Gain on Grass We are the only operation that I know of in the seedstock industry identifying cattle that convert the one thing that every cow calf producer sells and that is grass! We have been taking individual weights going to and coming off of grass for 20 years. I have tried to get the academia experts to do this and establish a EPD but it has mostly fell on deaf ears as most seedstock producers and industry feeders don’t feel it is important or it impedes their marketing plans. Most all bulls are developed on a perfect managed feed and never challenged in life to identify those that know how to go get their own mouthful and convert it to pounds and thriftiness. As I have always said “corn helps those that can’t help themselves”. It is impossible to measure intake while out on grass and that makes it hard to quantify, but we have over time identified cattle that can do just that. EPDs are mostly developed off of a starch diet and don’t analyze a true forage diet. But EPDs can be helpful but not totally used to get your needed goal. EPDs are a tool for use in the big picture and only one tool in the whole toolbox. For example, a lower growth EPD will help identify an animal that also has a much lower maintenance requirement. That is important info because if you run a low input operation those lower maintenance cattle will actually gain more. Reason being all cattle have a net energy maintenance and a net energy gain requirements, they have to meet maintenance before they can express gain. We have seen first -hand cattle with low EPDs actually weigh more in a low input environment because they met their needs at a lower requirement and then could express gain. Along with that we have seen high growth EPD cattle weigh much less and just look depleted and not thrifty. Conversely if your operation has more feed you can utilize the higher growth cattle and get more output with more input. We all want to walk the fine line as to getting as much growth as our environment will sustain because most of our calf crops will eventually be put on a high energy diet and we still want them to gain good as it just puts more money in the pocket of the feeder. We have done the much more structured tests in the past of feed efficiency testing the bulls on a feed test that weighs every mouthful. I believe it is very important information as we are always searching for the cattle that can do both and do both more efficiently. When we did test our cattle they did extremely well. Steve Scholz that performed the test said our cattle outperformed almost all cattle from top to bottom on test. He believed our grass tests identified better cattle over time from top to bottom and aggressive eaters and converters. We will be testing bulls again this year at Lincoln County Feed Yard feed test station. And we will then perform the grass test next summer as usual. I firmly believe our grass test is more important to your bottom line as the producer, you are selling grass. After you wean many will be selling feed but those that make yearlings the grass test is huge. It is also huge to the females you keep for replacements as for their lifetime they will by converting forage from your program. We are now unveiling a 1 through 5 star system for now on how the individual bull gained as compared to the rest of the group of bulls. For this initial year we are identifying the top 30% of the bulls for gain. A 5* would be the top 10%, 4* top 20% and 3*top 30%. I’m hoping over the next couple years I can identify a number system from all of the pedigree to identify the genetics through parentage that have excelled. Like for example our Sandhills line of cattle have been at the very top every year and if you look through the pedigrees he is in most of the bulls. To test our work we run a commercial yearling operation. We AI our commercial cows and then track the AI sired calves. We individually track the AI sired and also track the clean up as a group) The calves are weighed at weaning, yearling and coming off grass at approximately 16-18 months of age. The standard assumption for yearlings gaining on grass is 1.8/lb/d from yearling weigh to off grass weight. We have had many gain over 3/lbs/d and have the entire groups( AI sired and clean up bulls) gaining at 2.6/lbs/d. That is .8/lbs/d better than average and that is a lot of dollars in your pocket. Figure a 4 month turn out of 120 days. 120 times .8 increase is 96 more pounds! Cattle Fax today showed a 750 pound feeder worth $2.68/lb. That equates $257.28 more value per calf assuming the now 846 pound steer is at the same price as the 750 steer. You can trust our bulls to sire cattle that will be more aggressive to go out and forage grass and be able to convert it to pounds. Our cattle will get to the back side of a pasture and graze, not lay around the well. Cattle that get to the back side will always have healthier thrifty cattle that just perform well in any environment they are managed. We have also noticed our cattle handle different grasses especially well. Fescue would be an example we have sent several hundred cows to fescue and they just got fat and raised big fat calves. Short grass and mountain grass we see phenomenal gains and obviously Sandhill grass we do very well on. I had a prominent Angus breeder tell me once if you can get cattle to do well on Sandhill native grasses they will do very well in any other environment. I believe this is because they have to consume so much more volume of grass to meet their needs that when put on higher nutrition grasses they excel. This is a large test, a continual work in progress, and has taken many years to identify lines and propagate them into all of our cows. Behavioral differences play a large factor like the cows that are aggressive to graze further out and teach their calves to do the same. I believe that is why it took time in the beginning to find the lines that were solid and several progeny to prove them. One reason we waited this long to start to release results we wanted every bull we offered to have these genetics bred into them. We are identifying the top 30% but we also feel every bull in the sale has many of these inherent genetics bred into them better than you can find anywhere else in the industry. We are constantly searching for new lines of cattle that will not obviously have the testing done but we also need to identify outside genetics to outcross to your program for heterosis and thus increased profitability. The line breeding is our responsibility to your profitability. Your success is our number one goal and it is something we take very seriously.
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