ANGUS BEEF BULLETIN EXTRA

December 7, 2021 | Vol. 14 : No. 11

Management


Accuracy with EPDs

Range Beef Cow Symposium Offers Optimism

Conference gives positive industry outlook from price trends to tech tools.

“Boy, how things have changed ... It’s a completely different world,” stated economist Derrell Peel as he kicked off the 2021 Range Beef Cow Symposium hosted Nov. 16-17 in Rapid City, S.D. The biennial event brought together more than 450 cattle producers and industry leaders for speaker presentations, a trade show and networking.

Winter Management Tips for Bulls

Tips to keep bulls comfortable and functional during the winter.

Bulls need good care in winter and a chance to regain body condition if they lost weight. The best situation is to keep them separate from the cows. Some bulls, especially young ones, lose a lot of weight during breeding season. They need to be fed differently than the mature bull in adequate condition that may be able to coast through winter on a good maintenance ration.

Being Choosy

Selection criteria considerations for cow, calf and bull traits.

“There’s not just one way to select a bull for your ranch,” stated David Schuler as he addressed attendees at the Range Beef Cow Symposium hosted Nov. 16-17 in Rapid City, S.D. Schuler, a 2018 University of Nebraska–Lincoln grad, is the fourth generation operating Schuler Red Angus near Bridgeport, Neb., with his parents, Butch and Susan, and sister Stephanie.

How to Make Crucial Decisions

Identify essential decision-making information.

Deciding which bull to buy is not a real hard decision for a ranch manager. Neither is choosing between a 20% or a 38% protein cube. Those choices are not as hard as deciding whether an ongoing drought requires cutting herd numbers by 20% or 50%. According to Stan Bevers, with Texas A&M University’s King Ranch Institute for Ranch Management, the implications of a destocking decision would be much more far-reaching.

Selecting for Dollars

Selection indexes can simplify multi-trait selection, but providers need to present clearly.

Bull buying can be overwhelming for producers, especially when they attempt to use the extensive list of expected progeny differences and indexes available to them. What is meant to help producers tends to backfire simply because of a knowledge gap, according to Troy Rowan.

Mating Decisions

One bull likely can’t cover all breeding goals.

Selecting a single bull for a herd with multiple breeding goals might not be the most effective strategy, according to Jennifer Bormann, Kansas State University professor of beef breeding and genetics. She spoke to producers June 23 at the 2021 Beef Improvement Federation Research Symposium & Convention in Des Moines, Iowa.