Pinebank North America

[gaucho]

All you grass gods out there might be interested in some good grass based Angus genetics to go along with your steamy pastures. From the heart of our ET program and partnership with Pinebank New Zealand we have on offer 25 full blood yearlings... 100% grass / forage developed...We built an eBay style interface for our website and the bulls are up for sale till Sunday (May 17TH). Drop by for a visit to our sale and ranch by visting www.spiritviewranch.com and if you have any comments on what you see please fire them here so we can have a good BS.

Cheers

Gaucho

[grassfarmer]

Interesting viewing, quite an innovative way to sell them - hope it works for you.
The cattle are actually similar in weight and growth to our own bulls also developed on a forage system. We don't sell ours as yearlings though and I wonder why you have moved to that rather than 2 year olds? We sell an occasional yearling this size but we have to trust the buyer to be able to use this type of animal successfully. Some buyers I would trust others I wouldn't - our bulls I would trust absolutely. Generally I expect it will be a tough sell marketing 7-800lb bulls. Lots of old fashioned thinkers will mock them as half sized bulls for their age!

The other doubt I still have in the back of my mind is that of regional adaption. Conditions here are very different to NZ and although these seem to be great cattle they have been selected under NZ conditions. Time will tell on adaption, they may adapt just fine or problems may emerge down the line, some may adapt better than others. I believe this will be an issue - it certainly was in our breed. What worked in Scotland didn't always work in Canada.

[gaucho]

Grassfarmer, do you not breed your heifers as yearlings so they calve as two year olds? then why then should their brothers not be able to breed... I am positive that you use yearlings to breed your herd and the fact is 97% of the customers that we sell bulls to now do not breed till mid July....many start mid August and later....I know from experience now that I would rather take a grass developed May born yearling over a February born barley fed yearling... the forage developed yearlings will breed circles around their barley fed brothers...and on top hold if not gain weight.... I have sold lots of two's however no reason in the world you cannot use yearlings... as far as the boys that think our bulls are too light... that is not the customer base we are after anyway....There is a growing populous of producers out there looking for this type of genetics and development program...In fact most of these bulls will be 950 average weight by the time they get access to the cows August 1st. Finally I believe now more than ever that yearlings will adapt better to changes in location than older 2's...as much as we think we push our bulls and sort the best off... there are still 2's that we deliver that can have a hard time the first year....Yes we are excited about trying this type of sale style..I am sure we will learn from it, however marketing this way opens a huge market place that mail and old style sales don't reach... there are in fact several US buyers registered already and I believe 1 buyer from Wyoming is the high bid on one bull right now.
Time will tell

[rkaiser]

We can always count on old Gaucho to stretch the limits.... We'll be weighing our yearlings before they go to grass and it looks like we will be in a very similar weight range. Same feeding conditions, just that we still live in the banana belt here in Central Alberta LOL. I believe that we will stick with the two year old sale for a few years yet as the extra muscle and maturity gives me more confidence. Most people have a hard time believing that our bulls have never seen grain when they see the natural thickness these two year old bulls have developed.

Our marketing technique needed a bit of a boost this year but the main reason our sale was off was the two week spread between the conventional price surge and our early sale. Yes the customers we sell to think outside the box, but the box still has a psychological effect. Moved the last of our bulls out in April and will definitely be looking at a later sale to fit our customers better next year.

All the best to you gaucho as I hope you sell the hell out of those good yearling bulls.

The world "she's a no longer flat", lots of room for our type of cattle.

[grassfarmer]

gaucho, I don't have any problem with the concept of using forage raised yearling bulls. When we retain a potential herd sire we always use him lightly as a yearling just to get some calves on the ground a year early. We have to use new sires cautiously due to the limited gene pool we have, can't afford to take too many risks. Another reason we sell 2's is that you get the extra time to select and cull - a bull still has a lot of growing and changing to do between 1 and 2, we culled a rising 2 bull last fall because he just kept on growing and was a bigger framed, plainer bull than I liked. He would have been the easy sell out of the yearling pen though.
A yearling bull works great on heifers and that is what many of our customers are looking for. We also get buyers who want to downsize their cows and using a 900lb frame score 4 bull maybe isn't going to work so well on a 1500lb frame score 7 cow! Some guys will run a small yearling with a ton plus mature bull and get him injured as a result.

