You don’t have to go through a learning curve or pass a certification that declares you’re qualified to be a cattle seed stock producer. If you have enough dollars in your bank account, you can spend them on a few of the trendiest production sales. You then take an AI class, or again, if you have a sufficient amount of dollars left in the bank, you hire a ranch manager who knows how to AI, and just like that, you’re in the seed stock business.

I don’t intend to sound overly cynical about the way things are. I’m all for people to be able to spend their hard-earned dollars any way they see fit. It’s the American way. I do think, though, that some of the folks out there selling bulls do their commercial customers a disservice by not learning the difference between maternal and terminal cattle and their applications. There is efficiency and profitability not being realized otherwise.       

We all want calves to grow as quickly and efficiently as possible at the ranch and in the feedlot. We then want them to produce a high-yielding, high-quality product on the rail. These are terminal traits. Terminal traits are important. Cattle are all eventually terminal, after all.

Due to genetic antagonisms, good terminal cattle are not usually good maternal cattle, though.

To the commercial cowman that sells his calves at weaning, maternal traits are infinitely more important to the bottom line than terminal ones. 

Mature Cow Size

 Let’s start with mature cow size. You can support more mother cows on the same ground if they are moderate in size as opposed to large. You will have more calves to market from the same amount of acreage from moderate-sized cows as opposed to large ones. Moderate size is a trait possessed by maternal cattle.

Interestingly, according to a study done at the USDA’s Meat Animal Research Center, the average mature weight on cows from breeds we consider to be maternal is heavier than continental breed cows. According to MARC research, Hereford cows have the heaviest mature weights, followed closely by Angus. This is the result of many years of selection for feedlot performance without taking into consideration the invadable antagonistic effect this has on mature cow weights.

On average, a 1400 lb. cow will consume 1053 lbs. more dry matter over a year’s time than will a 1200 lb. cow.  The larger cow’s calf will have more growth potential. You need to take that into account. A larger cow’s calf needs are sufficiently more valuable to offset the increased feed costs over the smaller ones and the lost opportunity to run more cows that weigh less. 

For the EPD breeder, the MW, MH, and $EN EPDs have some correlation to mature cow size. I copied the following explanations from the American Angus Association website. Source

Mature Weight EPD (MW), expressed in pounds, is a predictor of the difference in mature weight of daughters of a sire compared to the daughters of other sires.

Mature Height EPD (MH), expressed in inches, is a predictor of the difference in mature height of a sire’s daughters compared to daughters of other sires.

Cow Energy Value ($EN), expressed in dollar savings per cow per year, assesses differences in cow energy requirements as an expected dollar savings difference in daughters of sires. A larger value is more favorable when comparing two animals (more dollars saved on feed energy expenses). Components for computing the cow $EN savings difference include lactation energy requirements and energy costs associated with differences in mature cow size.

Fertility

Now we’ll look at fertility. Fertility is the number 1 determiner of profitability in a cowherd. It’s tough to capture any grid premiums on a late-born or nonexistent calf. A brood cow needs to be hormonally balanced and able to conceive on her first breeding attempt each season. Hormonal balance has a specific look. A hormonally balanced cow has a long slender neck that transitions smoothly into her shoulder. She is much wider at the hip than the shoulder. This gives her body a wedge shape. The kicker is that the terminal traits that ad value to a feeder calf are genetically antagonistic to hormonal balance and fertility.   

She needs to be biologically adapted to do this on the forage available in her environment with very few extra inputs.   Shallow ribbed cattle lack the vital organ capacity to convert low-quality cellulose into useable nutrients. Purchasing extra hay to keep this kind of cattle insufficient flesh is a profit killer. In my particular situation, depending on the depth of the snow, our cows must get by well into the winter on brown grass before we start to supplement them with hay. We’ve found that deep ribbed cows stay in good condition long after we’ve had to start supplementing the pencil gutted ones.

