Hybrid versus purebred bulls

What are your opinions on herd bulls, hybrid or purebred?

Predictable offspring is the greatest benifit of pure bred animals. A hybrid bull on hybrid cows would produce offspring of various crosses. A 2 way bull on 3 way cows can produce far more than 6 types calves. An example of what is possiable if say both bull and cow have blood of a high birth weight breed like charolais and the cow is sized and built like her low birth weight ansasters. If those genes line up and produce a high wieght calf there might be a birthing problem. The possiabilties are limitless but that in it self doesn't gaurntee bad results. In the southwest Brangus,Braford and Beefmaster are popular hybrids. I am a fan of pure bred bulls.

My opinion? "Hybrid" is just a fancy name for mongrel.

Kinda like they say from breeding cattle that are related,if you get a good calf it's called line breeding. If it's a bad calf,it's called inbreeding.

LOL. And my biggest peeve is the breeders that refuse to cull for fertility. They keep the late cows as fall calvers and sell the bulls as 18 months old so they are "bigger" You know, when I was in grade school and some of the kids were bigger and a year older somehow I never considered them "ahead" of me.

I never could afford a registered bull. The grade bulls I bought or raised, were all good animals....always preferred Brangus for the natural poll, ease of calving, excellent disposition, and good growth characteristics.

My current (gonna be) herd bull is Brangus without one spot of any color on his entire body except black, underside is clean and tight for the breed, so I can see he is the result of some selective breeding....speaks for itself and bought him from a neighbor at about 7 months for $800 delivered.

I usually let my bulls run free with the cows and take the calve as they come. Sometimes I line breed for replacement purposes and have had stellar results for a little guy, mom-pop operation.

My 2c,

Mark

Pure bred bulls,dogs,horses,etc are only as pure as the breeder.

I am trying out a cross bred bull for the first time this year. Using him to breed a few pure angus heifers. He is a maine anjou-charlais cross. He was the product of a calculated cross of maine-anjou semen in proven registered charlais cows. I bought the bred charlais cow from a breeder I have worked with for many years and his charlais are all much smaller framed than traditional charlais. Cows are 1400# or so. Anyhow, I am anxious to see how this turns out.

I always used the best pure bred bulls available. They came to my farm in a tank. I used self locking stantions to catch the cows for breeding. I figured that the female offspring from top bulls were the real return on investment. Fixed costs (fence, feed, fodder etc.) are the same for mutts or top quality cows.

I'll only buy a registered bull because I want to know exactly what I'm buying (specifically birthweight and wean weight EPD numbers). There are registered hybrids though like Limflex (Limousin/Angus breed) that I would have no trouble with. Trying to save $500 by buying a bull that looks just as good is a folly. Pay for the genetics and documentation because that $500 savings could easily end up costing several thousand in losses from big calves, horns, or other unseen traits that bull might be carrying.

I guess the answer depends on what you are trying to accomplish.And remember, your bulls affect every calf produced on your ranch. One bad cow only produces one bad calf. One bad bull produces 20-30 bad calves!

Hybrid bulls bring with them the possibility of more variance in the off spring. Some of these variances are undesireable.

The pure bred bulls sire more predictable calves.

Cross bred cows have been shown time and time again to have greater longevity, higher resistance to disease, better fertillity, and more production over their lifetime relative to purebred cows. Yes you may get a lot of color variations but once you pull the hides off, they all look the same.
In my opinion, if you want to try crossbreeding, cross breed to a purebred bull for your replacements using EPD"s and pick your terminal sire from the purebred ranks based on EPD"s.

I"ve got mainly pure bred red angus cows and once I get the cow herd up to the carrying capacity of our ranch, I will bring in Polled Hereford bulls to start developing red whiteface cows and go back to red angus bulls for a terminal sire. I"ll keep a few pure bred cows to use for generating cross bred replacements.

Opinions are like belly buttons-everybody has one. This is mine on this subject.

pure,100%.crossed with a purebred cow of whatever breed,to get a crossbred calf of consistent quality in my opinion. The first cross is fairly predictable after that not so much so. look at how long it took to get a pure strain of santa-gertrudis cattle. And they were breeding no telling how many crossbred bulls to no telling how many cross bred heifers for years until they could get consistant quality.The problem to me with cross bred bulls is you can buy one ,breed all you cows ,and wind up with nothing but a bunch of culls which is often a make or break deal for a young guy. Now thats not to say i would run backwards from a proven crossbred bull if i liked the kind of calves he sired. Its just if i were buying a young replacement bull i think your better off knowing what to at least expect the breed to be. I had one here i was sorely tempted to try last year. He sure was a good looking calf and i liked everything about him.just couldnt get myself to do it.

I dunno. We usually had the worst luck with the expensive "purebred" bulls from the AI man. The offspring would be mean, dumb as a bag of hammers, stubborn, low-producing, hard to breed, bad bags, couldn't handle calving.

The mutts were always docile, robust, healthy, easy to breed. They may not have produced the most milk, but at least you didn't have to nursemaid them for half the lactation and get pounded for the privilege.

Several people out here make a very good living selling hybrid bulls. But, they do come from both purebred parents. I haven't used one myself, preferring purebred bulls instead. From what crossbreeding I have done, I can see that predictability is lost once you go down a generation or two.

Just watching the buyers at these bull sales, these hybrids are really are popular with alot of the cattle guys.

Pure bred, all the time, from known breeders, with EPDs, and preferably performance tested. I use PB Angus and PB Charolais. My goal is to have angus x charolais cows bred back on either breed bull. If I could buy the cows I want Id only use Charolais but, since I cant I have to run both and breed my own replacements.

Cows, and bulls, operate on a system. The make it or they leave. Live calf every 12 months on hay, pasture, and good mineral mix. 205 day weight at or greater than 600 pounds with no grain. Breed back in a 90 day breeding season, first calf at 20-24 months. One herd with 2/3 of my cows fall calves, the balance spring calves. When heifers calve determine where they end up. Heifers coming back into their first calf typically cant keep up, so they get one pass into the other group. After that, you dont make the program, you get a ride to town. Its worked for me and worked well for many years, when I started 400 pound weaning was my goal. The challenge has added half a calf to each calf in the process in 20 years.