Why breed Braunvieh cattle? | The American Rancher

we actually bought the first bowl 31 years ago they're just performance machine friends of mine they go my god where those others come from if bran B didn't work I wouldn't be using them learn why some producers have used Ron V genetics for over 25 years next on the American Rancher [Music] [Music] hello and welcome to the American Rancher I'm Pam Minich this episode marks the 10th anniversary of telling the bran V story on this show now that's a long time but there are cattlemen that have been using bran V genetics even longer than that one producer on today's program has been raising bran B cattle for over 30 years today we'll talk with him and two other producers who reveal why bran V is their longtime breed of choice I've always been interested in ranching but my dad was in construction a heavy equipment and I did that for 30 years but I always had cattle to come in after after 12 hours of work come in and and work with cattle of an afternoon or on the weekends and I always wanted to feed cattle see him all the way through I was raised on a feral to finish hog operation and the cattle were something that were just a you know something to take up the ground that we couldn't farm since we was around hogs all the time the cattle was something that we didn't get to spend much time with so one year I was kind of in charge of calving them and taking care of them one fall because each fall calves I that's when I really kind of started enjoying them the most I've tried a lot of breeds over the years most most all of them I've started with brøndby 20 over 20 years ago a friend of mine introduced the Braun V cattle into this this county locally I was wanting to feed cattle in the feed yards and he kept talking about them and I looked at them and and they really sounded like they'd worked for me and I haven't left them there excellent quality beef and they've grown well for me no matter what genetics line of brøndby cattle which I've sure I've went through 20 or 30 different bloodlines over the years but they're they're consistent enough they just keep working and the feed yard being paid on a grid basis I have to have cattle a little work and if brøndby didn't work I wouldn't be using them we were used to cattle that were not to tame as' you know he was always worried about a foot he was always worried about climbing a fence it was not a pleasant situation when we worked cows life's pretty short to work with wild animals that's just not our country here we can't do that but I believe our first bull was about 1993-94 in that range my dad went to the one of the first brawn be golden link cells and my dad doesn't get excited about cows at all that's not his thing and when he come back and was excited about the Brawn be cows and I thought well maybe that's something I need to look into so we went to the next brawn be Ceylon bought our first bull and then once we had our first set of brawn be calves and especially our first set of heifers we realized that how easy it was to work with the with the breed how docile they were I'll never forget there was a gentleman in our neighborhood we just weaned our first set of calves and we were standing there and then calves come up to the fence and he goes my goodness he says how long these calves being leaned I said oh we just stored the calves off up here man or two ago you know maybe half hour an hour and they come up looking at us he goes I'm not used to that we're used to kids running from us or you know bouncing off fences he goes you've got something here and so we just been building on it ever since that I've heard on some of the other shows they call me old man's breed and I'm okay with that you know we know I getting run over you know we don't like climbing fences I'd say you're half blood your your you know lower percentage brawny heifers them being docile and longevity and and their udders that's got to be the top things that the breed really has to offer we actually bought the first Bulls 31 years ago and after a year or two of seeing what the calves done what the females done we just didn't have a reason to change they just have done everything we wanted them to do and and haven't really found any holes so you know we've stuck with them they've treated as well the best way we started to show people what the bromby could do was we just started lending people our bulls that were and off you know they didn't have some place to go so if we had an extra bull or something we'd loan it to a good friend of ours once they have that first set of calf crops that that bull sells easy after that but on our commercial heifers that's just word of mouth once we finally started having the numbers where we could have like 40 or 50 heifers here for people to pick through and look through you know they're they're just as I can't remember the last time we've had heifers for sale you know we might have 10 or 12 heifers left after our normal buyers but they're gone within a month or so it's just you know that when we get down to that's the guy just one two or three you know we need all these people we need to buy Levi's 20 we need the guy that buys two or three so you know you to have it leftover heifer here and if they do usually that's something we're like it's good enough just stay with us we'll just keep them for ourselves because you know we're not gonna put anything out there that we wouldn't keep for our own coming up you know you get a cow that's 12 14 years old still standing up there at them seven eight year old cows that's good you're sure not uncommon to get up you know 12 14 15 16 years pal doubt them we've got several cows doing that