Heavy milking cows also have strikes against them with regards to fertility. A highly fertile female milks adequately to supply the needs of her calf but nothing beyond that. A cow that produces any milk beyond what is adequate has a built-in liability against the rest of her biological processes. One of those being reproduction.

Survivability

Finally, let’s take a look at survivability because it’s impossible to capture any grid premiums from a dead calf. 

Since dystocia has a major impact on calf survivability or the lack thereof, the CEM EPD needs to be considered by those that rely heavily on epds to make their breeding decisions. CEM is a predictor of what percentage of a sire’s daughters will require assistance at calving time compared to the daughters of other sires. The higher the CEM number, the better.

Structure plays a huge part in calving ease. Slim-hipped, small pelvised animals are obviously not desirable. Cattle with high tail heads and uptilted pelvises are becoming quite common in this day of EPD-only selection. A tilted pelvis is also antithetical to calving ease.  An easy calving cow slopes gently downward at the tailhead.

Udder structure plays a huge part in calf survivability. The udder needs to be level with a strong rear attachment. Ideally, the teats need to be no longer than two inches. Shorter is better.  Thick, yam-like teats are inexcusable. It’s crucial for a newborn calf to consume colostrum within the first four hours of life. After that, they begin to lose the ability to absorb colostrum antibodies through their intestinal walls into their bloodstream. Unless the rancher has the time to help each calf nurse right after it’s born, defective udders are calf killers. It’s easy to forget by fall, so cows with deformed udders need to be marked down and disposed of as soon as they wean their calf.

Mothering desire plays a huge role in calf survivability. This comes back to hormonal balance. Some cows abandon their calves at birth.

Another crazy thing that can happen when hormones are out of wack is the cow that savages her newborn calf rather than mothering it. 

One more undesirable thing is laziness. Sometimes a cow doesn’t necessarily abandon her calf, but she is slow or lackadaisical in getting it licked off. The odds of this kind of cow’s calf surviving are a lot lower than the cow that immediately goes to work mothering her calf. We calve from mid-January through mid-March, and I’ve found that a calf can handle a lot of cold as long as it is immediately licked off.

What About Terminal Traits ?

Everyone should have the objective of raising calves that grow as rapidly and efficiently as possible. We also want to produce a high-quality, high-yielding end product. That’s where terminal cattle come into the picture.

Continental cattle excel in growth and yield, while the English breeds excel in maternal traits and carcass quality.

The MARC study cited above puts some ambiguity to that statement, but for the sake of this discussion, we’re going to assume that there are still some maternal-type English cattle out there.

A sound production model would be to run a set of high-performance, high carcass yield continental bulls with your herd of highly maternal, highly efficient Angus cows. This is a good model except for one complication. If you’re raising your own replacements, you’ll have to determine where the heifers will come from.

Some producers run a small percentage of English-bred bulls to take care of that problem. Other producers buy all their replacements. This works if you have a local source of high-quality predictable genetics. If you don’t, you’d be better off raising your own replacements due to the inevitable lack of uniformity you’d get buying cows from random sources.

According to MARC research, your herd of highly efficient, highly maternal cows needs to be crossbred to get maximum heterosis. Again, this would be great if you are purchasing your replacements from one or two reputable sources. If you are trying to raise your own, you’d need a huge ranch with several herds of cattle to get it all done.

If you prefer your calves to be one uniform breed. There is enough genetic variation within some breeds, “Black Angus, for example,” to develop both maternal and terminal lines.

As you can see, there is more than one way to take advantage of this systems approach. It all depends on the environment you operate in and what makes the most sense in your particular situation.

In Conclusion

To be more profitable in the coming years, commercial breeders need to approach their programs in a maternal vs. terminal fashion that best fits into their particular operation.

To be more useful to the cattle industry as a whole, some of the allure and exclusivity need to be removed from seed stock production.

Seedstock producers need to take more of a systems-based approach to their operations and decide what segment of the industry they want to supply, whether that be maternal, terminal, or both.