My Steer… Going to be an Ox???

[Anonymous]

I have a 14mth old 1300lb Simmental steer we call him Buddy his registered name is Inferno. I am 19years old and bought this steer to use as my 4-H market steer… I showed him as a weanling and he was multiple champion in halter shows, and was also shown by a 13yr old boy. Well I decided to put my steer Buddy to work… Now he rides, saddles, baths,saddles, we have also been working him on pulling and he pulls 150lbs (don’t wanna load him with to much since hes young) he knows pretty well Hee, Haw, Stop and really knows come boss. Buddy will mature to 2500-3500lbs hes gonna be a BIG boy. Buddy will try and pull anything you hook him to , always goes straight… I think hes doing pretty good for me having NO idea what i am doing. Unfortunately financially I will have to sell him because of college and me needing the financial funds and I dont want him going to the market in 4-h if I can avoid it

I was wondering how much I could ask for him, where I should advertise him…
Like I said his pedigree says he will be a 2500-3500lbs on his EPDS…

[Nat(wasIxy)]

Good luck finding a home for him – I can’t help at all. I wanted to comment however that your simmentals are absolutely NOTHING like ours!

[OldKat]

@Ixy 26882 wrote:

Good luck finding a home for him – I can’t help at all. I wanted to comment however that your simmentals are absolutely NOTHING like ours!

Conformation wise or color wise or both, Ixy?

Not sure why we do this in the US, but as soon as we get a new breed over here we start “improving” it by tinkering with frame size, conformation type, color etc. Not sure most of our improvements are all that great. Not that Simmentals are all that new here now, but they look nothing like they did 25 years ago or so.

The color thing is a total joke. Virtually every breed now has registered individuals that are black. Why? Because black is somehow superior to other colors? Absolutely not, it is because the American Angus Association (black Angus only, Red Angus have their own association here) has developed a marketing program called “Certified Angus”. Restaurants and other retailers of beef promote that fact that they are selling “Certified Angus” beef.

Want to know how it works? At every slaughter plant there is a person that classifies cattle that are eligible for the program. If an animal comes along whose color coat is at least 51% black in the opinion of the classifier that animal is considered “Certified Angus” and the carcass is rolled with a stamp indicating as such. I once had a big Limousine X Holstein that was sired by a “Black Limousine” sire, he was solid black with two white feet. He weighed 2,400 pounds or so and would have rolled “Certified Angus”. What a bunch of crap. Has carried over to the show ring in the market classes, too. Few judges are willing to use a market steer that is not black as Grand or Reserve unless it is so obviously superior to everything else that they have no other choice.

Because of this the black bias thing the black cattle typically bring 3 to 5 cents more per pound than any other color or color combination. However, in my opinion it is false advertising and in no way means that the consumer is getting a certain quality of beef. In Argentina they once did something similar to this and the quality of the cattle in their version of the program degenerated so much that now black cattle sell at a discount to other color cattle. I suspect that it could do the same here someday.

[CharlyBonifaz]

have been having smoked simmental, came out of black; found the breed to be more of the beef type, instead of dual purpose as we usuall have them in Europe

[fabian]

If my remember is right, here in Germany it is just contrary to America:
The black Angus is known as a breed with high quality beef, but also as a breed which fattens fast. We have another system of classifying beef, and fat is not as wished as in the states. Therefore many butchers don’t want to have black Angus and decline any black breed (or use it as a reason to pay less money for it). Many Angus breeders change therefore to Red Angus.
May be that Charly Bonifaz knows more about it or will correct me if I’m wrong.

Wolfgang

[Nat(wasIxy)]

Simmentals here are definately a beef breed, some have experimented with dairy but it tends to be what we know as a ‘fleckvieh’ and imported for the purpose. Simmentals have gone down the beef road, known as a terminal sire and decent suckler cow.

The difference to that picture – here they are pied, and I’ve never even seen black pied let alone solid black, usually brown/red/fawn/lemon. The white face is a breed trait though, similar to hereford. They also seem taller here, a lot taller, and have a different head. If I saw the animal pictured here, I’d assume it was an Angus!

Confusingly, my Simmental is called Angus lol 😀

[Anonymous]

Breeders breed to the buyers standard. In northern U.S we have a high demand for the Black Simmental’s because small farmers are looking for something that will produce black because as before stated people “Think” Black is better… A lot of people I know do not want the traditional Simmentals, because there is no market and will not win in the show ring if they have to much white, I have never seen anything but Solid red,smokey or black Simmentals in person, I have seen the original colors in pictures and paintings. As a starting breeder I love all the colors and type the Simmentals traditionally were.

