Big Sky Country | Russ In Idaho - 11/17/2024 17:11
Good looking cattle littlejo. Do you buy bulls there? Very few white cattle round here, tough to take 30-40 cent hit on those calves. After all these years we ended up with a white calf out of a next door outfits white bulls. First year for her, had a nice black calf. Run in our tough country, got bred back. She looks tough, preg checked yesterday. Trailed to good alfalfa stubble today, she'll look different in a few days. My vet wanted to try black hair dye to mark her, all others got white marks. What's your thoughts on Vermillion bulls?
I’ve had maybe a dozen—-Cobb’s customers are after “meat and muscle”——they developed another line that was a little more moderate—-I got some good buys on them, think we had 50 on the ground before 1st intervention. Still probably added 40-50 lbs.
Charolais are a terminal cross to me. No females kept. As far as discounts, put them on black or baldy cows, black nosed ‘smokies’ sell like hotcakes.
I had a good friend, Lou Reisler who was quite the stockman—-wanted a small cow that would perform on grass and raise big calves. Figured 3/8 Jersey was about right in beef cows. Then put Cobb’s bulls on them. I ran some of his cows—-jerseys are kinda unique—-very fertile, kinda internalize their fat, large pelvic for their size.
I had a Jersey cross hef of Lou’s that got bred @ maybe 5 mos—-came in weighing maybe6 something, st calf @ side pushing 8–and she was bred.
Pretty neat—Lou put on a little ‘show me” day—-college professors from Ohio were there—-said they had hundreds of thousand of acres of reclaimed coal ground, could graze over 10 mos, and people that were 3rd generation welfare. Very intrigued by little cows that were easy to get along with and could excell on forage.
Don’t know if Lou graduated hi school—-I enjoyed him talking and professors taking notes.
Vermillion, I know one of the owners, haven’t really been around their cattle—-
My tastes in black bulls run to maternal, moderation, longevity, fertility, easy keepers —-I like diamond d angus—-I watched them test cows—Dads sitting at a desk—-note cows behavior in chute, look at feet, condition score, pull upside down T deal and get hip height, etc——the way they adjust weights, a cow that comes in with big calf—-and kept her own condition up—gets a bonus.
A skinny cow that ain’t bred but came in with a big calf, huge % of her body weight don’t do me much
The ‘“performance” angus—-people keep the biggest prettiest heifers—-and wonder how their cows got so big—-hip trouble, fertility, disposition—-and maintenance is pretty directly correlated to size
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Guts, nuts and butts….
