I hope this blog finds you still feeling full of both joy and turkey after enjoying the Thanksgiving holiday with those you cherish most. We are so blessed here at Poplar Grove Farms with the best of friends and family to celebrate with.
Keeping much in the same theme as the previous post, today I find myself researching and contemplating heterosis and hybrid vigor. In this industry, it’s easy to rack up a hefty input cost. We want what’s best for the animals that we put so much of our time into producing. This means buying mineral, vaccinations, medications, maintaining facility upkeep, feed, hay, the list goes on. While we love caring for our animals and ensuring they have the assets needed to be as successful as their genetics will allow, our farm cannot continue to run without a return on investment. Pretty simple, we must have a little monetary kick back from the girls in order to keep the lights on.
That being said, we’re considering, in our commercial herd, using complimentary cattle breeds to our existing genetics that will allow us to maximize growth and feed efficiency. We still love and going to continue to produce our Registered Red Angus. Their docility, heat tolerance, maternal instincts, and carcass merit will keep this breed forever at our farm. Also, I would like to point out, I’m well aware this is not a new, earth-shattering practice. Farmers and ranchers have practiced this for years. This is simply something we’re considering that would be new to our operation. We want to use our own, first-hand data to see, with our forage and feed quality, if this is something that will increase our ROI, which, as I’ve stated before, is something we have to constantly consider as the cows are not currently self-funding.
There are many ways and methods to use when considering this approach. You can use anywhere from two, three, four, even up to five different breeds (often called composite breeds) to achieve heterosis. Likely, if we were to pilot this program, we would utilize two breeds, both pure-breds. Perhaps the most common in our region being the black baldy, a cross of, typically, a Hereford bull on Angus cows. Some could even take this one step further. Those calves resulting from the original crossbreeding, often referred to as F1’s, that meet retaining requirements of the rancher, are kept to be incorporated back into the two-breed program. Meanwhile, all mature cows are bred to a terminal sire. This means all calves from mature cows are destined for the feed lot. These calves should perform excellently on the scale and on the rail. Examples of terminal breeds include Charolais, limousin, maine-anjou, or chianina. These breeds are considered terminal related to their increased muscling and marbling that allow for better performance at the processor.
Because part of our mission at Poplar Grove Farms is to produce a superior meat product, this method bears consideration. If we decide to pilot this program, we will, of course, post data and our findings. As anything with beef improvement, it will be quite some time before we have any true numbers to crunch. Ahh, how my patience are always tested.
Thanks for humoring my thoughts/research for the morning. I’ve linked one of the articles I found to be helpful below. Cheers!
Source of information for this blog can be found here: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2994&context=extension_curall#:~:text=Heterosis%2C%20or%20hybrid%20vigor%2C%20is,reproduction%20rates%20of%20crossbred%20cows.
Comments