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Newsletter Selling Cattle by the Pound! Yes, cattle continue to be sold by the pound; but the best way to mash the scales down is to sell more of them, not by increasing weaning weights. Texas A&M University collected SPA (Standardized Performance Analysis) data on 363 herds composed of almost 242,000 cows in the Southwest. They found that more than 1 in 5 cows exposed to a bull didn’t wean a calf. I expect that herds in the Northwest are even worse because of the commingling of cattle herds and the outbreak of Trich. I know what most of you are thinking. You are saying to yourselves, “Gee, we are a lot better than that.” Ask yourself these three questions; Is your cow herd 20% or more 1st calf heifers? Do you cull all open cows? Are you just maintaining your total cow numbers? If you answered yes to these three questions then 1 out 5 of your cows don’t wean a calf. Increasing or decreasing your percent weaned calf/cow exposed by 5% can result in more than a 50 pound difference in weight of weaned calf/cow exposed. At a $1.00/lb that’s a possible revenue swing of $100 for every cow you own. Remember death loss starts when you turn the bull out. There are basically two factors responsible for this. First and foremost, there is a lack heterosis in commercial cow herds. Maximizing heterosis in your herd will increase cow fertility and longevity more than any other management practice you can implement. The best thing about heterosis is that it doesn’t have to cost you anything; it’s the only free lunch in the cattle business. You get heterosis by cross breeding. The keys to cross breeding are; use breeds that complement one another, get the gene pool between the breeds as far apart as possible and keep the system simple so you can maintain it. Our Simmental and SimAngus Money Maker composite bulls allow you to do all three. The second biggest factor contributing to the low weaned calf rate is selecting replacement females that have too high of maintenance requirements for their environment. Look in any AI stud book and you will find more Angus bulls with over 100 yearling and 30 milk EPDs as not. Go to almost any bull sale or worse yet, bull test and you will literally be blown away by all the performance data and huge milk EPDs. Since most commercial cattlemen don’t buy their replacements, they are forced to select females from these high maintenance requirement bulls. Results, high cull rate for females because the 1st calf heifers and young cows can’t maintain themselves and breed back. Fortunately there are solutions to the problem. First take advantage of heterosis through a designed cross breeding program. Second use the selection indexes developed |
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Newsletter Chasing the Feed Efficiency Rainbow Everyone would like to go out and buy a new pickup that gets 30% better fuel economy, unfortunately there isn’t a vehicle on the market that does that. The scenario is similar for feed efficiency in cattle. All livestock producers are going to be bombarded with volumes of advertisements claiming tremendous advantages for certain genetic lineages being vastly more efficient for feed efficiency. Yes, there are steers that can be measured to eat less than 20 pounds per day and gain over 4 pounds per day and there will others that will consume more than 30 pounds of feed and only gain 3 pounds. Feed efficiency is expensive and difficult to measure because you have to weigh feed consumption of each animal. Major seedstock producers and large group bull tests know that it is going to be too costly for their smaller counterparts to test for feed efficiency. They also know that with high production cost, producers are going to be very willing to accept their huge claims of advantages for feed efficiency and monetary savings. So how should you select the right bull to improve feed efficiency? This topic was discussed at great length by experts at the Sim-Place 2008, a conference Margo and I just returned from, which was held at the University of Illinois. I will try to summarize what we learned. First we heard from the nutritionists that certain animals had as much as a $300 advantage attributed to their feed efficiency. Then the geneticist got up and poured water on the nutritionist’s fire, stating that upwards of 90% of the differences they measured were due to the environmental conditions and not the genetics. Our take home lesson was to select cattle based on EPD’s, not a physical measurement or a phenotype. EPD’s (expected progeny differences) are the culmination of all data for a specific trait weighted to account for the environmental influences so that only genetic differences are expressed. The American Simmental Association uses the indicator trait EPDs of birth weight, weaning weight, yearling weight and carcass traits (parental estimates combined with actual birth, weaning and yearling weight along with ultra sound data are used to derive these) to calculate a non published feed intake EPD for an individual animal. They can predict individual feed intake to within about 95% accuracy. These traits are relatively inexpensive and easy to measure, unlike a full fledge feed efficiency test. This is part of the information used to compile the dollar indexes, API and TI (see insert to the right). You don’t have to have a PHD to select the right bull for the job. Simply use the indexes. The higher the index the more money you will make. The indexes are like a really good spaghetti sauce, everything is in there. Combining the indexes along with optimizing heterosis, is the only real way to improve feed efficiency. It’s been a long undisputed fact that continental cattle are more efficient at converting pounds of feed to pounds of red |
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