- Location
- Shropshire
What bulls
Blues on jersey crosses
- Thread starter Devon lad
- Start date
And not one single replacement out of them 100 either
Cows 'n grass
Member
- Location
- Modbury, South Devon
Mostly cogent triple mix and some Crackly bank lord
Cows 'n grass
Member
- Location
- Modbury, South Devon
100 blues plus some Angus and Hereford and 80 odd replacements so far.
Holsteinfriesian90
Member
- Location
- Cornwall
Many bulls from sexed semen?
I would only ever serve a blue to cow I didn’t want to breed replacements from (20% of herd) as a block calver after 6 weeks Hereford bulls go in ‘not’ blues
Cows 'n grass
Member
- Location
- Modbury, South Devon
Almost worryingly few. I'm not going to jinx myself and say how few until I'm done on replacements in another week.
Homesy
Member
- Location
- North West Devon
Never heard such cock. I find my Jersey crosses calf blues easier than Holsteins or Friesians.
AGN76
Member
- Location
- north Wales
I thought a Jersey was about the safest bet there was for no calving problems
GenuineRisk
Member
- Location
- Somerset
Literally a couple of hours ago just had Genus lorry in to pick up their next bull from us, so 
he does a good job. The comments about Kojak are interesting and we’ve two full sisters here that will come on stream to our breeding programme later this year, so we will be very careful indeed as to what bulls we use on them. We’ve always said we prefer a ‘triangular’ type head as opposed to a blocky head, like a Char for example. That narrower head we believe definitely helps open up the cow properly when calving. Hence why the Valentine line bulls also do so well. She had just the ugliest narrow long old head and passed it on... we’re now on daughters and granddaughters and that head is still dominant !
We have a Mountjoy Utopia ex Valentine daughter who is looking like she’s going to be a very good producer. She currently has an Easy daughter at foot and we flushed her backalong to Belgian bull called Verrati and we have a baby bull calf who looks the part. Fine boned, very short gestation and not massive when born either.
i believe it’s your AI rep who has to be your best source of information and be good enough at their job to know you and how you operate your herd. Every herd/farm is different and it’s why the AI companies stand bulls of differing ‘types’. Some want that stronger calf, they know their cows can calve them no problem. Others have a range of cows these days of differing breeds so the bulls for those herds must produce small calves that will only just be better than using Angus etc. We have an excellent Cogent rep in our area who has some very large herds to supply. He knows the Cogent bulls inside out and same applies to his customers. Cogent don’t currently have an ‘active’ NewPole as they lost Icon and then Navigator broke a leg just as he finished his calving survey (which was very good) - all the semen they collected from Navigator therefore went into their triple blue. We have 50 straws here which we can use on pedigrees and so we flushed Easy’s sister to him recently and any calves we get will be a combo of our three foundation female lines for first time, so looking forward to those!
We, as in NewPole, have to rely on the AI companies doing good calving surveys of course but they and us have to really rely on the AI reps using that info to put the right bulls on the right farms. End of. Good reps know they’ll lose farms if they don't understand what bull will suit best and also make sure the feedback is passed on, good and bad. We’re as grateful for those good reps as their employers must be!
he does a good job. The comments about Kojak are interesting and we’ve two full sisters here that will come on stream to our breeding programme later this year, so we will be very careful indeed as to what bulls we use on them. We’ve always said we prefer a ‘triangular’ type head as opposed to a blocky head, like a Char for example. That narrower head we believe definitely helps open up the cow properly when calving. Hence why the Valentine line bulls also do so well. She had just the ugliest narrow long old head and passed it on... we’re now on daughters and granddaughters and that head is still dominant !We have a Mountjoy Utopia ex Valentine daughter who is looking like she’s going to be a very good producer. She currently has an Easy daughter at foot and we flushed her backalong to Belgian bull called Verrati and we have a baby bull calf who looks the part. Fine boned, very short gestation and not massive when born either.
i believe it’s your AI rep who has to be your best source of information and be good enough at their job to know you and how you operate your herd. Every herd/farm is different and it’s why the AI companies stand bulls of differing ‘types’. Some want that stronger calf, they know their cows can calve them no problem. Others have a range of cows these days of differing breeds so the bulls for those herds must produce small calves that will only just be better than using Angus etc. We have an excellent Cogent rep in our area who has some very large herds to supply. He knows the Cogent bulls inside out and same applies to his customers. Cogent don’t currently have an ‘active’ NewPole as they lost Icon and then Navigator broke a leg just as he finished his calving survey (which was very good) - all the semen they collected from Navigator therefore went into their triple blue. We have 50 straws here which we can use on pedigrees and so we flushed Easy’s sister to him recently and any calves we get will be a combo of our three foundation female lines for first time, so looking forward to those!