Had to laugh this spring when I heard a story from someone who retained a Luing x yearling bull as a potential new herd sire. Ran him with 20 cows for 3 weeks then joined the cows up with a mature Angus bull and was dismayed to see at least 5 of the cows in heat second cycle. He shipped the young bull in the fall and was surprised this spring when 19 out of the 20 cows calved first cycle to the yearling. I guess he shipped the wrong bull - don't know what the big old Angus bull was playing at!

My question stands on regional adaption though - bringing in embryos means your calves will be completely selected to totally different conditions than they will encounter here. Semen not so much, as at least half the genetics have been selected for Canadian conditions. I don't expect your bulls to be a problem - they can obviously tolerate the cold and are used to the Canadian climate and feeds already. The problem might be in the females - have they too much/too little milk for our conditions, what is their fertility like, mature weight etc all under totally different conditions?
Time will tell I guess but there really is no way to know, no EPD for adaption.

[per]

Fine set of bulls, I'm good with yearlings and don't care if they came over in a test tube or flew first class, just that they can convert grass to muscle without further input. Having said that, many are available right here that can do that. I like the eBay type sale as well. Kinda out of my budget already though. Nice to know that before the trip to go look at them.

The world "she's a no longer flat"

Geepers Randy, another shift to make.

[smcgrath76]

No question that the marketing approach
is working. I received notice of this
no less than 7 times, all from separate
sources today. The web is a powerful
tool.
Good luck with the sale.

[vagabonddreamer]

ya sher SMcG...next you'll be telling us the earth revolves around the sun...STOP getting your trivia from Bugs Bunny...(he is my favorite superhero by the way)...

we always use long yearlings lightly...one of the problems with limited gene pools...is tracking coverage within the herd...otherwise the family tree looks like a telephone pole...vs

[gaucho]

Thanks for your comments guys...we can all have opinions on yearling bulls all I know is my AI sired yearling bulls from NZ last year went with 30 heifers each...we got 85% bred in 42 days and the bulls held their condition... I ran 3 yearlings to clean up with the cows and they did fine as well... this spring all those boys look like rock stars and were the first to get sold. Along with the bulls I used 20 yearlings went out to breed in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, they were used lightly 20-30 heifers and all wer pleased with how the bulls held up. Why yearlings because like I said more and more are breeding later, which means the spring born bulls can easily go to work by July the next year. That said I do not sell yearlings to guys that breed for February or March. Grassfarmer you asked about adaptability of the cattle? Till now they have done well, lots of capacity, great hair and easy doing... time I guess will tell, however the program behind these cattle is close to 50 years old with lots of pressure on the dams and so I know they have the gens for fertility.
Alot of the guys that are interested in these gentics are ion the US... this is why we chose this method because I could not think of any other way to get it pulled of... its also why USD.
Randy I know you were one of the first guys to use TEAM to sell your bulls... I think it is a great method, however this method allows people to study and ask more questions, it is open and transparent so you see who is bidding,and best of all Canada Post did not make one cent on our sale. So far it has been a fun exercise... if you go to the site you can have a look at the YOUtube video we made for it as well. Another free form of media to sell your product with.
the link is on the main bar when you go into the site.

[grassfarmer]

I don't doubt your cattle will do well gaucho, certainly compared to the run of the mill grain-hogs that predominate in North America. I guess mine was more a philosophical question. I am intrigued by programs like Beckton R A where they have maintained cow weights at 1100lbs for 30 years yet kept up with industry growth rate standards. The key in their case seems to be at least partly due to selection for functional efficiency in a very tough environment. I believe their bulls range from fs4 up to fs7. Bottom line I would be a bit afraid of buying those cattle to move them onto strong prairie soils with abundant forage and rainfall. I suspect that there would be repressed genetics for growth and milk that would be expressed after a couple of generations and you might finish up with too big, too milky cows.