[OldKat]

SimmentalShowGirl; not sure what your plans are after college, but if it involves cattle breeding in any way I highly recommend you find a copy of Man Must Measure by the late Jan Bonsma. It is very hard to find and even harder to master, but worth every second of the time you invest coming to understand what he was saying. If you are not familiar with him; he was a noted animal scientist from South Africa who literally spent his entire life coming to understand virtually every aspect of beef cattle production.

His little book is not impressive to look at, really only a few hundred pages thick. After you have read it about 20 times you MIGHT grasp everything he has to say. I have probably read it 40 times or more in the past 30 years and I almost feel that I have it down. Of course, you youngsters can learn things quicker than dinosaurs like me can. Having heard him speak and reading his work literally turned everything I ever thought about raising cattle flat upside down and I had been around it my entire life. Here is a link to an online article by Stockman Grass Farmer editor Alan Nation talking about application of Jan Bosma’s concept of environmental compatibility & adaptability for cattle, really all animals if you get right down to it. http://www.stockmangrassfarmer.net/cgi-bin/page.cgi?id=570 Mostly deals with decisions southern breeders must make (which obviously does not apply to you), but it illustrates how everything is not as simple as some people would like to think it is when breeding cattle.

Maybe you have figured out that I am one American, who is not overly impressed in our contributions to the beef industry. I think the Europeans, the Australians, the South Africans and some South Americans, especially the Argentineans and maybe the Brazilians have done a far better job picking cattle that are adaptable to their respective environments than we have done. We pick a breed that fits our fancy (for whatever reason) and then try to make it work where ever we are, whether it really belongs there or not. Sometimes it works out well for us and our cattle and sometimes, quite predictably, it does not.

When I think about the color thing I always remember what an old man told me one time when we were discussing hair coat color. He said that he “ran” about 350 commercial cows, which in our area would probably mean mostly Brahman x Herefords and he used 20 Angus bulls on them; 10 Black and 10 Red. He said over about a 15 to 20 year period he had observed that his black calves consistently brought 3 to 5 cents more per pound through the sale ring than did the reds. Sounds like a good reason to use all black bulls, right? Well his next statement was … “but all other things being equal my red calves wean off 50 to 55 pounds heavier”. Takes a lot of 3 to 5 cent units to overcome 50 to 55 pounds more calf on the scale. This is true for my area but maybe not yours; so don’t apply this as a universal truth. Anyway, I asked him why he didn’t just use all red bulls and he said that he didn’t sell all his calves across the scales and he had buyers that specifically want black calves. It is just those little things that can make all the difference to a producer in a specific locale, so study your market carefully before you make your production decisions.

Anyway … don’t have a clue about how you should market your black steer, but I wish you all the best as you head of to the university to further your studies. Which university are you planning on attending anyway?

[J-L]

That looks like a lot of my calves. The Simmental breed in the U.S. has changed radically in my life time. As a kid we bred them into our herd only to have quite a few 120# plus red and white calves and learned to do C-sections on cattle in a hurry.
We also encountered a lot of udder problems. Much of it was due to the great deal of white on the bag its self. We are prone to late spring snows and wind along with. This combined with white udders made for a great deal of milking and greasing sore teated cows. When you have 250 or more, that’s a big deal.
The Simmental breed has really changed in many regards. Most for the better in my oppinion. I used eight Simmental and Simmental x Angus bulls on my cows in addition to three Simmental A.I. sires. They make good cattle for me and are a little more low maintenance than some other breeds.
As far as the black bias in the cattle industry, I agree it’s a marketing ploy by the Angus breed. When the red calves out of my herd go to slaughter, the carcasses are just the same as the the black calves in quality. But money talks. The black hided cattle make me over a nickel per pound more, at times as much as 10 cents per pound more. And this is right off the cow, not the hanging carcass where you see as much as $300 difference in the CAB (Certified Angus Beef) carcass.
We’ve made them into a usable cow model for us out west at least. They are now more moderate in size (a little more) and much easier calving. Still good mothers with good milk for beef cattle, and more muscle and growth than Angus cattle in general.
Well, my $.02 turned into a few bits worth didn’t it?

[Nat(wasIxy)]

OldKat are you inlcuding the british in your ‘european’ there? As I think our ‘industry’ is just as split as yours – we look to your mobstockers for inspiration, breeding moderate sized cattle fit for purpose etc. As a result, our cattle are virtually worthless at market because everybody wants limousins/continental cattle which are truly enormous, lots of bone, and they like ’em FAT (at all times of year). Even though we abandoned our British breeds because they were ‘too fat’ and imported the continentals, which are lean…so you can imagine how much feed it takes to get them fat enough again…*sigh*

That’s why we sell direct. Customers don’t actually care despite what we get told about ‘what the housewife wants’, as long as it’s a good price and ethically produced.

