Which breeds cross well?

[Henarar]

No wonder you keep saying that suckler farming is not profitable if you think like that

 

[M-J-G]

No wonder you keep saying that suckler farming is not profitable if you think like that

Its funny how the Lim man has said in the past week that temperament and milk aren't important, as well as commenting on how his cattle do in their 3rd summer.

Maybe if there wasn't as many mad cattle, running and worrying weight off themselves and such a lack of milk, two summers might do them.

 

[GenuineRisk]

rubbish - the Dutch are the biggest people in the World.

Do you think it's 'cos they drink a lot of milk?

Now that's a pretty silly analogy - how can you compare an omnivorous mammal with a herbivorous one as a size determinant!!?!?! Plus the fact that a human - Dutch or other - has the power of vast choice when determining what to put in its mouth - or its parents do. Cattle don't have that option - it's what we put in front of them. Presumably, if your suckler cow is just adequate milkiness wise, you have the luxury of waiting a considerable length of time before being able to cash your crop in, whether stores or finishers (depending on bTb status, of course). Or Julie feeds a lot of creep of course. That would work...

 

[Henarar]

Now that's a pretty silly analogy - how can you compare an omnivorous mammal with a herbivorous one as a size determinant!!?!?! Plus the fact that a human - Dutch or other - has the power of vast choice when determining what to put in its mouth - or its parents do. Cattle don't have that option - it's what we put in front of them. Presumably, if your suckler cow is just adequate milkiness wise, you have the luxury of waiting a considerable length of time before being able to cash your crop in, whether stores or finishers (depending on bTb status, of course). Or Julie feeds a lot of creep of course. That would work...

But would it pay
Or is it cheaper to keep a decent milky cow in the first place and not bother to phone the miller up or contribute to the corn boys new RR
I really do wonder why farmers will keep a cow thats job is to feed a calf that won't do that job
some make this job more difficult than it needs to be
what the hell could be more easy than putting grass in front a cow and the cow giving plenty off milk for its calf

 

[CharcoalWally]

If say like martins 3/4 SIMM calves you went back to shorthorn again then next cross x 2 SIMM would you loose the vigour?
Just thinking by putting a third maternal cross in would you end up with more extremes and loose consistency in the following calves ?
I'd imagine char calves out off those cows would be lovely alright

If you put in a third maternal cross , then you need to choose your bull carefully.

I've visited other people's herds , and , like you say , I've seen some folk lose consistency and uniformity by not selecting their bulls carefully enough.

One herd had started off with Simmental cattle. Nice heifers , they had a good trade going for themselves as breeders for the female market. Followed on with the Shorthorn. Yeah , that worked OK , but I'd have liked to have seen a better bull. Finished off with The South Devon. I'd have said that's where it really went wrong. Not so much in the breed choice , I could well understand the thought process behind that move , no it was the bull himself. A big raw boned plain bull. Gutty and hard fleshed behind. He didn't suit the cows or knit in with the "type" of the other two sires used.

What happened was the calves became very diverse in type. And , I would suspect , the trade for their calves wouldn't exactly improve.

In that case , I'd have stopped at the second cross. If you're going to go three ways , careful bull selection is vital.

 

[M-J-G]

I do sill wonder if Walt is actually a person or if he is a farmer hating cyborg who is on here to talk nonsense in order to provoke reaction, I mean if he were human, surely even if he hadn't got the self awareness to know when to shut up "Julie" or "the son" would tell him to stay off the forum and stop talking such waffle and making them look like such poor farmers.

If I'm correct, then well done to the TFF team for creating him and coming up with such a plan, it certainly gets lots if posts in reaction to his/it's rubbish statements and it unites a lot of us on here who may otherwise never agree on anything else.

 

[CharcoalWally]

The whitebred shorthorn crosses really well with the simm, look at the pics on the whitebred website, the case study at Moy farm, fantastic animals, The champion cattle beast at Lochaber show this year was a lim x blue calf out of a shorthorn x simm cow, Its a credit to this type of cow that they are so versatile and give you loads of options. In my mind their one of the best crosses you can get!

I am building my own herd of cross cows and have spent lots and lots and lots of time considering my options and have been buying simm crosses out of whitebred x highlander cows just love them!!

That's a lovely heifer @west coast angus . A hardy beast that's bred to do a job on your rougher terrain.

