#65 - Bull Sale Preview and Breeding Philosophies

Matt takes a solo flight in this episode as he highlights the sires of this year's sale bulls and then gives an overview of the Dalebanks Practical. Profitable. Genetics. breeding philosophy.

52nd Annual Bull Sale
November 23, 2024
NW of Eureka, KS

mattperrier@dalebanks.com
www.dalebanks.com

Transcript

Microphone (Yeti Stereo Microphone): 0:07

Thanks for joining us for practically ranching brought to you by Dalebanks Angus. We're counting the days to our annual bull sale. November 23rd, 2024. We'll hold it at 12:30 PM. Northwest of Eureka, Kansas. We'll sell about 150 yearling and coming two year old bulls. And we would love to have you either here at the ranch. Or online@cci.live. This episode is not only sponsored by Dalebanks Angus, it is all Dalebanks Angus all the time. I did a bull sale preview similar to this last year. And admittedly, it felt pretty self-serving it's time. But I had lots of good feedback. And so guess what? I'm doing it again. Some of you were even brave enough to say that you wished I had gone a little more in depth about why I choose some of these sires and our breeding program. And so, um, This years may even turn into a longer version. So... you're welcome. Or I'm sorry. Whichever may be the case. First I'm going to go through the sires that will have the most bulls in this year's sale. And then after that, I'll outline a little of our breeding philosophy and what goes into producing these bulls each year at Dalebanks Angus. So, um, thank you for a. Tuning in again, and I hope you enjoy it. Starting with the sires of this year's sale bulls and no particular order. Um, but I'm going to start with the bull called H F safe and sound. He is actually the sire of our first three lead off bulls and the older division. And then we'll have several more throughout the sale in both age divisions. This was a bull that we actually tried to buy several years ago as a yearling from the Hilton farms sale when he sold. We didn't get it done. Uh, we were going to get him as a cleanup bull to use here, and I liked a lot of things about the bull and I just didn't have enough. Uh, didn't have enough. Powder in the gun to Getting purchased. Uh, but we've used him AI ever since. In fact, we were some of the first ones to use the safe and sound bull. We've bred heifers and cows, but primarily used him as a calving ease bull. And, and he's just, he's a rock star for that top 2% for his calving ease, direct DPD. Um, they're shaped, right. They're made right. They are not tiny calves. They still come out with plenty of vigor and hit the ground running, but he's worked really well as a Kevin he's sire. He, if I had to sum the safe and sound cattle up, they are just all around range. Ready cattle. They're easy fleshing. They're deep sided. They're good, structured, free moving cattle that just have a ton of, uh, fleshing ability and function and hardiness to them. From an EPD trait standpoint, as I mentioned, he is, is in the stratosphere in terms of calving, ease, direct, and yet still is in the top third for weaning and yearling EPD. Um, he's right at zero for yearling height, uh, which puts him in the, uh, smallest 10% of the breed, for yearling height. But they put kind of a pounds in the right package. So he will moderate frame size, I would say in most operations. and still carries that into his mature weight and height EPDs that are in the smaller 10 to 15% as well. He is in the upper quartile of the breed for marbling. Uh, 0.85 is where the Seiler. We're HS safe and sound is today for marbling. And yet he's also in the best 25% for dollar energy. And you don't see that very often. So folks who are trying to find those. lower maintenance type females to keep into the herd and yet still not have to give up all the marbling, the bull fits really well for that. He's in the top 10% for his dollar maternal. And because of all these trades combined is in the top 10% for dollar combined, too. And so that's why we've used safe and sound. That's why we tried to buy him earlier. And that's why we continue to use him as he just hits on so many areas and keeps things in balanced. So well, not a rockstar. Star in any one trait. And I say that about a lot of the bulls we use, but he's a bull that, um, he just adds functional longevity and he adds sustained profitability to a cow herd in my opinion. The next bull will hit on'em. Is to Haim a patriarch. He'll be the sire. I think of probably the most bulls we have about 30 yearling and coming two year old bulls that'll be sired by patriarch. And, um, this is a bull that we've used for three or four years. Um, we're starting to wind down on using him simply because we've got so many daughters, we've got so many customers who've bought patriarch sens already and are now getting daughters of those bulls, but he's another calving ease bull that's just worked in a variety of roles wherever we've used him over the past several years. we've used several bulls from our friends, the Borror family Tehama Angus out in Northern California