Tablerock Ranch eastern Wa | Been a little quiet on here lately as we are all in the back yard burying money in a coffee can. A few weeks ago, there was some good conversations regarding what constitutes good Cows good Calves and what bulls on what cows... for the old timers on here please disregard as you may remember our trial, if you are real old you forgot it anyway. Some ten or more years ago we did a study on our place to see what would cross best with our core cow herd, this herd was comprised of top end PB Angus gathered and refined over 25 years and had a good amount of PB Red Angus turned black in the composite herd. We are Cow Calf with the calves going through our feedlot on the ranch then hitting the grid. The study group was straight Angus, cows and bulls / Angus with Horned Herford's bulls / Angus with Charolais bulls /Angus Simmental / Angus and % Sim/Angus bulls and we also bred Angus to Murrey Grey fed grass diet for a Grass-fed buyer test. Will just give you our takeaways from this test without scientific numbers, and what we landed on. Angus / H Herford's turned out as expected for the cow calf side of things, good baldy calves at weaning and heifers that could feed or breed, BUT they were lack luster in the feedlot and gross dollared at the bottom of the pack, the steer calves finished on the average size but heifers butter balled at lighter weights than their counterparts. Angus /Charolais "SMOKIES" were impressive all the way through, they weaned great and fed very well, no way anyone I know would keep these heifers to breed as their running age weight was stupid big at 1650 to 1700 plus on average, those calves fed great and grew and grew and grew to the point that to pass our eyeball finished criteria they would have to average 1750 minimum and up on the steers and not that much under that on the heifers. To the eyeball these calves looked athletic at 1750 and didn't look finished, they did however grade ok even not looking finished, "ok" not great. The Murry Grey calves were kinda cool to work with, obviously not on the feedlot ration, but pen fed on processed hay. The Gray thing kind of blew up on us as weeks before harvest one of our guys ran a starter ration to them by accident which had corn in it for three days before we caught it, we did return a few of them to grass after that but for the most part we sent them in as conventionally fed and took our lumps, we ate one of the grass fed to see if the family could be happy with it and it was great! The Angus /Sim F1 cross worked well and calves at weaning were standouts similar to the Smokies the females were on the larger size but we would have found plenty to use in a commercial herd. The F1 Sim cross calves did outstanding in the feedlot and broke the SICKENTALL stereo type for health, they finished at the top of their class for pen size and graded well and put nice consistent load sizes together. The straight Angus on Angus did extremely well as grading and per head dollars went and finished a close second to the winner, the winner and the program we still run today is Angus cow / percentage Sim/Angus Bull, we found year in and year out a 1/2 to 3/4 Sim Angus Bull on our PB Angus cows makes us the most money in the program we run, also any heifer retained for breading is probably going to be a standout in any commercial herd. Now keep in mind your operation may have different results if you aren't taking them to finish or starting with the same cow. Best of success Dave.
Edited by t rock 3/6/2026 09:19
|
Let's talk F1 cross cattle... long read!
