Foot Issues in the Angus Breed

 

If you Google foot issues in the Angus Breed, you’re not going to find much.  Following are the top three articles I found when I googled "Foot Issues in the Angus Breed".  The first is a newsletter published by VDAR or the Van Dyke family.  Seven years ago Ronnie and I had the pleasure of meeting both Lee and Keith Van Dyke and touring their farm.  You don't have to spend much time with either of them to know that they know their cattle.  When you walk through their cow herd you’re going to see structurally correct cattle that are deep with picture perfect udders.  When you read their newsletter you will see that they have been concerned about the foot issues in the Angus breed for several years.  

VDAR Stock Report

The second article I found on Google was the foot score brochure that has been developed by the American Angus Association.  I don't know when this was originally published but am glad to see that steps are being taken to address the issue.

Foot Score Brochure

The third article was considering structural integrity; this article was published back in 2010, so foot issues have been around for awhile.

Consider Structural Integrity

I also did a search through yahoo and found solid footing an article printed in the Angus Journal in 2014.  This article talks about the steps being taken to develop a foot scoring EPD

Solid Footing

The good news is that some folks are talking about foot issues, the bad news is at this point and time it is still just talk.  The Association is requesting breeders to turn in foot scores, but the question is how many breeders are actually doing it?  I confess we haven't turned in the first score; time seems to be the main issue. 

This year the foot issue really hit home for me, and here is why.  We had two first calf heifers that we had to send to the sale barn because of bad feet.  I am not talking about marginally bad I am talking about claw set 9 on the scoring sheet.  The really disappointing thing about these two cows is that we purchased both of them as embryos from a very well known breeder out west. Embryos are not cheap, not only do you have the cost of the embryo itself but you also have the cost of an embryologist to put the embryo in, in the case of these two first calf heifers we had raising them to breeding age, AI breeding then kaboom cull for feet!   Do we blame the breeder?  Should we blame the breeder?  Should a breeder be flushing a cow and selling embryos if the cow has bad feet?  Did the cow that produced these heifers have bad feet?  Did the bull?  The answer is I don't know.  I can tell you it has made me realize that I don't want to purchase anymore embryos at least not without seeing the cow and the bull.

If I feel this way about purchasing embryos, then I sure understand how commercial cattlemen would feel about bulls that came up unsound at 30 months old.  If we don't get a handle on this issue the commercial cattlemen are going to start looking at other breeds, and heck I can't blame them.  It is our responsibility as breeders to provide our customer with a product that works, cows find enough ways to hurt or kill themselves.  We sure don't need to give them another way through bad feet or structure to get culled.

An excerpt from the Consider Structural Integrity article explains what the Australian Angus Association is doing about this issue.

Scoring in Australia Attempting to aid cattle producers in genetic selection for structural integrity, Angus Australia has produced trial estimated breeding values (EBVs) for five foot and leg traits. The five traits include front feet claw set, front feet angle, rear feet angle, correctness of rear legs from a side view and correctness of rear legs from a rear view. Carel Teseling, Angus Australia’s breed development and information manager, says data from 9,000 animals representing 40 Angus herds were used to generate structure EBVs. Structure scores are accepted only for animals assessed by technicians accredited by the Performance Beef Breeders Association. Teseling emphasizes that the new EBVs have been produced as a trial only, but the information is available on the Angus Australia website. Posted structure EBVs have accuracies of 40% or greater. The assessment system uses a 1-to-9 scoring system for feetand-leg structure, with a 5 being ideal (see Figs. 1-4). Scores 4 and 6 show slight variations from ideal, but would include most animals and would be acceptable in any breeding program. Scores 3 and 7 represent greater variation, but would be acceptable in most commercial breeding programs, but seedstock producers should be wary. Scores 2 and 8 are low-scoring animals and should be looked at carefully before purchasing, according to the Australian scoring system. Scores 1 and 9 should not be catalogued and are considered culls.

Keep in mind the above was from an article in 2011 here we are the middle of 2016 and were still talking about it!  I sent an email to the Angus Association Board of Directors concerning foot issues in May.  Folks we need to put this issue on the forefront not on the back burner.  Ask yourself, what can I do to to help?

