Line one Herefords

[Cowgirl]

Unless there's been more research released recently there was a very blurred line apart from one or two bulls if I recall.
Show breeders make up a minority of bull breeders, there are plenty breeding for traits that matter in a commercial setting

What do you mean by a blurred line? This is what I’m referring to.

 

[Gulli]

What do you mean by a blurred line? This is what I’m referring to.

There's as much variation in the op cattle tested as there is between the two groups even if you exclude the one horned one that seems to be Australian in a different colour

I don't doubt there's simmental blood in some of the American Herefords I also don't disagree that breeds ought to be preserved where possible, although if you could tell me where we draw the line on that I'd be interested.
They are still very similar animals that can do the same job despite your seemingly one eyed view of polled herefords

 

[som farmer]

breeders have to produce to what the mkt wants, that mkt demands size

agree with @Cowgirl when she says original genes may be lost, we may need those genes in future breeding plans, same as all traditional breeds.

but the mkt is not calling for those traditional breeds, they are a 'niche' mkt, even though they taste great, its a limited mkt, for those of us, 'enlightened' foodies.

the AAX schemes are really just for the extra money their name brings, not for the type of sire, new, old or in between. The s/markets are experts at conning the consumer into buying what they want them to buy.

the 'bonus' on the hereford seems to have somewhat faded, certainly there isn't the price difference there once was

on price @Gulli hope your herefords sold well, if you were there, what were those young aax cattle make, and what were they like.

 

[Cowgirl]

There's as much variation in the op cattle tested as there is between the two groups even if you exclude the one horned one that seems to be Australian in a different colour

I don't doubt there's simmental blood in some of the American Herefords I also don't disagree that breeds ought to be preserved where possible, although if you could tell me where we draw the line on that I'd be interested.
They are still very similar animals that can do the same job despite your seemingly one eyed view of polled herefords

There’s variation in all breeds of course but the difference is clear - from what you say it doesn’t matter that the Simmental is closer to the NAD than the HOP and I suppose next you’ll say “breeds don’t matter anyway” which is a valid point of view if you understand genetics.
If you’re referring to the one blue one it’s a Traditional bull exported to America. I don’t have a “one eyed” view of Polled Herefords - my opinions are based on what people who buy our bulls tell me, but I have nothing against them in the right system. I just don’t want to see our breed go extinct, which it will if nothing is done to prevent it, as with the other OP breeds, by lumping them all together. If you look at Polled pedigrees they are either 100% imported or you have to go back 8-11 generations to find any OP breeding. The Polled Hereford is an American breed, as are the Line 1s, and they are right to be proud of what they’ve produced, but they are not an autochthonous native British breed. All I’m asking is that the OP should be conserved as a genetic resource, that they should remain recognised for what they are and that people stop saying unpleasant things about them that are not true.
There is no line to draw - all truly native breeds should be preserved but it takes the will to do it.

 

[Cowgirl]

breeders have to produce to what the mkt wants, that mkt demands size

agree with @Cowgirl when she says original genes may be lost, we may need those genes in future breeding plans, same as all traditional breeds.

but the mkt is not calling for those traditional breeds, they are a 'niche' mkt, even though they taste great, its a limited mkt, for those of us, 'enlightened' foodies.

the AAX schemes are really just for the extra money their name brings, not for the type of sire, new, old or in between. The s/markets are experts at conning the consumer into buying what they want them to buy.

the 'bonus' on the hereford seems to have somewhat faded, certainly there isn't the price difference there once was

on price @Gulli hope your herefords sold well, if you were there, what were those young aax cattle make, and what were they like.

So to answer your own question what have you decided is the right size of cow and where do you think animal agriculture is heading? All points of view are valid. Clearly large cattle are what you think your market demands and the small ones will have to wait (hopefully not go extinct) in niche markets until something changes. So what does your crystal ball tell you?

 

[som farmer]

So to answer your own question what have you decided is the right size of cow and where do you think animal agriculture is heading? All points of view are valid. Clearly large cattle are what you think your market demands and the small ones will have to wait (hopefully not go extinct) in niche markets until something changes. So what does your crystal ball tell you?

it tells me, cattle are in short supply, and will continue to be, while the dairy and suckler herds continue to shrink. And with present policies, not much encouragement to increase.

there's some amazing prices for lamb/cull ewes, just as there are for cattle. And there's only one reason they are at these levels, supply is not meeting demand, if they were, prices would be much lower. No-one will pay a penny more, than they have to.

