Polled Hereford or Angus

Have some coming two year old Hereford heifers that I might want to AI. Angus or Polled Hereford? Definite Low birthweight. Sure don't want to pull a calf. Where is the best place to get semen?

The one polled bull I've watched for the past couple of years and I like more the more progeny I see is UPS Sensation 2504. It seems he is a solid heifer sire and siring some nice calves. I like the 3027 on the top and his mother. I feel she is one of the top cows in the polled breed.

Check out Select Sires or Genex. They should have a sales person in your area. One Hereford bull that we are really beginning to like is Select Sire's bull THM Excede.

Got a question, are these registered or commercial Hereford heifers and what's the goals of your program? If they are commercial females as much as I love to promote the Hereford breed it may be better option to consider an Angus bull and take advantage of the heterosis. If you can't register the calves you'd get not sure how much benefit you'll get using a Hereford bull other than you'd just have some more commercial Herefords that will probably get docked at the sale barn.

It probably sounds crazy to hear that from someone that raises registered purebred Herefords but when we're selling bulls we're marketing guys with black angus bred females who want to breed for black baldies and I'd be lying if I didn't admit that if we had some commercial Hereford females we couldn't register calves out of we probably would be using some Angus AI. We did that some back in the 80's and 90's when we had a few crossbred females mixed in with our registered Hereford herd. If they were mostly black they'd run with our Hereford bull, if they were red and white we bought some semen from a good Angus breeder a few miles from us and AI'd them to an Angus bull then if we kept any females from those matings we'd either breed them back to a Hereford bull again or we even used a Gelbvieh bull AI a bit too which was a nice cross. We're all registered Herefords now, don't miss the days when dad would bring home a handful of bred commercial Angus females from the sale barn as most of them wound up having poor temperament and weren't worth the hassle they would cause even if we did get some nice baldy calves out of them.

Commercial. Want low birth weight, as little problem as possible with calving, and calves that will put weight on well.

Pointer1160":3dgejz7i said:

Have some coming two year old Hereford heifers that I might want to AI. Angus or Polled Hereford?
Definite Low birthweight. Sure don't want to pull a calf. Where is the best place to get semen?

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I would use a proven black angus sire for the first calf (and later calves too)
All the major A.I. studs have several black angus calving ease sires to choose from in their lineups.
Select Sires has an excellent reputation for quality semen.

I believe Southeast Select Sires Inc services your area... Tennessee office (931) 489-2020
They can give you the phone number of the sales manager for your location and he should be able to refer you to
a local technician to inseminate your cows too.

I vote black angus also. There is such a large selection of proven calving ease angus, a lot of them with very impressive growth.
One I have had very good luck with is connealy right answer. Come small, grow very well, and the cows I have out of him are awesome. Wean some of the biggest calves every year.
I have thought about using ups sensation on angus heifers, but I'm afraid of the calving ease. I bred some cows to victor 719t and they came pretty large for what he is rated at. Cross breeding always seems to make my calves a little bigger.

These are 2-year old commercial Hereford heifers. Are you breeding them for their 2nd calf? Most of us breed them at around 15 months of age to calve at 2 years old. Just wondering if these are getting bred late or getting bred for their 2nd calf??

I, too, would recommend a calving ease Black Angus bull, especially if it will be these female's first calves. I echo what Tbrake suggested with Connealy Right Answer. I used him a few times several years ago and got some very nice calves out of him. I should have used him more than I did. Calves were docile as long as I had them, came very easy, and grew well. Pick a bull that is well proven and has a good history/reputation behind him.

Jeanne - Simme Valley":1d3lgc4x said:

These are 2-year old commercial Hereford heifers. Are you breeding them for their 2nd calf? Most of us breed them at around 15 months of age to calve at 2 years old. Just wondering if these are getting bred late or getting bred for their 2nd calf??

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I was wondering the same thing but another possibility is they were born opposite of the calving season the breeder prefers. We only calve in the spring so fall born heifers usually are not something we buy. We breed our home raised heifers to calve right at or shortly after they turn 2.

Had this situation hurt me at a county fair show my senior year in HS. I was showing a September born senior yearling heifer my grandpa raised and since you could not show a heifer both in 4-H and FFA shows she was my FFA project as my high school was in a different county that allowed senior yearling heifers in their show while my 4-H county did not. The nice thing about a senior yearling is you usually can get 2 show seasons out of them. She was less than a month away from being 2 years as their fair is on labor day weekend. The judge asked me when she was due to calve I told him late February as that is the earliest we calve with our AI program and he made a point to say he put her in last place in the class because of that even though he felt she was good enough to lead off the class because he felt she should have been calving that fall. While that was a legit reason maybe his opinion would have been different had he realized she would be the only fall calving female in our herd. It was one of those moments when the show ring world and real life herd management are not in sync and that is why we have never bred our cattle with the show ring in mind.