>>2911158
>So you're looking mostly at maternal traits primarily for ability to thrive and temperament.
>I assume you breed for pure angus, how do you pick your bulls?
Yes for the heifers we hold back we are mostly looking at the things I mentioned above.
For the bulls we look mainly at their appearance and body condition, frame size, etc. Birth weight so we can run them with heifers, growth rate/weaning weight/yearling weight is another high priority, they must be polled and not throw babies with horns, and then of course you still gotta look at the stuff like scrotal size and who their sires are and other stuff like that and make sure there aren't any red flags. I swear some of these places selling bulls have a plethora of info to look through.
If we like the looks of a bull and their attitude, then we will dig into the rest of the specs and see if they will be a good match for the herd. Or sometimes visa-versa, look through the specs first, and then find matches and then look at the bull. If they look good and have a nice frame with a big butt then they'll go on the list as a possible buy. My herd doesn't have any issues with milk production by any means, so that is one stat that we kinda gloss over and don't select for much.
We do run mostly angus bulls, but my wife actually purchased a Saler/angus cross bull (Optimizer) just this week. We'll give him a try and see if we like him. If not, he cost us $3600, and we could almost make our money back across the scales at the local salebarn.
And of course price is another thing. I'm not going to spend $10,000 or more for a bull that I can turn out on the river bottom and never see again, or have an injury that will put him out for the rest of his life. I don't care how good he is. I'd rather have 2-3 bulls that aren't 100% optimal, but will make sure to get the job done and still throw good calves. It's all a balancing act.
