British White Cattle are an Excellent Fit for Commercial Production

Four Top Commercial Producers Talk About Beef Production

Burt Rutherford

The following are excerpts from an interesting Beef Cattle Magazine article.  Click the link above for the full text of the article: 

“Our breeding program is really focused around a maternal composite,” says John Maddux with Maddux Cattle Company of Wauneta, NE, this year’s BIF Commercial Producer of the Year Award winner. “We stress maternal traits and making sure we’re focused on fitness and convenience traits as opposed to the traditional production traits that are represented by EPDs.”

“ . . . For most breeds out there, we have more-than-optimum levels of production,” he says. That means having a high-growth calf is relatively unimportant to them, he says, because it’s relatively easy with moderate growth to make a nine-weight steer at 16 or 17 months of age. . . "

" . . . So, while the most efficient cow size will differ depending on the environmental constraints you run in, all four say a moderate cow size is something to shoot for. “It may not be for everybody, but for our program, we want moderate size, a 1,200-lb. cow max,” Maddux says."

J.West's Vincenzia & Heifer Calf

Rare 3/4 British White - 1/4 Nelore Heifer Born in the USA to J.West Cattle Company

My stunning half Nelore and half British White heifer, HBW Daisy, calved yesterday evening a pretty little heifer!!  Daisy has proven to be very easy-keeping.  She grew that magnificent frame while on the same hay and alfalfa as the BW heifer herds she has run with since I brought her home. Daisy has shown clear tolerance, or perhaps lack of desirability to biting flies and lice, excellent heat tolerance.  Basically, this gal never misses a beat.

My goal . . . a gentler version of my beautiful Miss Daisy.  Tomorrow I'll be dashing out to get a birth weight on her new heifer calf, and will cross my fingers I can get a tag in her ear before Daisy pounds the earth to get to me!!!  While she's let me touch her, comes readily to me offering alfalfa, she clearly has extreme protective maternal instincts and does not trust me as my BW girls do.  Her heifer calf was very laid back about me having a look at her, popping up her tail to confirm she was a heifer. She didn't startle at all, I was thankful for that as we were close to the state highway fence.  That said, I wasn't going to pop her up on her feet and take a chest measure so close to the highway; if she dashed thru the old highway fence I've no doubt Miss Daisy would have simply taken down all the barbed wire and headed after her newborn heifer on US Highway 69. . . .

HBW Daisy and her newborn 3/4 British White and 1/4 Nelore Heifer Calf

 

J.West's British White Cattle.

American British White Females in Texas Available for Lease for Embryo Flushing . . . 

The topic of embryo flushing has come in to conversation this past week, and I thought of this fine photo of Colombian BON calves the product of embryo transfer. If you are interested in embryos of the British White breed, or using one of my females for flushing to the BON or another breed, please let me know. I will certainly make available my superior females for flushing and export on a lease basis as I've done in the past. It's an excellent approach to introducing desirable genetics around the world. I think the combination of the beefiness of the American British White and the BON's documented excellent tolerance to heat and biting insects would be a great joining for tropical areas in pursuit of greater beef production in tropical environments.  One day it will happen!!!   

Blanco Orejinegro calves in Colombia

"Nice set of embryo calves of the Blanco Orejinegro breed in Colombia. A road to more rapid improvement and expansion of any small breed is the use of embryo flushing of the superior females."Embriones Agropecuaria Pacaraima -- Pacaraima livestock embryos (Translated by Bing)

Embriones Agropecuaria Pacaraima

Tis the Season of Peace and Good Will -- let Americans be at Peace in their Continued Role in this Great World in Furtherance of the Good

Excerpts below are from the 1896 publication "A Man's Value to Society", preface to Chapter 8 "The Enthusiasm of Friendship".

"He that walketh with wise men shall be wise"   Solomon

"The only way to have a friend is to be one."  Emerson

"A talent is perfected in solitude; a character in the stream of the world."    Goethe

"It is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught as men take diseases, one of another; therefore let men take heed of their company."  Shakespeare

"Beyond all wealth, honor or oven health, is the attachment we form to noble souls, because to become one with the good, generous and true, is to become, in a measure, good generous and true ourselves."  Thomas Arnold

"Cicero said:  'Friendship can make riches splendid.'  Friendship can plan many things for its wealth to execute.  It can plan a good winter evening for a group, and it can plan an afternoon for a hundred children.  It can roll in a Christmas log for a large hearth.  It can spread happiness to the right and left.  It can spend money most beautifully and make gold to shine.  Civilization itself is of the heart."  Shelby

My niece, Taylor, with her sweet young one, Lexie, that she babysits on her days off from her Target job that is restricted to a mere 20 hours because of current laws.  Let the both of them always be as happy in the years to come as they were today..............

This excerpt struck me as pertinent tonight from "A Man's Value to Society", Copyright 1896:

 "Disobedience is slavery. Obedience is liberty. . . . disobedience to the law of morals gives waste and want and wretchedness. That individual or nation is hastening toward poverty that does not love the right and hate the wrong. So certain is the penalty of wrongdoing that sins seems infinitely stupid. Every transgression is is like an iron plate thrown into the air: gravity will pull it back upon the wrongdoer's head to wound him."

Let their be peace . . . and faith in our civil system, for each of us. Obama says: "Understandable reaction?" Hardly. Gun shots, rocks and bottles thrown, police cars attacked, fires and .... whatever else. Absurd. Shameful. Hardly Understandable. Burden falls on the baiters and the mainstream media and the rabid liberals who regularly lay waste to the the old Christian laws of morals that has  lead to waste and want and wretchedness" . . . among some other rather significant others of influence.