I posted plenty earlier in the year about how a cross between the Simmental and the W. Shorthorn worked well on this farm when I was a kid. I still to this day think that the Whitebred has something to offer the industry if it's potential could be picked up on. It's not all about the blue grey. They're a lot more versatile than that.

And they're not just a hill breed either - we were running them lower ground and they milked tremendously well.

 

[H.M.]

So you think that if you have your better cow that don't give much milk and turn her out to grass with her calf the calf will grow just as well as the one out off my not so good cow that has loads of milk

I've found the calves from the few 3/4 lim cows that we have generally have a better conformation and seem to grow as well as the calves off the milky dams that don't have as good overall conformation, they do get enough milk it's just they spend most of the day sucking in order to be full whereas the others have a feed that fills them, then sleep. Personally I'd rather they had more milk as I wonder how good they could potentially be if they didn't waste energy following their mums around all day, which is why I'm going to add some lincoln red into the herd to try get more milk without losing conformation. Used to have a sim cow and her lim x calves were definitely the best out of the whole herd with regards to growth and conformation

 

[CharcoalWally]

I've found the calves from the few 3/4 lim cows that we have generally have a better conformation and seem to grow as well as the calves off the milky dams that don't have as good overall conformation, they do get enough milk it's just they spend most of the day sucking in order to be full whereas the others have a feed that fills them, then sleep. Personally I'd rather they had more milk as I wonder how good they could potentially be if they didn't waste energy following their mums around all day, which is why I'm going to add some lincoln red into the herd to try get more milk without losing conformation. Used to have a sim cow and her lim x calves were definitely the best out of the whole herd with regards to growth and conformation

Aw no , @H.M. No no no no no no.

A calf that needs to spend all day sucking it's mother isn't a great sign. I never see my Simmental calves suckle their Simm. mothers more than , oh I don't know , 2/3 , 3/4 times a day. I mean , I admit , I don't live with them contrary to what some might think , but I know for a fact that they don't spend all day sucking their mothers. They don't need to. I like to see the contented calves that sleep for hours on end- that's how it should be. I had a few 3/4 Lim. cows myself in a brief and sorry experiment some years ago. I know , I know , I was a different man back then - it was a dark period for me .

I remember everything you describe - how the calves off these cows wouldn't leave their mothers alone , how they'd go round the group trying to pinch off the Simmental cows , how they always looked tucked up and hungry , how much smaller/lighter their calves were at weaning.

The 3/4 Lim. cows didn't last long with me and I was glad to see the back of them.

Do yourself a favour and get that maternal blood in to your herd. Honestly , you'll thank yourself for doing it in the future. Keeping cows is a pleasure when they wander off and do the job themselves with minimum help from us. I mean it , I go running with joy through the fields every day now .

That Simmental cow you told us about? She was telling you something.

 

[harperfarmer]

I had them here and if they were the only cows in the country I'd have to stop keeping sucklers! Yes their calves can do ok, but they need away for beef as young cattle, if they hang around too long the Hol starts to show, hence why mr Frost has them off the farm early for them to be fattened intensively.

The Hol x cows themselves though are horrible things to keep and have way too many extra costs and need too much special care in comparison with a proper beef cow. Even the daughters we kept off them ended up looking like holsteins after 3 or 4 calves and they were only 1/4 Hol.

Setting aside the fact that they are very hard to keep flesh on and can't stand being cold. They are bad tempered bitches, with low udders, are bad for mastitis, bad feet and don't last. The few that we had that were off BF dams were good cows.

Keep in mind that the Hol x sucklers half brothers are being shot in the head for having no beef value at all, is that genetics you want in your beef suckler herd.

Surely by being away for beef as young cattle makes them more efficient than the cattle that have to be kept for longer?

 

[harperfarmer]

Milkiness is an over-rated trait - just go to any maternity ward and ask yourself 'do the best babies always belong to the birds with the biggest tits?' Of course not - baby growth is largely genetic.

So (bearing in mind that Julie doesn't try to turn out weaned suckled calves for sale) we'd be more interested in other traits, so long as the milk is adequate. That's all we look for is 'adequate', before moving along to more important performance measures.

So essentially Walter you are saying that genetics alone, and not nutrition, is responsible for growth?? I agree that genetics are important, but it isn't the only part of the equation!! Cattle with genetics for fast growth will only do so if they are afforded the resources to achieve that growth, be it milk, grass, creep feed or a combination of all three! My milkiest cows have the best grown, and best fleshed calves in the herd, end of.

