Curve bender bulls

[NZDan]

But I thought that half of the breeding IS the feeding...?

No all of the breeding is breeding and all of the feeding is feeding.

 

[Tim W]

But I thought that half of the breeding IS the feeding...?

Some people use the feeding to hide the breeding

 

[NZDan]

Some people use the feeding to hide the breeding

A quote I heard somewhere.

"Heavy feeding can hide a multitude of faults and create a good few as well."

 

[Tim W]

What if the calves have been crept?

Creep feeding should make no difference as long as all stock within a management group are treated equally
BLUP is simply a way of comparing performance between groups of animals , it attempts to separate the genetics from environmental factors

So if 100 calves are creep fed but the calves from sire A within this group grow better than the calves from sire B then appropriate conclusions can be drawn ----if the same sires are used on another farm where the calves are not fed creep the difference in growth should be proportionally similar even though the calves on the creep grow much quicker than on the non feeding farm

 

[S J H]

Yes fair enough but when can that actually be done? If you have a calf that weighs well at weaning and is crep fed, how do you know if the mother is milking well and that the calf is just not a good converter of hard feed.

 

[Global ovine]

What if the calves have been crept?

This is where across herd/flock analysis plays its' most vital part because the common bulls/rams which link the other herds become the benchmarks across a wide mix of management treatments. If one breeder is an excessive feeder of high octane feeds, the performance of his cattle are adjusted according to the average of the sires which have been used elsewhere. Yes they may look magnificent, but do their figures across that breed look equally impressive.

If the breeder has no genetic linkages via a performance recording scheme, then buyers must ask if the progeny of a bull reared under such management will have the same level of feeding. If not find a breeder who farms like you, i.e. servicing the commercial sector with appropriate genetics to improve the next generation born.
And when you do, don't try to screw him/her by saying the ram/bull isn't as big as you have seen elsewhere.

 

[easyram1]

Creep feeding should make no difference as long as all stock within a management group are treated equally
BLUP is simply a way of comparing performance between groups of animals , it attempts to separate the genetics from environmental factors

So if 100 calves are creep fed but the calves from sire A within this group grow better than the calves from sire B then appropriate conclusions can be drawn ----if the same sires are used on another farm where the calves are not fed creep the difference in growth should be proportionally similar even though the calves on the creep grow much quicker than on the non feeding farm

I know that this is the BLUP theory but I think that you really need to be sure that the environmental factors have been well and truly separated from the genetics. I would have no worries about BLUP within a single flock/herd situation providing the various management groups are sorted correctly but there are real issues I believe where the management is so very different as you have suggested in your example above.
There was a paper at the 2011 Sheep Breeders Round Table given by Prof Will Haresign entitled " Performance Testing of rams on concentrate diets is not in the best interest of the commercial lamb producer". This paper ( viewable on the NSA website ) examined the results of the 1999 - 2001 High-Low project and in particular the Genotype x Environment interaction. The figures showed that whilst overall high index rams produced higher 10 week weights and higher finished weight lambs and therefor greater returns than Low index rams there was a marked difference in the performance between the breeds examined. In a nutshell there was a great difference in the performance of High and Low index Texel rams, barely any difference between High and Low index Suffolk rams and the Charollais were somewhere in the middle. The suggested reason for this breed difference was that historically Suffolk flocks sold ram lambs and had used high levels of concentrate feeding over many decades. In the trial most Suffolks were ram lambs ( " pushed hard " ) and the other two breeds were mainly shearlings ( not "pushed hard" ). He therefore suggested that it was possible that the differences observed were due to Genotype X Environment interaction i.e. rams reared on high levels of concentrates will not pass on their superior performance to their lambs if the lambs are on a forage only diet. In his conclusion Will warned of the potential consequences as increasing numbers of Texel and Charollais flocks were moving to high level concentrate feeding of ram lambs. He pointed out that the commercial producer is the "ram breeders market " and then then urged breeders to produce and select sheep under conditions similar to commercial production - forage - based systems.
People will no doubt expect me to say this but if you are on a forage system with no or very little concentrate use then buying rams from a breeder using a forage based system does seem to be the obvious thing to do.

 

[Tim W]

What you/Will are saying is that the further apart the comparison farming systems are within a breed analysis the less accurate the analysis---which makes sense. The higher the environmental input ('hi-octane feed') the harder it is to separate genetics from other factors

And this adds to the other reasons (mainly animal health) for not feeding commercial rams----I must admit to having been somewhat in the dark about the levels to which terminal rams are fed. I have only recently been looking at terminal sire production and the more I see the more I am amazed at the practices. Even the breeders who profess to use 'only a little grub' are (in my humble opinion) drastically overfeeding