Role reversal

[grassfarmer]

I attended the bred cow sale in Ponoka today looking for some bargains and something struck me - some of the accepted breeds and their characteristics have been switched around. There were a number of good size dispersals, mostly of east country, short grass cattle. There were a lot of char x tan/twf cows mostly weighing in the 12-1300lb range. There were good thick black and red baldies weighing mid to upper 1400s and then there were the black cows - lots and lots of them - again upper 1400s with several lots 1500lb plus. A single simmy x cow weighed 1890lb! Apart from these cows nearly all being far heavier than I think they should be the amazing thing is that the Charolais and the Angus breeds have switched places! The huge terminal Charolais breed that was imported from France to put some size into the crossbred calves out of smaller maternal breeds like Angus and Hereford is now siring the more moderate sized maternal females while the Angus breed seems to have evolved into what the Charolais was originally - a huge terminal sire breed. The sad thing is most producers don't seem to have noticed this remarkable transformation, the fashion for black and the marketing job the Angus people have done has producers believing that 1500lb Angus cows are the same moderate size maternal females their fathers knew.
It was an up and down sale - one or two buyers picked up a lot and paying $7-800 on for them, plenty other good cows, many young, just topping the packer bid in the $475-$550 range.

[kato]

We've stuck with the Charolais all along, and never did have big monstrous cows. Those kind have in general culled themselves over the years. I remember years back when a lot of "outside" money, got into the breed, especially in the world of the show ring. At that time we could never get why the animals that won the big shows actually won. What we saw in the ring just didn't translate to real life. We stuck to our guns, and over time the breed got back to basics.

That's probably what's happening with the Angus now. Investors sometimes create their own little world at the top levels, and time and the experience of those in the real world will eventually get things back into line.

We bought some bred cows last year, and in the group there was a couple of black cows. Don't they just stick out in our pasture! LOL. But their calves are the same size as the tans, with one Limo cross being very much on the narrow side. There's really not much of a difference to us other than the paint job on these cows. If anything they're a little crankier, which I'm not impressed with.

[smcgrath76]

This is pretty much what the Germplasm evaluation reports from USDA MARC have been finding. The British breeds have caught the continental for growth and milk and the Continental breeds have caught the British for calving ease. The only breed with a decline in mature size has been GV. There are still major differences in carcass though.
The USDA MARC project is very good basic research. We used to do this type of work in Canada, but thankfully discovered the error of our ways before we could actually do too much good.