We, as in NewPole, have to rely on the AI companies doing good calving surveys of course but they and us have to really rely on the AI reps using that info to put the right bulls on the right farms. End of. Good reps know they’ll lose farms if they don't understand what bull will suit best and also make sure the feedback is passed on, good and bad. We’re as grateful for those good reps as their employers must be!
Cows 'n grass
Member
- Location
- Modbury, South Devon
We're into our 2nd year of a flying block all AI is Triple impact bule from Cogent, cow weigh 490kg average, can't say I would be worried about serving anything to the bule, we had massive problems calving Angus on heifers, which we switched back to Devons and for last 4 years moved back to Herefords without any problems.
- Location
- somerset
that's the theory
uncle did some proper trials on charolais on jerseys/guernseys, back in the 70's just as they started importing them, lovely calves, but the damage done to cows, was horrendous, and till the day he died, charolais was not a word to say.
BB's have a name for caesareans, when bred pure, and yet both the char and bb are now widely used, the breed has been altered/bred to include easy calving traits, so has breeding for those traits, smaller/earlier, and narrower calves, have they detracted from the original reasons for importing those bulls in the first place ? And yet there are certainly 'throwbacks' as calving problems still occur.
GenuineRisk
Member
- Location
- Somerset
I think calving problems can and will occur with any breed. Many are forgetting or maybe just don’t realise that even in Belgium, the land of the c-section, there has been tremendous pressure and also the will to reduce sections and for the crossing bulls, ie white bulls on dairy cows, great progress has been made to produce small, short gestation calves that the black and white can calve easily. we use a lot of BBG bulls in our breeding programme now becaus they have better, more reliable data for their bulls. there are several, very well known large dairy herds in the SW who buy direct from the same semen supplier we do, ie are using Belgian Blues, with no calving issues whatsoever and they are getting good money for their calves.
@som farmer, you’ve hit the nail square on the head. It’s not at all difficult to ‘lose’ muscle on ped Blues and for their resulting dairy cross calves to lack the essential Blue traits. Just because they’re blue roan, doesn’t necessarily mean they are always better quality calves. It’s true, the ultimate reaction is for anyone using Blues to stare at the calf they haven’t had to touch lying in the straw and feel rather disappointed by it. Then two or three weeks later to have a smug smile on their face as that calf now looks like it’s been blown up with a bicycle pump and looking a picture!
To be honest, I wouldn’t dare show a photo of Easy’s dam (still going strong in her nineteenth year), she’s as ‘Belgian’ as they come but seems to be able to produce the goods no matter what bulls we use. She has retired now, I would add and stays until she isn’t happy being here.
And then flood the market with BB calves which cost an arm and a leg to get to a half decent weight
- Location
- M6 Hard shoulder
@cows 'n grass
Homesy
Member
- Location
- North West Devon
More cock. Have you actually any experience in calving Jerseys/crosses and rearing their calves ?
I haven't kept many blue calves myself but the people who buy them keep coming back for more. I do keep Viking reds out of the Jersey crosses and they make bigger heifers than those out of the Monty crosses. They are just much more vigorous. The last blue I kept out of a Jersey cross, killed out at 317kgs. It was just running with the dairy heifers and slaughtered for the freezer at 2yrs 1 month.
Cows 'n grass
Member
- Location
- Modbury, South Devon
Flooding the market is what spring calvers are best at.
I think having 1800 jersey x spring calvers is enough experience don’t you think? And never touched a BB in my lifetime of farming
And what was your cost of producing that animal to that weight?, labour, feed etc etc?