If you haven't done it already make 2016 the year you do foot scoring on your herd!  That is what we intend to do, we will never solve a problem if we aren't willing to take the first step needed to start solving it.

Fall 2015

It has to be Fall, even if we didn't have a little nip in the air it would be hard to miss.  The Fall sale season has arrived!  I needed to eat some Wheaties just to drag the September Angus Journal out of the mail box.  I imagine the October issue will be the same, sale book after sale book.  I love going through the sale books seeing what direction other breeders are traveling genetically. 

Fall is also calving season for us at Gizmo Angus Farm.  Time to find out if those heifers we like so much are going to become the cows we want them to be.  Fall is also a time of great excitement and at times great disappointment.  There is nothing more exciting than finding your favorite heifer standing over her first calf and a cherry on top its a heifer!

Gizmo Eriskay 1336 2N1 972 Reg# 17844679

  But nothing sadder than finding one of your favorite old cows in trouble, you get her up check her and find a dead calf in her.  You go to work get the calf pulled doctor her up then watch her looking for that lost baby for several days.  It is just heart breaking.

Gizmo Beauty 0707 201 4132 lost her calf this year
 

Fall is the culmination of so much planning, bull selection, breeding then waiting nine months in anticipation of a live calf.  Watching the calves develop and hoping we have done all we can to insure they are healthy.  If we aren't busy enough keeping up with all the new babies.


 It is also time to get our winter pastures planted, plan for the next breeding season, freeze brand,  give herd health vaccination not to mention it is sale season!  We have 7 bulls consigned to the Alabama BCIA Fall Round Up Sale in Uniontown Alabama on Friday November 13th.  This means we have to get BSE's scheduled and add hauling bulls to the schedule.  With all we have to get done, it doesn't look like we are going to have much time to go to many of the sales being advertised, but we are sure going to try to get to a few.  We love attending sales when we get the opportunity, seeing old friends meeting new ones. 

2014 Calf Crop

The past few months have been really busy for us here at Gizmo Angus Farm. For me busy equates to paperwork, for Ronnie it equates to feeding, checking and building fence.  I think I like my job better since it is much warmer sitting here in my recliner typing!  Our last calf arrived on 12/31/2014.  Our first calving date was 10/6/2014 so we calved out 97 calves in 86 days (if I did the math correctly). Ronnie is very strict about trying to get our herd into a 60 day calving season so anything that calved after 12/5/2015 is on the sale list.  I understand getting our herd into a shorter calving season, but man oh man when you have some of your favorite cows on the list it hurts.  We have some calves this year that I am really excited about.  We purchased some embryos from the Sinclair dispersal and the calves are on the ground, they are:

Gizmo B9 Y3051 5522-6148
Gizmo B35 Y3051 5522-6148

We will be really interested to see how these two calves turn out.  There were only two eggs available and we were able to get them purchased, both stuck giving us two nice bull calves.  The dam of these two calves is a bull maker.

N Bar Primrose Y3051 Registration # 11553390



Some notable sons out of this cow are:

Sinclair Emulation 5522 XP Registration # 15696693

 

Sinclair Executive 9XV2 Registration # 16365949

Sinclair Emulation XXP Registration # 15355048

Sinclair Grass Master Registration # 16027094

 



In addition to these two bull calves some other ET calves that are on the watch list are two
SAV Final Answer 0035 sons out of our old Finks Pride 065 6198 LB donor cow. We flushed this cow at the age of 13 twice once to our Coleman EXT 6149 bull and once to Final Answer with the two flushes resulting in 44 eggs. We have only implanted 4 of the eggs two of the 6149 which didn't stick and two of the Final Answer's that did. Although the dam of these calves didn't make Pathfinder status in our herd she did produce one Pathfinder daughter and has one Pathfinder Granddaughter working in our herd.

Gizmo Final Answer B7 065

Gizmo Final Answer B14 065

 

Another group that so far is looking really good are out of an old cow we purchased from the Kinsington Cattle dispersal.