and l don't think large cows, are the ideal, but the abattoirs dock payment, for smaller carcasses, they cost the same to process, than a large one. I think we are losing out, by having to many breed/types/weights, going into an abattoir, just from an efficiency point of view, makes the processing, and selling, easier with just 1 type of meat/weight box,

fundamental to any business, to get best price, you have to produce what the buyer wants, if you don't, you get a lesser, or possibly zero payment. Farming is lucky, we have buyers for pretty well everything we produce, price might not be nice, but everything sells. Other industries, do not have that luxury, it stays on the shelf, unsold.

to me, it would be kg beef/ac produced, and the 'true profit' on a suckler, would be cost of keeping her, minus what her calf makes, and minus your fixed and variable costs, attached to that cow, plus any sub.

ideal cow ? A small dexter producing a huge contx calf, but that isn't possible. Would a smaller AAx or Hfrdx put to an easy calving cont bull, ie Bazaday, be an answer ? Or an improved native breed, AA or hfrd bred pure, more lower cost ? l keep looking at the costings, 'experts' tell me there's no profit in sucklers, l think there is, but you have to keep a very tight rein, on costs, or as the guv likes to say, efficiency.

and l think genetics from 'rare' breeds should be conserved, they could easily have traits, which we may need in the future.

there's also the question, why did they become minor/rare, in the first place, simply because they were not what the mkt wanted.

 

[M-J-G]

Unfortunately in the eyes of governments it does.
As usual you have missed my point about the genetic differences - we should be “bothered” about DNA. It’s far more important than “Kennel Club“ stuff. If the unique genes of our Traditional native breeds are lost ie become extinct, which is going to happen if the breed societies continue with this “they’re all the same“ mantra, we lose the traits that originally made them successful ie feed conversion efficiency, ability to survive on poor grazing, disease resistance etc. All in the name of “progress“ which might not turn out to be progress after all.

I haven't missed any points, what's successful always rises to be dominant at some point and I'm not interested in a natural history museum of cattle breeds.
Semen and embryos will keep for a long time.

As for what the government wants, I'm not into bothering about that.
Out of interest, if methane is important, what produces most methane, a 30 month old pasture reared animal or a 18 month old animal that ate 100 quids worth of barley.

 

[Cowgirl]

it tells me, cattle are in short supply, and will continue to be, while the dairy and suckler herds continue to shrink. And with present policies, not much encouragement to increase.

there's some amazing prices for lamb/cull ewes, just as there are for cattle. And there's only one reason they are at these levels, supply is not meeting demand, if they were, prices would be much lower. No-one will pay a penny more, than they have to.

and l don't think large cows, are the ideal, but the abattoirs dock payment, for smaller carcasses, they cost the same to process, than a large one. I think we are losing out, by having to many breed/types/weights, going into an abattoir, just from an efficiency point of view, makes the processing, and selling, easier with just 1 type of meat/weight box,

fundamental to any business, to get best price, you have to produce what the buyer wants, if you don't, you get a lesser, or possibly zero payment. Farming is lucky, we have buyers for pretty well everything we produce, price might not be nice, but everything sells. Other industries, do not have that luxury, it stays on the shelf, unsold.

to me, it would be kg beef/ac produced, and the 'true profit' on a suckler, would be cost of keeping her, minus what her calf makes, and minus your fixed and variable costs, attached to that cow, plus any sub.

ideal cow ? A small dexter producing a huge contx calf, but that isn't possible. Would a smaller AAx or Hfrdx put to an easy calving cont bull, ie Bazaday, be an answer ? Or an improved native breed, AA or hfrd bred pure, more lower cost ? l keep looking at the costings, 'experts' tell me there's no profit in sucklers, l think there is, but you have to keep a very tight rein, on costs, or as the guv likes to say, efficiency.

and l think genetics from 'rare' breeds should be conserved, they could easily have traits, which we may need in the future.

there's also the question, why did they become minor/rare, in the first place, simply because they were not what the mkt wanted.

Many good points I quite agree with, if there is such a thing as an easy calving continental. Why is the Bazadaise not more popular? They look amazing. I don’t know about the other OPs but, although heifers might not, I do know that plenty of Traditional Herefords are calving to continental bulls or big modern Herefords. We just bought back two cows that we bred that have been living in the Hebrides all their lives, wintering out on the machair and having calved to either Limousin or Simmental bulls. I was keen that they should have pedigree calves in their old age before they go as they are both sound with great feet and udders and I want to keep their genetics- the thing is they appear on the database to have had no calves because the calves weren’t registered but in fact have been great suckler cows. I could have passed off the big Simmental cross calf as a purebred with no trouble if I’d wanted to.
I disagree totally with your last paragraph though - they just went out of fashion, like 70s mini skirts went to maxis. Fashion changes rapidly, but remember that was 40 years ago. We’re talking about a different future when fashion may change again.

