What traits are you breeding for?
Striving to breed a functional, milky cow, capable of producing a heavy weanling, Wesley Browne discussed the breeding and genetics on his farm with Chris Daly, ICBF, as part of a recent Teagasc Future Beef webinar.
Wesley is a full-time farmer, farming 90 spring-calving suckler cows on 58ha of land in four blocks just outside Monaghan town. The bulls are finished at 15.3months. The heifers he does not keep for himself are sold as replacements heifers to other farmers.
Wesley's key focus is on profitability:
- Calf per cow per year
- 200 day weight of >300 Kg
- Meeting factory specifications with the bulls
- Reducing the age of finish to reduce cost
- Having a heifer at 400 Kg to bull in May
- Having a saleable heifer
Top class genetics
When we look at what Wesley requires, its top class genetics, a milky cow to produce a heavy weanling to reduce the cost of the finishing period. She should have good conformation to be capable of breeding a U grade bull. The bull bred to her must also have good conformation to produce a U grade animal at 15.3 months.
Wesley is also selling replacements, a key consideration has always been her colour. Wesley says “farmers want a nice red heifer with a white face. But with the introduction of BDGP and then SCEP these purchasing farmers also wanted to buy females that were eligible for the schemes”.
For Wesley, this is not an issue as he has been following genetics for many years and has been using stock bulls to complement one another. “I want a functional cow, to calve down at 24 months, to give me a live calf per cow per year and produce a good animal to finish under 16 months”.
How does Wesley achieve his breeding goals
Wesley has looked at the attributes of each bull and mixed and matched bulls to produce the replacements he wants, “one bull cannot do everything for you”. Wesley is chasing milk, he wants a good heavy weanling, so let’s assess his Simmental Bull – SI474. He is:
- +29.3Kg on carcass which is a good weight
- +1.52 on conformation, so a plainer animal
- +10.5Kg on milk so really strong here (you wouldn’t want him much stronger).
He also has a negative calving interval of -2.09 days, this is excellent as Wesley wants a calf per cow per year.
But Wesley is finishing bulls and he wants them to grade so he uses a strong Limousin bull,.
LM0940 is a large bull who is +37.7Kg on carcass and +2.65 on conformation. This bull is used to put size and conformation into a replacement heifer. He is only +2.3Kg on milk, so he is not taking away from the milk in the herd, but he is also not adding anything either. So Wesley has to be careful. He is +2.53 days on calving interval, so he is not helping to keep that 365 day calving interval.
Wesley has 90 cows and runs them in 3 separate groups, so he wants another bull. What should he choose? For the last number of years Wesley has had a Saler bull – SA1124. Again he is lighter on carcass at +21.3Kg, is plainer on conformation at +1.39, he has lots of milk at +7.5Kg and he pulls back the calving interval with – 6.4 days.
So when Wesley looks at the contribution of each bull, he is building the cow type he wants and producing the type of stock his market wants.
Tune in below to hear more on Welsey's breeding plan:
More information on the Future Beef Programme is available here.