The premier collection

[happycows]

Anyone spend extra for the ‘elite’ end beef bulls on there cows. No doubt they will come with a premium price tag but you’d hope you might get some market topping calves. Lodge Hamlet looked a nice limo and some beasts of blues with names I can’t pronounce...
Or are they just cow killers???

I’ve opted for fertility plus top calf and blue elite this time.

One more question..... blues on red and white cows. What colour calves might you expect?? Thanks

 

[Scholsey]

Anyone spend extra for the ‘elite’ end beef bulls on there cows. No doubt they will come with a premium price tag but you’d hope you might get some market topping calves. Lodge Hamlet looked a nice limo and some beasts of blues with names I can’t pronounce...
Or are they just cow killers???

I’ve opted for fertility plus top calf and blue elite this time.

One more question..... blues on red and white cows. What colour calves might you expect?? Thanks

Blue + red = purple?

 

[happycows]

Blue + red = purple?

Walked straight into that.

 

[Scholsey]

Anyone spend extra for the ‘elite’ end beef bulls on there cows. No doubt they will come with a premium price tag but you’d hope you might get some market topping calves. Lodge Hamlet looked a nice limo and some beasts of blues with names I can’t pronounce...
Or are they just cow killers???

I’ve opted for fertility plus top calf and blue elite this time.

One more question..... blues on red and white cows. What colour calves might you expect?? Thanks

 

[AGN76]

The ones I've seen have been mottled, but i suppose you could get anything. The wonderful world of genetics!
Dairy farm down the road calving Lodge Hamlet with zero issues. Fertility plus Top calf, does that have Charolais in it?

 

[sidjon]

Anyone spend extra for the ‘elite’ end beef bulls on there cows. No doubt they will come with a premium price tag but you’d hope you might get some market topping calves. Lodge Hamlet looked a nice limo and some beasts of blues with names I can’t pronounce...
Or are they just cow killers???

I’ve opted for fertility plus top calf and blue elite this time.

One more question..... blues on red and white cows. What colour calves might you expect?? Thanks

Blues out of our couple of Ayrshire have, come out redish and white.

 

[Homesy]

Blues out of our couple of Ayrshire have, come out redish and white.

Yep I find the same. Newpole Easy seems to throw red/roan ones. It comes back from the beef shorthorn in the Belgian blues ancestry. It can depress the price as well. I kept one for the freezer and she ended blue/roan after a few months.

 

[Purli R]

Wont be any cow killers dont worry about that.Genus do alot of calving surveys on there bulls........owt not good enough makes Beef pies

 

[happycows]

That’s why I was thinking limo for the red or red and white cows. Being decent sized crossbred cows should throw some shapely calves.

 

[happycows]

What beasts

 

[Will Blackburn]

One more question..... blues on red and white cows. What colour calves might you expect?? Thanks

Your supplier should be able to tell you if they are red gene carriers. We have a few red blues with BB F+, not a problem with our regular BB bull.

 

[Whitepeak]

My grandad and uncle have Ayrshires and use quite a bit of BB semen, virtually all the calves I've seen have been blue roan. Not sure where he gets his blue semen from though or what bulls he uses.

And the Premier Collection, are they not just aimed at the pedigree beef breeder?? Like the Signature Beef catalogue from Cogent is.

 

[Had enough.com]

Have had some all white bb calves out of red & whites. Sold well

 

[happycows]

My grandad and uncle have Ayrshires and use quite a bit of BB semen, virtually all the calves I've seen have been blue roan. Not sure where he gets his blue semen from though or what bulls he uses.

And the Premier Collection, are they not just aimed at the pedigree beef breeder?? Like the Signature Beef catalogue from Cogent is.

I know the girl across the valley uses them on her xbred cows too get show calves, and she gets some beauty’s.

I’m thinking along the lines of calves out of fleckvieh x cows that have had a couple calves before ai to these best bulls. Calved can go ad lib on machine or maybe a high cell count cow with 2/3 calves.
Doesn’t want to be at the expense of killing cows though.
Just starting too reap the benefits of cross breeding on fertility and milk solids. Getting a significant calf value is next in a relatively short space of time after birth.

 

[HasthorpeGrange]

How about the new sexed beef for bull calves? Would you be better getting a bull calf out easily than killing cows or having dead calves? Be interesting to see how you get on with them! What sort of price are these beat bulls?

 

[buffalo_soldier]

Never say never but i would be unlikely to use sexed blue currently.
When I switch to beef, pregnancy is the aim of the game.

That said I've been using triple blue straws for a long time now and now I've moved into selling them as calves there can be quite a bit of variance in worth.

So this year Im mostly using 2 named sires and only a few triple straws.

 

[Whitepeak]

I know the girl across the valley uses them on her xbred cows too get show calves, and she gets some beauty’s.

I’m thinking along the lines of calves out of fleckvieh x cows that have had a couple calves before ai to these best bulls. Calved can go ad lib on machine or maybe a high cell count cow with 2/3 calves.
Doesn’t want to be at the expense of killing cows though.
Just starting too reap the benefits of cross breeding on fertility and milk solids. Getting a significant calf value is next in a relatively short space of time after birth.

I'm sure @GenuineRisk or @Henarar can answer your questions better than me. They are the resident blue experts

 

[GenuineRisk]

Yes, the premier collection/elite type bulls are mostly aimed at pedigree breeders and or show potentials. That said, there’s a few of the ‘commercial’ style pedigree Blues that can also give a fairly serious calf. There’s a vast choice out there and much depends on personal preference and the type of dairy or dairyx cow you want to breed to them.

As to colour....well that’s a $64,000 question if ever there was one! Believe me, in pedigrees it’s hard enough....many an al black bull has an all white full sibling and all colours in between! Haven’t any experience of Blue on a Fleckvieh x or purebred but would have a guess at a blue roan. There are a very few bull in Blues that carry the red gene - mainly old bulls - Inexes de la Croix de Mer was one, though.

Can’t see why you would think you would have cow killers though! As long as you manage the cows sensibly amd they’ve had a couple of calves, I wouldn’t be worried with any of our bulls.

As to sexed - we use it if a bull we like has sexed available but we don’t buy in the UK - we source from Belgium, both Belgian and British bulls. Rarely buy here now. If you do your own AI or have a good AI tech that’s readily able to pitch up at the right time, no less successful than dairy sexed.

 

[Henarar]

One more question..... blues on red and white cows. What colour calves might you expect?? Thanks

Our white British blue bulls will throw a white or brown and white calf or mottled brown/white on to a Sim a lot of the time, the mottled or ones with brown tend to sell better but then they tend to be better for some reason
only ever use white British Blue bulls so I can't comment on the black or blue bulls though our white ones will carry some black

 

[Henarar]

Anyone spend extra for the ‘elite’ end beef bulls on there cows

And the Premier Collection, are they not just aimed at the pedigree beef breeder?? Like the Signature Beef catalogue from Cogent is.

we have bought straws from cogents signature beef catalogue but TBO we have had just as many from there dairy catalogue, never dealt with genus and don't deal with cogent now
just cos they are in a different catalogue don't mean they are anything to get excited about IMHO