brøndby females earn their keep and then some that story is next on the American Rancher [Music] [Music] welcome back to the American rancher Braun V females are well known for longevity in the pasture their ability to put more calves on the ground over their lifetimes certainly translates into more profit but the real money comes in the performance of bromby influence calves I've been feeding brøndby cattle in the feed yards for well over 16 years I don't know exactly I've had them for 20 so I probably have fed them for 18 years I've started out feeding them in a natural program did a great job they loved them at b3r meats then when they sold out I've spent some too coleman meats and we wound up shifting to Coleman shifted to Colorado I believe so I started feeding in Kansas at poki feeders up there and they seem to like the cattle they just never had a bad word to say about them and they feed 90,000 head at a time they wish they could find more of them to feed bran be well for the last several years we've been selling to the stairs - Fred Schroeder up in Nebraska which feeds the cattle the rest of the way out and he sells on the grid and we get the premium he likes the way the cattle grain yield so he's always paid a real good premium for the calves we've been doing that now for six seven years just the fact that we're able to get that premium whether it's female or steers we've always been able to get that extra dollars per head and that's what it's all about right now we generally have some of these heifers for sale after they're weaned and backgrounded a while and that's been a real good market also replacement heifers that we keep back we're breeding them heifers to where they're calving at 22 months of age and yet they're maturing out at the size that we want for the for the mature cow you start that early and be able to get them extra years on the other end it just all adds up to more money bad it's kind of a best-kept secret with what the cattle can do there's people out there that know and understand the brothy and it's just a matter of making connections with these guys and and there's getting to be more and more of them all the time the Brunswick cow it just has so many pluses I think number one the disposition is just very very good clean uttered longevity without longevity it makes it tough out here it's already tough you know you get a cow that's 12 14 years old still standing up there at them seven eight year old cows that's good it is sure not uncommon to get up you know 12 14 15 16 years out of them we've got several cows doing that 14 15 16 year old cows that you know still have a nice structured udder no breakdown on the quarters we don't have a lot of the issues like with the bad udders and some of the things that we constantly hear the neighbors talk about we don't have they're just performance machines I think it means everything as far as cow longevity I mean we don't have a great big curve we have we run about a hundred cows and most of time if there's heifers saved it's because we need those to new genetics it's not so much that we need to replace the cows it's that we need the genetics or or maybe we're experiment with something you'll see some backlight pay scales or stuff out here well the producers have Bibles from us and efforts from us they won't kind of see what they have already got somebody tells me they're gonna put an Angus bull on or if they're gonna put a Hereford bull on them I can go out there and show you know here's kind of what they're looking for looking at and what you expect to see from them the strongest points the breed has is their percentage females them half blood heifers three quarter blood heifers they're irreplaceable we really do like the f2s just seems like it gives a little more spark to the hybrid vigor we've seen them crossed with a lot of different breeds and really haven't seen any that we didn't like they've just always put that extra muscle that extra rib and top line on the calf and then again the female side carries through so yeah I don't see any reason why not to do it on a cross breeding program I'm not a purebred breeder my goal and has always been to put a good product on the table whether it's at a restaurant or at your home and just me knowing that my cattle wound up on somebody's plate and they loved it it's that's all I need up next friends of mine that have been in the cattle business they go my gosh where those others come from there's nothing else like adaptability and outstanding profit traits are putting hydrating bromby carcasses on the rail you're watching the American Rancher you [Music] [Applause] welcome back to the American Rancher for decades Rodney has been the breed of choice for cattle producers nationwide that level of history with the bran debrief is impressive considering that those producers have plenty of experience with other breeds as well but because about standing adaptability longevity productivity and other traits keeping brøndby genetics in their herd is an easy choice for these ranchers I like these cattle because they'll adapt to any climate it seems like they've they're in Mexico they're in Canada I think they'd grow and and do well in Alaska I've had them in a feed yard in western Kansas in one of the worst winters on record and I believe that pen went through with zero Hospital days completely zero death loss snowstorms terrible and they just kept on eating they originated out of the Swiss Alps and we've heard about them far south as you can think that they take the heat well I've got neighbors right now complaining about pinkeye and foot rot like this year knock on wood we have not had to doctor a single animal