Different types of bulls produce different results; to improve your bottom line, ensure your bull matches the goals of your operation
Choosing the right genetics for your grazing program can be as complicated or as simple as you choose to make it. Some of the master breeders I most admire have spent countless hours making a lifetime of baby breeding steps toward their goals. They favored some form of line breeding to hone a population into smaller genetic pools to create prepotency and a consistent type. They strongly recommend starting with genetics as close to your ideal type as your business plan can afford, since it can take a lifetime to get your gene pool close to where you want it.
If you aren’t selling breeding stock, however, you should strongly consider a systematic crossbreeding program that will deliver your customer their desired type, and you should keep in mind the advantages of heterosis.
Terminal vs. Maternal Sires
What is heterosis, you ask? It’s a fancy word for hybrid vigor: the phenomenon we observe when genetically diverse parents produce offspring that demonstrate increased performance in their offspring. In plain terms, heterosis translates to more pounds weaned per animal exposed and increased reproductive longevity. These two metrics are the foundation of a profitable herd.
If you are currently straight breeding (i.e., using the same breed for both sire and dam), consider choosing a bull of a different breed to cover your cows. This one simple step will garner between 8-16 percent more weaning weight per cow exposed, depending on your bull breed makeup (whether he’s a single breed or a composite). To gain a 24 percent advantage, source or create F1 cattle (cows made up of two breeds) and breed them to a third breed. In today’s sky-high markets, this difference can translate to over $200/head premium in extra pounds weaned over a straight-bred herd.
Most ranches under 150 head would benefit from buying replacement cattle, breeding them to a terminal sire, and selling all the calves. A terminal sire is one bred to produce calves whose offspring are all to be sold for meat. They typically wean heavy and have value-added carcass traits. Unfortunately, many producers don’t understand the difference in terminal and maternal production and often save heifer calves as their replacements from terminal-type bulls. While these cows might outperform other mating types, their genes were not likely selected to thrive in a given environment without supplementation, and terminal breeders often select for expected progeny differences (EPDs) focused on weaning weight, yearling weight and carcass traits.
Saving heifers from terminal bulls will increase your cow herd size over time but will typically lower efficiency and profitability. This is not to say all terminal sires fit into the same neat category, as each breeder selects for different amounts of performance. However, the modern rush toward higher and higher EPDs has led to many producers to buy “by the numbers,” without regard to a careful understanding of their breeder’s protocols for feeding, supplementation and selection criteria.
Maternal breeding is using a bull that has been selected to create daughters that thrive in a given environment. Maternal breeders often use minimal inputs to let nature select the animals that will thrive, and they cull those who don’t breed back in a timely window — often less than 60 days. They will give up maximum weaning weights for attributes that will create a cow that will stay in the herd. If you have less than a few hundred head, consider buying replacement females from maternal programs, as opposed to raising your own. Maternal bulls are best used to aggressively save or sell daughters, ideally in a similar environment where those bulls were produced.
Many ranchers implement a hybrid approach and use down-the-middle bulls that can produce quality calves — both sons and daughters. This approach can be managed successfully, but careful consideration must be made to select for traits that don’t skew too far in either direction. Most breeders think they have down-the-middle bulls but don’t realize the tradeoffs involved in sourcing bulls from programs that substitute-feed their cow herd, or programs that have better forages than their customers. Going down the middle will create sacrifices on both the terminal and maternal sides, so make sure that saving your own replacements is worth the tradeoff.
Selecting for Grass
If you raise direct-market grassfed beef, recognize that a terminal bull that is ideal for the feed lot may not be your best bet. Those bulls often have considerable frame, which can be difficult to finish in most forage environments. Long bone growth is shut down prematurely when cattle enter heavy grain-feeding regimens, but not so on forage. Those sons and daughter will grow tall, and it will be difficult to pack on the fat for a proper finish on forage alone.
An ideal terminal grass bull is an efficient converter, deposits fat easily, and shuts down long bone growth early enough to finish under 24 months in a good forage program. In most environments, these bulls are a 3.5-4.5 frame score with plenty of spring of rib and adequate back fat. We currently don’t have enough carcass data to substantiate which grass bulls are the ideal terminal type. Hopefully, larger programs will soon get adequate traceability to link sire groups to carcass merit so that the industry can focus on certain breeds, breeders or bloodlines.
When selecting replacement females from outside the herd, start as close to home as possible. Cattle raised in a similar environment under similar management and feed resources will be more likely to thrive than those coming from a different region. Weather, plant communities, pest pressure and environmental stressors can be wildly different from region to region. However, it’s also important to source breeding stock from someone who raises cattle like you do. If your heifer provider feeds his cows silage throughout winter and exposes his herd for 120 days, don’t expect those cows to work on winter stockpile and a 60-day breeding window.
One way to fine tune the fertility of your herd is to have what Burke Teichert calls a “long breeding season and a short calving window.” This simply means to leave your bulls in for 75-120 days and sell any cows bred outside of your calving window. That window might start at 60-75 days and work down to 30-45 days after a few years of progress. The Casey Beefmaster program in Albany, Texas, has had a one-cycle breeding program since 1977. They re-expose the opens and sell the cattle who get bred in the second exposure for a premium, since you can’t buy a cow from the herd that has missed.
Finally, if you choose to sell maternal breeding stock, one easy way to start improving the environmental adaptability of your cow herd is by saving bulls from your best older cows. Cows that have raised an average or better calf for a decade or more have proven themselves to work under your program. These bulls should produce daughters that have a higher chance of thriving on the home ranch than those from bulls purchased elsewhere. We made the most progress in our program when we starting using our home-raised bulls. The daughters slicked off earlier in the spring and were sexually mature at a younger age. The bull sons gained better on our grasses and were extremely efficient.
There’s no one genetic path that’s right or wrong when choosing breeding stock, but it is important to work off of the progress of like-minded ranchers in your region and to carefully select your herd sires. Select what marketing plan is right for your operation, and match the genetics to fit that program. Keep good records, and don’t be afraid to make adjustments as you go. While this article has focused on cattle, the principles apply to all ruminant animals.
There aren’t any perfect animals — making more of them better is what keeps a little more money in our wallets.