I speculate that this is what occurred with the Luing cattle they brought from Scotland originally. Cattle purely selected for functional efficiency under tough climatic and soil conditions brought onto abundant forage grown on mineral rich soils seems to have brought out almost a hybrid vigor type response in terms of growth and milk.

Contrary to what most people here think of NZ with it's year round grass growth that type of "raw" climate (like Scotlands) is way harder on cows than the dry hot/cold climate of the prairies. I think that pushing cows hard like Falloons do might result in them also having repressed genetics for growth and milk that might be expressed under different conditions.
This kind of thing really interests me but I guess all it goes to show is there is no perfect way to breed cattle - you can have them as good and as adapted as you like on your place for 100 years and they will still change if taken to different conditions. Mother nature always has the last say!

[Pinebank]

grassfarmer and others.
Most interested in all your comments. Your concern about adaptability is ours as well, it is going tyo be interesting to see.
The pure Scotish cattle that we have adhered too came of course and evoluted from the highlands. Now 100 years since they left is only a breath in evolutionery terms. So I do not think that they would have lost any of the ability to stand up to snow and cold. Just a comment, our cold is a very wet cold and as such can be vert chilling.
It has not been our experience that a big increase in nutrition has increase our cattle size all it has done is increase their bulk. I imagine that this is just a factor in there ability to handle the high variation in feed supply and their ability to bulk up is just to protect them from downturns.
We have kept away from milk because it is antagonistic to fertility and fertility is our first cow requirement.
Anyway thanks for all the discussion. It is new to us as well as you this method of selling. And good on Gaucho !. The important thing ian any breed of anything is that everyone should not do the same thing. There is no progress that way.
May I leave you with one of my Genetic sayings...."Animals selected under a low environment, will perform just as well as those selected under a high environment when subjet to a high environment. BUt the reverse is not true"

[grassfarmer]

Good to get your input Pinebank and to share our international knowledge.
The Scottish Angus didn't really come from the Highlands - they came from the arable farms on the east coast of Scotland where it is fairly cold (by European standards) but also fairly dry. They only get 18-30 inches of precip. generally in these areas. The south west where the Galloways come from is milder but wetter maybe 45-65 inch precip. Further up the west coast where the Highlands and Luings come you get anywhere from 80-120 inches precip. It seems the more rain, the more hair hence the Angus, the Galloway and the Highland each progressively hairier than the other.

How does your rainfall compare where you are in NZ??

To use a human analogy I find Canadian winters quite pleasant really - even if it's -35C the sun is usually shining and you can dress for it - so can a cow with a good haircoat and the right body type.
In contrast I was often chilled to the bone working in Scotland with wind and rain and temperatures of probably 4 to 7C. Cows were the same, when you got into 3 week spells of that in winter without seeing the sun or a single dry day or dry place to lie you can pull condition off them in a hurry.

I'm not quite following your terminology on "not increasing cattle size but increasing their bulk" Are you saying that the cattle are tending to lay down more fat rather than growing extra frame when fed better? If so over what time period are you talking about increasing nutrition? Are you talking seasonally or have you increased feed to a group of them over say a 10 year period and watched for changes?
I'd be interested to learn more on this subject.

[Pinebank]

Thanks grassfarmer for the comments.
I was in China at Xmas some years ago when the temperature was goodness knows how low, but we were running around in business suits and the cold did not concern us because it was a very dry cold.
After we left the wind came up, and with it the chill factor. Then it was very very cold and reisidents retired in side.

About the increase in nutrition and size. One of the other members of our breeding Group farms under a very much higher plain of nutrition then us but his cattle remain the same size as ours. I was talking about seasonal change in our own herd and imagine that it is fat that the cattle bulk up on.