Chasing carcase and meat yield

[larso]

I've been wondering for sometime, how far do we go down this path? There is no doubt we have had to improve the Hereford breed in this area, but if we increase meat yield and also milk there will come a time when  the fertility of the cow herd could be affected. Nothing will dent the bottom line like cows not going back in calf, especially the heifer the 2nd time round. One of the features the Hereford has over other breeds is her ability to hold her condition when feed is tight and go back into calf. Could we be in danger of losing this advantage? Harley speaks about breeding the right type of muscle which is something I would like to understand more about and I was wondering if that didn't bear directly on my initial question. Would be interested if any other breeders had any thoughts on this.     

[hoekland]

Peter, theoretically you do run a risk of affecting fertility when you increase muscle and milk as those are antagonistic traits. In reality the average hereford has a long ways to go to reach that point. Look at proper simmentaler cattle, they've got more muscle and more milk than herefords so the muscle/milk antagonism hasn't had an effect yet. Granted they aren't as fertile under normal circumstances as they produce at a level that most commercial farms can't sustain, but when the grub is good, they'll still calf every year within the calving season.

You are absolutely correct about the muscle, what we want is a soft, long, high yielding muscle, or in short you want a smooth bull with natural thickness. It's the hard, dry, short continental type muscle that will dry the milk up and take the hustling ability away.

I know sooner rather than later this will turn into a horn vs poll debate so I might as well start it. When the polls became thicker, too many of them had the wrong type of muscle, my own herd included, it is something I've worked very hard to correct. The easiest way to spot this for the untrained eye is as they get fat the muscle will pump on the hooks like two pistons when the animal walks, something often seen in continental cattle.

On the horned side you'll seldom find the wrong type of muscle, but as they became bigger too many has just lost all the muscle and bone and most hasn't regained it since. Sadly those breeders pat themselves on the back for breeding range bulls!

[larso]

At the moment I have 6\11mths old bulls in the shed, breaking them in for sales in 12mths time, 2 each by 3 different sires. The difference is quite amazing, 2 are naturally thicker, doing it easy,2 have the carcase and a certain amount of natural thickness but I know will need extra feed to finish them and the other 2 although displaying good body shape I know they will need a tone of feed to present them. I know bulls at this age have different maturity patterns but I'm asking myself am I doing the breed a disservice by keeping the last 2 bulls? For the commercial man wanting to finish his cattle on grass and breed his own replacement heifers I think I probably are.

[tartancowgirl]

Have you any photos or videos to illustrate the muscling? Girl learning here!

[larso]

I have real trouble posting photos on here, I put them on Photoshop and then I can't seem to get them to the next step. May be Glenn might go over the steps again for those of us who aren't that computer savoy. I think Harley has posted pictures before on what he believes to be the right muscle that we should be aiming for.

[hoekland]

I'll try and find a few pics

[Sudsy]

A most interesting subject.
An Australian Dept of Agriculture employee, Bill ? (cant think of his name) devoted most of his professional career in attempting to answer this very question.
His main brief, to push the envelope in regards to muscling and carcase, in order to determine at what point any detrimental traits' surfaced.

He concluded in short, we can successfully increase muscling considerably more before we have negative impacts on our cow herd.

Possibly, the average breeder is overly concerned with too much muscle.

A program which involves increasing muscle, in conjunction with a disciplined culling program, will not harm too many cow herds.

Having said that, there are imo a few pollie herds that are most certainly reaching the upper limits of muscling. Some are on the verge of euro type muscling.

With the ever increasing demand for grass fed and finished cattle in Australia, there is a possibility some of these animals will prove virtually impossible to finish on grass.

Grass fed animals represent approximately 33% of our current steer slaughter, and increasing annually. There will come a day in the not too distant future when grass finished will exceed grain fed, ie. grass fed will be greater than 50%.

Bearing this in mind, I believe the ability to finish on grass will be the determining factor in muscle scoring. I imagine a score of C+ (maybe even a soft B-) will prove to be the upper limit, only my opinion.

[hoekland]

I find that the thicker the animal is (but the right kind of muscle) the more the better for ease of keeping and finishing without concentrates. I've never experienced slab sided animals getting overfat on forage only, or maybe they just fall out here on reproduction before I can see it happen?