 

Ambrose Erica A47

 

We have several calves on the ground this year out of this old cow they are:

 



 



Gizmo Erica B8 A47 0035 - This is a nice heifer out of A47 and SAV Final Answer 0035

                                       SAV Final Answer 0035                                            

                                                                    

OCC Juneau 807J

 

Gizmo Juneau B15 A47 807J

Gizmo Juneau B30 A47 807J

Gizmo Juneau B36 A47 807J

 

 These three flush brothers out of 807J are really eye catchers!  They are on the radar for sure.

 

Two more calves that keep catching our eye are our of a flush from a cow owned by our friend Tim Hopkins over at Cedar Creek Ranch in Ashford Alabama.  We split the flush of his RB Barber 756 528 B192 cow and Boyd New Day 8005.  We put two of the eggs out of this flush in and got a heifer and a bull.  They are long and deep with a ton of eye appeal.

 

Gizmo Barber B29 756 8005

Gizmo New Day B39 756 8005

Some of my very favorite calves this year are out of another flush purchased from the Sinclair dispersal.  They are N Bar Clova Pride F2839 X Sinclair Rito Legacy 3R9 and they are something to get excited about for sure!

 

 



Gizmo Legacy B33 F2839 3R9

Gizmo Clova Pride B34 3R9

Gizmo Legacy B37 F2839 3R9

Gizmo Clova Pride B40 3R9

                                                                        Sinclair Rito Legacy 3R9

I am really excited to see how both the heifers and the bulls out of this mating develop!

 

We have a few ET calves out of our now deceased donor RB Bridget 658 C11 111 and N Bar Emulation EXT.  We are currently using a full brother natural service on our heifers and a maternal brother out of Coleman EXT 6149 on our two and three year old cows. The 658 cow has had a major impact on our herd and will continue impacting it through her sons.

 

Gizmo Bridget B17 658 EXT

Gizmo EXT B28 658 U23

Gizmo EXT B31 658 U23
 

 A New Day out of the 658 cow

  A Final Answer out of the 658 Cow

 

In addition to our old proven cows calves we have some up and coming young cows that we are pretty darn excited about.  Needless to say they have done everything right so far but they still have to raise their calves and breed back.

 

Giz Miss Emulous 1220 EXT Registration # 17523774 This is a first calf heifer that was purchased as an embryo from Coleman Angus.  She took AI on the first service and is raising a bull calf out of OCC Paxton 730P. 

 

Giz Kinochtry Bty 1212 6807 Registration # 17525496 Another heifer purchased as an embryo from Coleman Angus.  She took AI on the first service and is raising a heifer calf out of our

Coleman EXT 6149 bull.

 

Giz Kinochtry Bty 1216 6807 Registration # 17525495A flush sister to the 1212 cow that stuck AI on the first service.  She is raising a bull calf out of our Coleman EXT 6149 bull.

 

Giz Kinochtry Bty 1232 6807 Registration # 17530336 A flush sister to the 1212 and 1216 cows that also stuck AI on the first service.  She is raising a heifer calf out of OCC Missing Link 830M.

 

Gizmo Bridget 1219 956 830M Registration # 17538449 This is a heifer that we have been watching, she is out of a natural daughter of our 658 cow and a really nice Matrix bull that we raised.  She has been a favorite from birth, then stuck AI on the first service. 

 

 

We also have some of those tried and true cows that just keep getting the job done for us that have some calves that are going to be really good ones.

 

Our Gizmo Pride 525 065 0125 Registration # 15394906  just keeps on doing us a great job! She achieved Pathfinder again this year the and this was the 7th consecutive calf so not only did she make Pathfinder she continues to perform.  She has a heifer calf on the ground out of SAV Resource 1441 that is already catching everyone's eye.  I think this one is a keeper!

 

Our Gizmo Pride 811 525 430 Registration # 16358620 that has followed in her dams footsteps making Pathfinder on her third calf.  This year she has a standout heifer calf on her side out of SAV Net Worth 4200.

 

We also have a bull calf on the ground out of a cow that we are currently flushing she is SAV Blackcap May 0524 Registration # 16697983 the sire of the calf is SAV Campbell 0262 Registration # 16687708 he is a little stud, so it will be interesting to see how he develops.

 

Well I am sure there are a few I missed, we have a bunch of nice calves this year these are just a sample, of what we are doing genetically.