Hair Coat Comments Hair coat is one of the most under looked traits in cattle, yet it makes a tremendous economic impact on cattle in the deep south. Here at CK Cattle we have been hair scoring our cattle for years to see how well they perform in our hot and humid environment. We are geographically located at the very most southern tip of the U.S. fescue belt. Cattle with hair simply struggle in our environment, which is why most of our neighbors and customers in the fescue belt use brahman influence to mitigate the dirty fescue. We feel that the most valuable time to take hair scores on our fall cows is in the late spring after they have been exposed to fescue for several months. It is this time of year we want to see our animals showing 25% or less of their winter coat.
Our calves are hair scored during the mid-summer, as we feel this is the most crucial time for a calf to be slick. At this time of year many of the calves in our area have been weaned and are being fed a grower type ration and are already battling heat stress, so any added hair at this time of year will certainly create issues in performance. We can attest to the fact that hair is directly related to performance in our operation. Years of CK data shows that calves keeping 50-100% of their hair coat will certainly sacrifice pounds to those animals that are slick.
When selecting genetics to use in our program, we will only use a bull born here at CK if his hair score was a 1 or a 2 as a calf. We have used this in our selection criteria for many years, which has given us an angus cow herd that is extremely adaptable to the U.S. fescue belt and gulf coast regions.
For the first time in our catalog the Fall 2-year old bulls have a hair score in their footnotes.
CK Hair Score Guidelines 1 0% hair (Slick)
2 Up to 25% hair coverage 3 Up to 50% hair coverage 4 Up to 75% hair coverage 5 100% hair coverage, has not shed at all. (There are no 5 hair scores in this sale)
How The Bulls Are Raised: All bulls are born on our operation in Lowndes County AL. We have a mix of Black Belt prairie soil, which is predominantly Fescue grass, and Sandy soil which is usually Bermuda grass. The bull lots are 10 to 20 acres dominated by fescue with fence line bunks. Our fall calves are born September thru December. We work our calves for the first time around 4 months of age. This is when we make our first round of culling the bull calves. We start by culling any excessive birth weight or calving problems and obvious disposition and quality problems. We give our second round of vaccinations about 60 days later (still on the cow), at which time we collect our weaning weights, disposition and hair scores. We fence line wean around 7-8 months of age according to pasture grass conditions. When bulls are weaned they go into groups of 30 to 50 head and fed a high roughage ration consisting predominantly of We are very pleased to see that the American Angus Association has developed a hair shedding EPD to help both seedstock and commercial producers choose animals that respond better while grazing fescue. We have included that EPD labeled (HS) in this year’s catalog.
corn silage and soy hull pellets. We strive to have our bulls gaining at or above 2.5 lbs/day. Due to the high moisture and high rough- age content of our ration, coupled with the heat and humidity in our area, the bull calves that do not perform in our environment will sort themselves out. At yearling we collect weights, scrotal, frame and ultrasound data. All yearling bulls are freeze branded in December. It is then we select the group of bulls we will be using in our program as year- lings. All yearlings used on the CK Cattle operation will be returned to our bull development program after being pulled at the end of the breeding season. These bulls will then be offered for sale at 2 years of age at our Headquarters sale. We will provide a footnote in the catalog on any bull used in our program as a yearling. We are continually culling bulls. Some Soundness and feet issues really start to appear at around 15-18 months. This is another big plus for buying two year olds bulls, as it is very difficult to see some these issues before the bulls have a chance to fully mature. All bulls are trich tested and will have passed a bull soundness eval- uation within 30 days prior to October 24th, 2025.
Friday, October 24, 2025 • 5
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