 

[H.M.]

Aw no , @H.M. No no no no no no.

A calf that needs to spend all day sucking it's mother isn't a great sign. I never see my Simmental calves suckle their Simm. mothers more than , oh I don't know , 2/3 , 3/4 times a day. I mean , I admit , I don't live with them contrary to what some might think , but I know for a fact that they don't spend all day sucking their mothers. They don't need to. I like to see the contented calves that sleep for hours on end- that's how it should be. I had a few 3/4 Lim. cows myself in a brief and sorry experiment some years ago. I know , I know , I was a different man back then - it was a dark period for me .

I remember everything you describe - how the calves off these cows wouldn't leave their mothers alone , how they'd go round the group trying to pinch off the Simmental cows , how they always looked tucked up and hungry , how much smaller/lighter their calves were at weaning.

The 3/4 Lim. cows didn't last long with me and I was glad to see the back of them.

Do yourself a favour and get that maternal blood in to your herd. Honestly , you'll thank yourself for doing it in the future. Keeping cows is a pleasure when they wander off and do the job themselves with minimum help from us. I mean it , I go running with joy through the fields every day now .

That Simmental cow you told us about? She was telling you something.

Trust me, I know it isn't a good sign seeing them suckling all day have a few old cows with loads of milk that have about 5 different calves on them throughout the day because they need 'topping up'.
Those lim cows are getting crossed with a maternal breed sometime in the next couple of years to replace themselves with and we're buying some lincoln red heifers in October as well! (the shortlist was lincs red, south devon or shorthorn)
The sim cow was definitely telling us something and would have loved a whole herd of her but her lim x heifer calves were wild so couldn't keep any as replacements, something just didn't click with the two breeds

 

[Henarar]

Trust me, I know it isn't a good sign seeing them suckling all day have a few old cows with loads of milk that have about 5 different calves on them throughout the day because they need 'topping up'.
Those lim cows are getting crossed with a maternal breed sometime in the next couple of years to replace themselves with and we're buying some lincoln red heifers in October as well! (the shortlist was lincs red, south devon or shorthorn)
The sim cow was definitely telling us something and would have loved a whole herd of her but her lim x heifer calves were wild so couldn't keep any as replacements, something just didn't click with the two breeds

We bought some Lincoln red cross heifers last year one has calved to a lincoln red bull and had a nice little heifer calf the other is due to our BRB bull

 

[M-J-G]

Surely by being away for beef as young cattle makes them more efficient than the cattle that have to be kept for longer?

It's good when you can if you choose to, It's not a good thing when you are forced to!

 

[H.M.]

We bought some Lincoln red cross heifers last year one has calved to a lincoln red bull and had a nice little heifer calf the other is due to our BRB bull

Bet that's a nice cross LR x BRB

 

[Henarar]

Bet that's a nice cross LR x BRB

I hope so
we also bought three shorthorns from the same place these have some LR on the dam's side one has calved to the LR bull and has a heifer calf the other two are in calf to the BRB
They came from up country, the LR's seem very hard and have grown down here I just hope not to much
lovely cattle to look at

 

[Henarar]

She has grown since this

 

[Henarar]

 

[hillman]

I can only talk for myself but round here all bullocks sold store at about 7months Simm x shorthorn bullocks sell quite well, big push for them now,

What breeds you running over there ??

What I'm running is a dolly mix as was building up no s, mainly lm x around 3/4 bred or so some AA as well , replacement s last 3 yr are SIMM out off these cows ,to boost milk and growth rates , kinda contradicts Walters theories !!
I'm going back to SIMM again as I like the breed and always did , original cows where SIMM x BF cows back to SIMM then a lim then a char then a couple off limos saw the light now SIMM
The majority off farmers run Martins favourite cow , lm x hf some if they can get them bb x hf . Now interestingly a swing to SIMM for replacement s as men have kept the next generation and are losing milk and fertility av calving here is 412 days and .72 calves a year !
I like the idea off shorthorn x but worried a limited outlet , native crosses don't seem to get on that well on this side off the country , but then if I Ai d the heifers to shorthorn and ran a char on that cross it would work , any good shorthorn bulls to look out for

 

[hillman]

View attachment 67645 She has grown since this

Aye she's done well in the 5 mins ! , nice pics do