 

[Cowgirl]

I haven't missed any points, what's successful always rises to be dominant at some point and I'm not interested in a natural history museum of cattle breeds.
Semen and embryos will keep for a long time.

As for what the government wants, I'm not into bothering about that.
Out of interest, if methane is important, what produces most methane, a 30 month old pasture reared animal or a 18 month old animal that ate 100 quids worth of barley.

Yes you have. Just because it doesn’t interest you doesn’t mean it isn’t important. The problem with your point about semen and embryos is that semen only gives you male genes and not the mitochondrial DNA of the females, and there are only tiny numbers of embryos in storage currently from any of the rare breeds because nobody has taken responsibility to collect and store them. You could argue that that is what the breed societies should have been doing all these years but they haven’t.
As to methane production, nobody has measured it from pasture fed animals or taken into account the emissions from the growing, fertilising, harvesting and transport of the barley you are referring to, so it’s probably a pretty close run thing. If methane production becomes most important to governments it will be the most feed efficient smaller animals that will be required not the big ones - maybe the Hereford X Friesians that used to be so popular, and we shall have come full circle.

 

[som farmer]

Many good points I quite agree with, if there is such a thing as an easy calving continental. Why is the Bazadaise not more popular? They look amazing. I don’t know about the other OPs but, although heifers might not, I do know that plenty of Traditional Herefords are calving to continental bulls or big modern Herefords. We just bought back two cows that we bred that have been living in the Hebrides all their lives, wintering out on the machair and having calved to either Limousin or Simmental bulls. I was keen that they should have pedigree calves in their old age before they go as they are both sound with great feet and udders and I want to keep their genetics- the thing is they appear on the database to have had no calves because the calves weren’t registered but in fact have been great suckler cows. I could have passed off the big Simmental cross calf as a purebred with no trouble if I’d wanted to.
I disagree totally with your last paragraph though - they just went out of fashion, like 70s mini skirts went to maxis. Fashion changes rapidly, but remember that was 40 years ago. We’re talking about a different future when fashion may change again.

l will stick to 'went out of buyers spec', because, like trad pigs, they carried to much fat, which is exactly what they were bred for, cheap energy, for the manual worker. Work got 'easier' and other sources of energy were produced.

since then, breeders should have improved the breeding, to have less fat, and even trad breeds are leaner. Which is natural improvement, to meet mkt needs, Some breeds went further, to compete with cont sires.

but, the native breeds still retain the genetics, to do on grass/forage, without shovelling conc into them, and that is the trend of things to come. We have 120 aax stirks/calves on farm now, and a lot more to come, off 1 farm, if he had herefords, there would be 120+ of them here.

its the ability to grow, on forage, that is the key.

 

[som farmer]

Yes you have. Just because it doesn’t interest you doesn’t mean it isn’t important. The problem with your point about semen and embryos is that semen only gives you male genes and not the mitochondrial DNA of the females, and there are only tiny numbers of embryos in storage currently from any of the rare breeds because nobody has taken responsibility to collect and store them. You could argue that that is what the breed societies should have been doing all these years but they haven’t.
As to methane production, nobody has measured it from pasture fed animals or taken into account the emissions from the growing, fertilising, harvesting and transport of the barley you are referring to, so it’s probably a pretty close run thing. If methane production becomes most important to governments it will be the most feed efficient smaller animals that will be required not the big ones - maybe the Hereford X Friesians that used to be so popular, and we shall have come full circle.

cow methane has a life of 12 yrs, then its 'gone', as the total number of global cattle, has gone down, the methane becomes less important every yr, in the calculation.

an acre of pp, will absorb and store, more carbon, than an acre of trees

instead of the truth, we get a convenient version of distorted data.

flying of to the sun, is far more important, to a majority, so pass the buck, blame farmers for farting cows, electorate happy.

its all a load of ballcocks.

 

[Cowgirl]

l will stick to 'went out of buyers spec', because, like trad pigs, they carried to much fat, which is exactly what they were bred for, cheap energy, for the manual worker. Work got 'easier' and other sources of energy were produced.

since then, breeders should have improved the breeding, to have less fat, and even trad breeds are leaner. Which is natural improvement, to meet mkt needs, Some breeds went further, to compete with cont sires.

but, the native breeds still retain the genetics, to do on grass/forage, without shovelling conc into them, and that is the trend of things to come. We have 120 aax stirks/calves on farm now, and a lot more to come, off 1 farm, if he had herefords, there would be 120+ of them here.

its the ability to grow, on forage, that is the key.

