bacon - 4/21/2017 08:35 Don't know if this has been discussed on here or not. I see a lot of guys are running calving ease bulls on their cows as well as heifers. I think guys are gonna run into a lot of problems with cattle and small pelvis measurements by doing this. I'm not sure why anyone would want to use a minus EPD birth on cows. If your cattle can't push out a 85-90 lb calf without assistance, maybe you already have a problem. This obviously is if you are keeping back your own replacements, which I do. As mentioned above, there is a big difference between choosing bulls on birthweight (BW) alone, which CAN lead to a herd of small cattle with small pelvic measurements, and choosing bulls on CED, CEM and YW spread. An example is my current Hereford bull, C627. He has above breed average calving ease, low birthweight, and good CEM epds but then comes back with weaning weights and yearling weights above breed average (50th percentile) and a hot carcass weight near breed average. Basically his calves are born easily, grow like crazy to weaning, slow a bit to yearling but end up near average carcass weight. Also the heifers he sires are likely to carry his calving ease (CEM). This guy is a cow maker in my opinion. Breeding him to my larger cows should end up with cows that are about right. To get ABOVE average growth on some of my steers I'll use a terminal bull (this time a Fleck) on 627's cows (and my older, proven, experienced cows) after they have their 2nd Hereford calf. This should produce good Hereford replacement females, breed average Hereford steers and above average terminal F1 crosses for harvest. We'll see how it goes. Here's a picture of one of his calves born the other day to a heifer, 55C.
Edited by Jim 4/21/2017 11:00
 (IMG002 Heifer 55c and her new bull calf 55CE 041917.jpg)
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 IMG002 Heifer 55c and her new bull calf 55CE 041917.jpg (95KB - 50 downloads)
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Stacking calving ease
