feeder calves

[cowman]

Checked out the regular sale yesterday at Innisfail for an hour or two and while prices were fairly decent I doubt anyone got rich feeding cattle this winter?
It did seem lighter calves(suitable for grass) were selling well, while heavier cattle were probably a break even proposition at best?
Randy: There were a group of black Welsh calves sold there and while they looked very good they did not sell all that well, except for 7 heifers(747 lbs) that sold very well. It was kind of funny when they brough in the first bunch of steers...there were two heifers in the bunch...too darned hairy for the yard men to tell the difference! The auctioneer said the boys had better use the old two finger method if their eyesight was poor!

[grassfarmer]

Cowman, to balance that I had a visit from one of my previous customers yesterday to buy another Luing bull after his calves topped the sale (in their weight range)in Rimbey on Tuesday. The auctioneer was excited to see them enter the ring and announced them as being "real good grass cattle -look at the coats on them" The buyers obviously agreed. More importantly the owner could tell me that they were the most PROFITABLE calves he has ever sold. Without cost of production information high weaning weights or big sale prices are meaningless.

I weighed my backgrounding calves yesterday - basically the bottom half as the biggest were sold back in December. Charolais x calves weighed 30lbs lighter than my Luing xs with the difference being that more Luing calves were born earlier in the calving period than were the Charolais.
Same conditions at breeding but less fertile bulls cause me to lose weight with my Charolais.
Proof again that fertility traits are considerably more important than either growth or carcase traits for cow/calf producers.

[PureCountry]

Couldn't have said it better Iain. It all starts with fertility. I might send you an e-mail, I'm interested in that Rimbey auction. Their service and prices.

[rkaiser]

If I knew the buyer of those cheap Welsh Black Calves cowman,I would shake his hand. Some of those buyers just love it when something looks a bit different in the Auction barn and they can have a laugh as they steal them.

Had a load of Welsh Cross heifers that had to go conventional from our program in Oct. Sold them on the rail to Cargill. Or shall I say gave Cargill a bargain as they did not qualify for their grid.

16 - 17 month old heifers, born in April and May, backgrounded over winter and then moved up on feed later in the summer. No implants.
44 head - 86%AAA - three Prime
775 average carcass weight.

I guess that buyer in Innisfail got lucky hey.

Hope everyone of the farm dogs in the stands had a good laugh.

[cowman]

Well I don't think anyone was laughing at the cattle...as I said they looked good...very thick little guys...very wide over the back. I do think the buyers were a little confused or uncertain if you will? They didn't sell really poorly just under the market, and as I said the pen of big heifers sold very well...obviously going into a breeding program?
They came out of a purebred outfit out by Rimbey, I think? Seems to me it was Frosty Acres or something like that?

[cowman]

grassfarmer: Not real sure what you are saying about your Charlais bulls being less fertile than your Luing bulls?
Was their a problem with the char bulls or something? I mean do they produce less semen or something? Do some breeds produce more active semen or something than others? I've never heard of that!
Now I can understand a bull that has some problem...but are you telling me that because the bull was a Luing he had a better conception rate or something?
Now I'm sure you boys will enlighten me, but my old AI instructor always told me fertility is a very low trait to select for? He further went on to state that most fertility problems were a management problem not a genetic problem? And he concluded: Select for the traits that can be approved genetically and manage the ones that can't!

[rkaiser]

cowman???????"Now I'm sure you boys will enlighten me, but my old AI instructor always told me fertility is a very low trait to select for? He further went on to state that most fertility problems were a management problem not a genetic problem? And he concluded: Select for the traits that can be approved genetically and manage the ones that can't!"

This is one of your most astonishing statements to date cowman - If your A.I. guy was selling you semen that he was confidence would raise you terminal calves, his words were likely misunderstood by you.

Not even worth responding to this fertility stuff except to recogonise the amazement I had when reading it.

[PureCountry]

I'm sure there's some wisdom in that statement somewhere, cowman. But, isn't trait selection part of management?

[kato]

I think heredity has lots to do with it, but the variation between certain bloodlines in a breed are at least as great as the differences between breeds. I help with the testing of over 500 bulls a year, and haven't seen that big of a difference divided by breed. I've seen big differences divided by breeders though.

Some are producing consistently higher fertility bulls, but that is probably because their management is excellent, and they use bulls themselves that are above average as far as fertility goes. If we test a herdsire, and he's only average, we can count on some failures when we test his sons.

Don't blame the breed, blame the breeder.

[smcgrath76]

Agreed fertility traits generally have a low heritability, however there are a couple of important points we are probably missing. First crossbreeding has a huge impact on these traits. Second, for most producers selling weaned calves, reproduction is 5 times more important than growth and 10 times more important than carcass merit to total profitability. In other words, small heritability, but small changes can have big effects on bottom line profitability.