True. But I’m not sure I agree on fat - yes if food is plentiful or if overfed they may put on too much fat but it’s that easy fattening trait that allows them to winter out on very little food in harsh climates. You’re correct that the Traditional Hereford breeders got rid of the ones that became too fat, but at what cost? That trait is feed efficiency- that ability to fatten on next to nothing may be useful one day.

 

[som farmer]

fat was the cheapest form of 'energy', for the manual worker.

times have changed, fat is now seen as 'bad'. But to outwinter in bad weather, the animal needs that reserve of energy/fat.

and very true, the ability to convert food, quickly to fat, is a sign of food conversion efficiency.

which just goes to show, you can't have everything dead right ! But cont cattle need more than grass/silage, to finish.

a narrow path between the two, is the correct way.

 

[Cowgirl]

fat was the cheapest form of 'energy', for the manual worker.

times have changed, fat is now seen as 'bad'. But to outwinter in bad weather, the animal needs that reserve of energy/fat.

and very true, the ability to convert food, quickly to fat, is a sign of food conversion efficiency.

which just goes to show, you can't have everything dead right ! But cont cattle need more than grass/silage, to finish.

a narrow path between the two, is the correct way.

Haven’t you heard? Medical opinion is changing again (slowly). Fat isn’t bad anymore! Sugar is the enemy! In fact pasture fed fat is healthy - more omega 3s! Things will come full circle I believe!

 

[Hilly]

Haven’t you heard? Medical opinion is changing again (slowly). Fat isn’t bad anymore! Sugar is the enemy! In fact pasture fed fat is healthy - more omega 3s! Things will come full circle I believe!

Yes the modern problem of obesity is from animal fat thats for sure.

 

[som farmer]

Haven’t you heard? Medical opinion is changing again (slowly). Fat isn’t bad anymore! Sugar is the enemy! In fact pasture fed fat is healthy - more omega 3s! Things will come full circle I believe!

yes, but it will take the gen public years to accept that, they have been told fat is bad, for decades.

 

[Hilly]

yes, but it will take the gen public years to accept that, they have been told fat is bad, for decades.

Personally and i have no proof but i think animal fat is good for us , sugar and veg oil that bad for us .

 

[M-J-G]

Yes you have. Just because it doesn’t interest you doesn’t mean it isn’t important. The problem with your point about semen and embryos is that semen only gives you male genes and not the mitochondrial DNA of the females, and there are only tiny numbers of embryos in storage currently from any of the rare breeds because nobody has taken responsibility to collect and store them. You could argue that that is what the breed societies should have been doing all these years but they haven’t.
As to methane production, nobody has measured it from pasture fed animals or taken into account the emissions from the growing, fertilising, harvesting and transport of the barley you are referring to, so it’s probably a pretty close run thing. If methane production becomes most important to governments it will be the most feed efficient smaller animals that will be required not the big ones - maybe the Hereford X Friesians that used to be so popular, and we shall have come full circle.

Important to whom? Not very many I would guess.

If it were important people would be doing IVF on cows and collecting semen from bulls, it shouldn't be down to the breed societies, what money is in it for them to create an ark for redundant genetics just in case they come back into fashion? and I don't mean any breed in particular.

I bred a bull from very rare 50yo semen, it's up to me if I want to do that, and to be honest I wouldn't want a breed society involved.

 

[M-J-G]

Yes the modern problem of obesity is from animal fat thats for sure.

The sugar industry spent a lot of time and money convincing people of that.

A bit like the global warming fakery, of you convince enough people of it, they convince the rest.

 

[ImLost]

Many good points I quite agree with, if there is such a thing as an easy calving continental. Why is the Bazadaise not more popular? They look amazing. I don’t know about the other OPs but, although heifers might not, I do know that plenty of Traditional Herefords are calving to continental bulls or big modern Herefords. We just bought back two cows that we bred that have been living in the Hebrides all their lives, wintering out on the machair and having calved to either Limousin or Simmental bulls. I was keen that they should have pedigree calves in their old age before they go as they are both sound with great feet and udders and I want to keep their genetics- the thing is they appear on the database to have had no calves because the calves weren’t registered but in fact have been great suckler cows. I could have passed off the big Simmental cross calf as a purebred with no trouble if I’d wanted to.
I disagree totally with your last paragraph though - they just went out of fashion, like 70s mini skirts went to maxis. Fashion changes rapidly, but remember that was 40 years ago. We’re talking about a different future when fashion may change again.

What kind of weight would those cows be?