now is dark red. The light colored Simi's have really gone out of style over the past few years. Dark limo are certainly favored over the very light golden color. I have a couple of the lighter colored fullblood cows here but always use either dark red fullblood or black bulls so the calves are either dark red or black.
Tan Char cross calves are still popular. Black baldies are good mama cows, and if I was going to raise commercial cattle I would have black baldie cows bred limo....

[kpb]

We will not buy any straight British calves to feed over the winter because they simply will not gain. Other than that any crossbred calves with a stretchy body will be bought--we don't care about their color as long as they will gain. Over the last three weeks we've sold a bunch of backgrounded heifers and were very happy with the price--up to .85 for 1025 lbs.

The top sellers for us were black Maines, then blacks with some white, then solid reds, then tans and whites. My personal favorites are anything that has some Maine in them, they gain like crazy, then anything with some Simmi.

And before all you British purebred breeders get up in arms, I like the British breeds for grassing but not for feeding. I've fed for a long time and I've yet to see any pure British calf gain much over the winter. They need to be stretchy and have some obvious exotic blood or feeders will discount them in my humble opinion. At any event I won't be buying the British calves in the fall.


kpb

[grassfarmer]

kpb, I understand your reasons for buying the type of cattle you do - it makes sense. Can you explain to me the experience I've had in the last couple of years? - once in Ponoka, once in Rimbey. I go in with a string of 720-750lb preconditioned calves, roughly 1/3 Sim x baldie, 1/3 char x baldie,
1/3 luing x red angus(which are just like red angus to look at - but better ;o)) I pen them in the truck in tens or twelves of each breed so they don't need sorting. Yet they appear in the ring as a group of @30 head and on both occasions were within a couple of cents of the market high for that weight range. They never attempt to sort them in the ring after they are sold either. Will the order buyers sort these out later or do they go to the feedlot in the same group?

I should add that when I sold the calves in February this year at 9-10 months old the Luing x angus calves were the same weight as the others - granted they were a touch heavier fleshed and slightly smaller framed but they impressed me none the less.

[kpb]

grassfarmer, I'm staying up late hoping for a mare to foal so here's what I think about your sale. First of all, your calves are obviously weaned which means a lot to me since weaning stress is the biggest killer for backgrounders. Secondly, for the three groups you took to the auction, the colors were different sure but the weights were very tight. And I mean very tight. Your three groups were all within 30 pounds or so which is why they all went in together to be sold and weren't split afterwards either. And they were 700 plus weights so who cares about the color--they were all obviously crossbreds from what you describe and I'm sure they looked great so yeah I guess they did get top dollar--they were just darn good calves with a tight weight range that were crossbreds which meant they could be fed. I would have bought them!

Why would you want them to be split--they would feed real well and be fats at all about the same time--a perfect pen. No need to split them in my book--like I said I don't care what color they are as long as they'll gain.

In regards to feeding your Luing-Angus calves, I confess I know nothing specifically about feeding the Luings. My question is did you feed them to gain over the winter or to maintain? In the fall I like to buy calves that will be 1,000 pounds by April. Say 180 days of feeding so they have to be able to put on the pounds and finish in the late spring or early summer. If your Luings will do that I'll buy them in the fall forever.

I have a Black Baldie mostly cow herd so I have nothing against British calves. I think the British cows are the best keepers for rough ground and rough feeding which is what my cows experience summer and winter. And I usually buy 7 weight British calves in the spring for grassing because they come off the pasture looking great in the fall and just need 90 days of feed to finish real well. I just don't want to feed them over the winter because I don't get paid for it.


kpb

[whiteface]

No hard feelings, we've already discussed this one quite thoroughly and I do agree wholeheartedly that straight british, probably in MOST cases ( not all ) hereford, is not the way to go for gain in the feedlot. I do very well with my herefords and like kato said, if you recognize a certain tag you may steer clear or in my case, they do buy 'em because they will gain and don't get sick but I believe that as a breed they're not there with some others for gainability or even a whole lot of other traits. This is of course the entire challenge with owning them, to "compete" with the other breeds using a distictive marking feature (the white head).
Hope your mare foaled allright and you all have a good day!

[grassfarmer]

kpb, With calving later now I wean in October and feed for 2lbs/ day of gain. I find that with the "book" rations set up to do that we get weight gains around the 1.7-1.9lbs from the calves. The slight drop from "book value" gains I attribute to the calves getting a slight set back at weaning and going onto feed for the first time plus some poorer gains if we feed them through very cold weather. I always find the ones that received the least milk get some compensatory growth gains at this stage over the better milked ones.
I now aim to hit the late December
"tax money" trade with some and the Feb-March trade with the rest.

Preconditioning certainly works for me - haven't pulled a sick calf post weaning in 4 years. It allows me to add value to my calves, spreads yardage/ tractor costs over greater numbers and converts some cheap straw into valuable organic matter.

As for feeding Luing steers I have not done that in the feedlot either. I'm told they will perform very much like the old fashioned "real" red angus cattle - before they got into the hard calving, 4lb a day gainers! Given that my steers were F1s we maybe picked up a bit of extra performance from the hybrid vigour? We killed grass fattened luing x heifers last fall at 17-18 months which were 690lb carcases with a very good fat cover.

[cowman]

kpb: So you are saying that crossbred British calves(eg. Angus X hereford) work for you? They will gain good enough and still not get too fat? I guess the bottom line is will they make you as much money as say a Maine X Angus?
Grassfarmer: I wonder what would happen if you left those calves on the cows until late Nov. early Dec.(when the tax money comes to town) and shipped them? They may not be quite as heavy but you sure wouldn't have any extra money in them? I am sure you have pencilled this out and have a good idea of whether it pays or not? If so, how about a ballpark figure?
Personally, being sort of a lazy type when I can get away with it, I just prefer to ship the big steer calves right off the cow in late November, but I might reconsider that if the pay is good!