between the pigment the darkness on the hoof and the darkness around the eyes they just don't seem to have the issues that some of the others do there's thrombi cows in the mountains they really thrive up there you know they go out in the deserts they'll work on the fescue they work out you know where the grass is good it's it's easy to live where the grass is good you know try where it's tough and converting grass and other feet efficiently is a trait that bran V cattle are known for now after years of residual feed intake or RFI data collection the Braun V Association of America has cracked the code on true efficiency the Braun V Association now offers a multi breed RFI epd for the entire industry to use in electing for efficiency when using Braun V cattle the Braun Bay breed has been testing for efficiency for 10 plus years on grow safe equipment and technology even prior to that Braun Bay knew that they had some efficiency values that are inherent to their breed through testing at the Great Western beef Expo where they had a lot of success in identifying different sire lines that were efficient for feed the game so bran Bay's got 10 plus years of history on well over a thousand animals of individual records to drive their efficiency database which is then plugged into the multi breed database of all of the animals tested through grow safe so that you can compare cattle for RFI from location to location and year to year and breed to breed right now sustainability is a huge buzzword and when it comes right down to it when you select for efficiency there's nothing you can do that applies more to being a sustainable producer than selecting for efficiency and where this is going it's it's amazing if a producer selects for efficiency using the RFI efficiency EP D this is the most valuable tool they have to move their herd forward because if you start looking at all the claims that we make in marketing beef we've looked at sourced claims we've looked at antibiotic free claims we've looked at welfare claims I really think that the consumer out there right now what they're looking for now is they want to feel good about the beef that they eat so if they know that it's been responsible for the environment that it was beef it was raised on less feed with a softer carbon footprint I really think that that's going to be a marketing tool for the future when you look at future applications for selection for efficiency that's what you're positioning for it adds the most value the fastest to what you're doing and and it does that by again taking out the the subjective opinions of what you're producing you have hard facts to back up what you're trying to sell if we can dusar calls to gain the amount of feed that it takes to produce beef there will be a lot of dollars involved in the feed yard industry you know if they're efficient here eating out of the bunk they're gonna be fishing out in the pasture and it'll pay off for you in the feed yard the bottom line for cow-calf operations using brown v genetics is a reduction in overall feed intake while maintaining production translating into an automatic cost savings and now with a decade of robust RFI data and the association's new RFI EP d Ron V genetics are the benchmark and breed efficiency people desire these heifers and seems like what you get somebody with a set of them in their hands and they care that first set of heifers very easy to sell to you next time they understand what it's about they understand that the longevity the others are amazing so friends of mine that have been in the cattle business and not been in it for a while when they come around they go my gosh where those others come from there's nothing else like them out there people some of the comments are our first calf heifers have better utters and some of our cows and to me that's kind of hard to believe but yeah when you go out there and see some of their cows see the others on them you understand that they've milk and if you're got a cow that don't meal you're gonna raise a sorry calf they always raise a calf as good or better than they they are their self when I started feeding cattle I've always did it as a retained ownership and owned my cattle that that keeps a risk on me and that's how I trusted these cattle to do the job and we actually sell carcasses instead of cattle we get a base price for the cattle and then we're the carcasses priced off of a grid rib eye area Mar blend yield grade quality grade it's all pluses or if you don't have the right cattle it can be minuses but I've always been in the plus category with a lifetime of experience raising cattle these and other producers across the country are sold on the exceptional value of bromby genetics James Duane and Eric have done so for decades and with a track record like that it's a safe bet that bromby cattle can work for you when I talk to other breeders about the brøndby breed no why why they're superior I asked them why did they give us the Hereford breed the Angus breed Cemetery Sharlee and what is the last breed that was imported from Europe is the Bronte because they kept the best for last that's all the time we have today to learn more about the value of brøndby genetics log on to bran V dot org and to find out more about us visit the American ranch or calm or connect with us on Facebook I'm Pam Minich for the entire American Rancher team thanks for joining us we'll see you next time [Music] [Applause] [Music] that was superior

Channel: Superior Productions

Views: 5,438

Rating: 4.9069767 out of 5

Keywords: american cattle breeds

Id: 21obk_KrFUw

Length: 22min 10sec (1330 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 10 2020