[OldKat]

Ixy; I was actually thinking more of a big picture, historical thing than boots on the ground current producers. I am sure there are American cattlemen such as J-L who do a wonderful job with their cattle. Maybe I am just soured by the terrible job that people, I won’t even refer to them as cattlemen, do in our area with their animals.

Or maybe I am just despondent over the fact that I have finally had to throw in the towel and sell my herd because of the drought. There is only so much I can do with intensive grazing to offset the relentless, nearly continuous drought that has plagued our area since about 1998 or so. Really tears me up, because I had spent about 8 or 9 years selecting moderate framed, easy keeping type individuals to do just the type of thing that you are doing and now it gets all blown away in the course of a single season. Disgusting, just disgusting.

Anyway, your comments about the frame size of the continental breeds remind me of something that took place in an collegiate animal science class I had some 35 years ago. My professor was talking about frame sizes and he placed his hand, palm down about waist high. He said that back in the 40’s and 50’s we went “here”, indicating the shoulder height of cattle in that era. Then he raised it midway between his waist and his shoulder and said now we are “here”. He then raised his hand to shoulder height or a little higher and said that he was afraid that we were heading “here”, meaning probably frame 9 or 10 cattle. Some of the students asked what would be wrong with that and in turn he asked “Can you imagine how much feed it will take to finish a steer that size?” It was a great point and worthy of consideration. Unfortunately many of the know it alls in that class were snickering under their breath about him and openly mocking him as we walked out into the foyer after class. They were clearly in the ”bigger is better” camp when it came to cattle frame sizes and couldn’t even conceive of such a thing as frame sizes ever getting too big.

Had they not made such a big deal about it I probably wouldn’t even have remembered the incident at all. However a few years back I heard a beef cattle specialist at the local land grant university say that we were definitely going to have to downsize our animals because they had gotten too big and with rising grain costs the feedlots were going to demand more moderate frame sizes. Corn was probably ½ what it is now, so I suspect the feedlot boys are really starting to squirm now. First thing I thought about though was: ” Well, I guess old Dr. Nance wasn’t so stupid after all”.

[Nat(wasIxy)]

Sympathies about the drought – our land is usually exceptionally wet, and everything is adapted to that. Last year though it was dry, and we lost 3months of grazing (and stupidly sold our hay). So we ended up eating up ALL our reserves of silage, built up in the good years. Now this year has been even drier (after 2 exceptionally harsh winters, too), and the cattle are covering ground so fast that until it rained the other day we were worried we were going to have to bring them in again and start feeding bought in forage!

Fingers crossed for more rain as what we’ve had isn’t enough alone. But, we are looking at culling a good number, as this winter is going to be short on forage whatever happens. This is where lots of little animals really comes into it’s own though – you’re culling in little increments.

[OldKat]

@Ixy 26951 wrote:

Sympathies about the drought – our land is usually exceptionally wet, and everything is adapted to that. Last year though it was dry, and we lost 3months of grazing (and stupidly sold our hay). So we ended up eating up ALL our reserves of silage, built up in the good years. Now this year has been even drier (after 2 exceptionally harsh winters, too), and the cattle are covering ground so fast that until it rained the other day we were worried we were going to have to bring them in again and start feeding bought in forage!

Fingers crossed for more rain as what we’ve had isn’t enough alone. But, we are looking at culling a good number, as this winter is going to be short on forage whatever happens. This is where lots of little animals really comes into it’s own though – you’re culling in little increments.

Sounds like you are on about the same curve I was on, just about two years behind me (drought wise). Hope it works out better for you than it did for me.

Really pretty bummed out (I think “bum” means something different on your side of the pond than it does on ours) about the whole thing because I really put a lot heart and soul into it, but it just wasn’t meant to be. I’m pretty resilient though, if I can get our house and property sold I am interested in moving about 700 miles north (where the rainfall is a little more consistent) and starting over again.

Anyway, good luck with your situation.

[J-L]

Sorry to hear of your drought woes. Nothing so hard to take as drought. I know this from experience. Makes you feel completely helpless.
I guess the one thing you can look forward to (gotta look on the bright side) is making your new here into the cow that’ll work for you again.
The part of the cattle industry that has really bastardised cattle is in the show side of things and the club calf end of things in particular. It is in this area (to me) that we have really skewed what a steer is supposed to look like and perform like. We’ve made them an unsound animal with birth problems and genetic defects, and many times they are not even an animal that would function in any way in the cow world.
Our country is so big and so diverse that one cow will not work every where. We get docked hard on eared cattle and our hairy, fat, black cattle would have hell down in the hot country.
Your professor sounds like my dad, who has told me many times not to get too far from the basic, good cow and chase trends.

[Author]

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