Opinions on the "best" suckler cow

I've said it before and I'll say it again, British Friesian X Limousin is the best suckler cow.
I wasn't a fan of them when I had them.

I can't imagine they would be the best for every occassion, for example, at 1500ft on heather she'd be a dead cow, making her far from the best.

Plus, many don't want to keep a nucleus of British Friesian cows to breed their own repacements off ;)

As is pointed out in @Cowcalf's post, there is no, one fits all answer.
 

MJT

Member
Black baldies best performing cow for us, small cows that average 550kg when in working condition, never see meal in their lives, good fertility, calve unaided, rear good growth calves, and are very little trouble, running to 1400ft . Tried all types of dairy crosses and they’d never last more than 3 calvings with us, tried welsh blacks too and they weren’t up to the job.
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
I’m just amazed that anyone would consider this a brilliant bull...

As for cows, always found our Blue X Holstein very disappointing, used to get some cracking calves when put to a Blonde bull but poor cow fertility, cows didn’t last and were expensive to keep, also had a lot of difficult calvings. But it all depends on your system

Why so long before anyone mentioned anything about cost of keeping them? Surely that must be one of the most important things when considering what is the 'best' suckler cow?:scratchhead: It doesn't matter what the calf is worth, if the mother has cost more to run than that.
 

JP1

Member
Livestock Farmer
Black baldies best performing cow for us, small cows that average 550kg when in working condition, never see meal in their lives, good fertility, calve unaided, rear good growth calves, and are very little trouble, running to 1400ft . Tried all types of dairy crosses and they’d never last more than 3 calvings with us, tried welsh blacks too and they weren’t up to the job.
Looking forward to seeing the first cows Black Baldies with Galloway / Hereford criss cross
 

Agric

Member
Location
East Yorkshire
Why so long before anyone mentioned anything about cost of keeping them? Surely that must be one of the most important things when considering what is the 'best' suckler cow?:scratchhead: It doesn't matter what the calf is worth, if the mother has cost more to run than that.

People ignore the cost of keeping big cows and like to brag they always have the biggest calves in my opinion. The mindset of "biggest income" and not "biggest profit"
 
Why so long before anyone mentioned anything about cost of keeping them? Surely that must be one of the most important things when considering what is the 'best' suckler cow?:scratchhead: It doesn't matter what the calf is worth, if the mother has cost more to run than that.
People ignore the cost of keeping big cows and like to brag they always have the biggest calves in my opinion. The mindset of "biggest income" and not "biggest profit"
This topic has been done to death on here many times.

I think if people have much of a brain they can work these things out.
Size of cow isn't really what it's about, it's what she can produce at as low a cost and with as little man power as possible.
Plenty of cows, both big and small cows are inefficient, it would be naive to assume that all small ones are more efficient.

If farmers haven't got the intelligence and/or are not educated enough to figure these things out, words and suggestions aren't of much use to them.
 

cows r us

Member
BASE UK Member
Location
Buckinghamshire
This topic has been done to death on here many times.

I think if people have much of a brain they can work these things out.
Size of cow isn't really what it's about, it's what she can produce at as low a cost and with as little man power as possible.
Plenty of cows, both big and small cows are inefficient, it would be naive to assume that all small ones are more efficient.

If farmers haven't got the intelligence and/or are not educated enough to figure these things out, words and suggestions aren't of much use to them.
There was some research done in America by some of the big breeders on feed conversion and they found that limos were by far the most efficient at converting feed to meat. But within the breed there was also a big difference between sires. When genomics gets going over here properly I think we will get a better understanding and will be able to select sires not just on weight gain but also on feed conversion.
 

Gulli

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
This topic has been done to death on here many times.

I think if people have much of a brain they can work these things out.
Size of cow isn't really what it's about, it's what she can produce at as low a cost and with as little man power as possible.
Plenty of cows, both big and small cows are inefficient, it would be naive to assume that all small ones are more efficient.

If farmers haven't got the intelligence and/or are not educated enough to figure these things out, words and suggestions aren't of much use to them.
I did a research project on it at uni. Very little research on comparisons between breeds especially recently, most stuff comes from the 80s/90s which is fairly meaningless these days.
Best I could come up with on a lowland system was lim x Holstein but only if you pick the Holstein cows to put the lim bull on or you end up breeding from all the rubbish in the dairy herd.
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
I remember visiting the late Stephen Hart in Oxfordshire about 30 years ago and his ideal suckler cow was an Angus x Jersey (i.e. as small as possible) to which he would put a Charolais bull. He reckoned that was the most efficient way.

Funnily enough, I was thinking of a very similar set up. Back home, I had a neighbour on some grass keep who had started a suckler herd to run alongside his organic dairy herd. Back a few years, Angus X dairy heifer calves could be had for a fiver. He bought a bunch of them and reared them, then put them to a Charolais bull. Now the bull wasn’t the greatest specimen to be fair, and they were run on some shite grasskeep for most of the year, but they were producing some very tidy calves at very low cost, and for very little capital invested.
His dairy herd was of Jerseys, and his later replacements were Angus X out of them. The cows, and the resultant calves didn’t look much different to the others.
 

shearerlad

Member
Livestock Farmer
Two of my ideal cows

First one is a very smart, shapely 3/4 limmy, quiet as a lamb, tidy udder, calves herself to produce very smart usually red calves.

2nd is the mother of the bullock in the OP of my sales plug thread. Her last 2 sons have sold at a year old, 473kg, £1170 and 513kg, £1240 with a calving interval of 372 days. Assisted breech this year

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71E3F90E-53C0-48EF-8B57-FC201D392FCF.jpeg
 
I remember visiting the late Stephen Hart in Oxfordshire about 30 years ago and his ideal suckler cow was an Angus x Jersey (i.e. as small as possible) to which he would put a Charolais bull. He reckoned that was the most efficient way.
I had some Jersey cross cows once upon a time, low udders, milk fever, poor priced progeny off them and their daughters are the memories that I gained from them.

Their genetics were expelled from the herd before they got old.

They may have taken up a bit less room than some, but they needed more looking after in winter and more assistance around calving time than I would say was ideal.
 

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