through the years. And they're always very predictable. They're always very consistent. They always follow those ePDs about as well as we can expect. And, and patriarch has certainly been no exception. Again, calving sire 13 for calving ease direct up to 134 pounds, a yearling weight in the top 20%. Um, his daughters I think, are going to be a strong suit. They've bred. Well, very well here. Um, his heifer pregnancy is in the top 5% of the breed at a 17.6. And, um, I think we've seen that, that here as well. from a structure standpoint, feet, and an angle of his pasterns he's in the upper 20 to 30% of the breed for those traits. And, um, uh, you know, his sire. Niagara was, and really maternal grand sire, Connealy Thunder were both, talked about as foot improvers back before a lot of people were even looking for foot improvers. And so I think his, his pedigree is stacked with several different bulls in there that that should help that, that foot and leg soundness as well. he also offers a lot of end product merit, uh, 0.94 on marbling 0.84 on ribeye, which ranks him in the top 20 to 25% respectively. And again, as you combine this balance of these traits, he's in the top 15% of the breed for dollar maternal. top 25% of the breed for dollar beef value. And that puts them in the top 15% just shy with$300 combined value. And so these patriarchs, again, they've met with a lot of customer acceptance. Um, The other thing that patriarch progeny have done. I mentioned that the daughters have been very fertile and bred really well here. the bulls have excellent fertility as well. And you know, this is something that we, we have a difficult time of measuring just how many cows a bull actually gets bred in the pasture because we all know that it takes two to tango and it could be the daughters, or it could be the, the cow or the heifers fault. It could be the bull's fault, but, You know, by and large, we've gotten good reports about breed ups on patriarch sons out there in commercial pastures. And as we run bulls through the breeding soundness exam shoot, and our vet doesn't see sire tags doesn't know who the sires would be, but just anecdotally, some of the observations that I've had is as I will hear from the vet, as they step up to the microscope and say, man, this bull is really good, or this bull's a rockstar or whatever the case may be. Quite often, it's, it's going to be a patriarch son. And so I think the semen, motility and quality hopefully will transmit into getting a lot of females bred out there in the pasture. So another, another good, all around type of bull that has worked very, very well in our program. Yon top cut will be the next bill that we talk about, uh, will sell just shy of 25 bulls in both age divisions again that are sired by top. Cut. Um, Kevin and Lydia Yon out in South Carolina, bred the bull and again, good friends of ours and a tremendous breeding program out there. And, and we've used. We've used a couple of Yon sires through the years. Uh, we've used top cut very heavily and we're going to be using a maternal brother to him called Yon Saluda in the coming years. And so, um, and again, just a really good program that, that is cranking out a line of cattle in these, uh, In the sons of there. Sarah D 668 cow that, um, that do a lot of things really well. Top cuts, um, is really unique. Quite often when we see bulls that are off the charts on marbling and he sees a 1.6 marbling EPD, top 2% of the breed. Um, he's a very lean scanning bull, his progeny are some of the leanest at yearling time when we ultrasound those. And I believe they have some carcass data, actual carcass data that would back this up, but they're also in the leanest, 1% of the breed for fat. And when I see those two traits in a sire, sometimes a red flag goes off in my head that, oh my here's a terminal cross Angus bull or whatever we want to determine that. And they're going to be big and they're gonna be hard and et cetera, it said no breeding and everything else. Then you turn around and look at a bull, like top cut. And he's not. They're moderate framed. He is in a, let's see for his yearling height, he's in the smallest 20% of the breed for yearling height, height. I would say that ours, at least here. Have probably even been a little more moderate than that. Uh, still in the, in the most moderate 20 to 25% for their mature Heights. But it's heifer pregnancy EPDs and the top 10% of the breed. And granted he's just had about 79 daughters submitted to the association with breeding data. But that has held very well. And we have seen as we've bred the first group, a couple groups of top cuts here. They've bred up very well. And as they get out into those pastures, They aren't super lean cattle. They've got some fleshing ability and they've got some rib depth and, and enough capacity, I think they're to, to work in a range type of environment. So, you know, Top Cut does so many things, so well, they're, you know, top 15% for docility. His foot claw and angles are still in the top 10 to 20%. Um, here's one, that's a newer EPD that a lot of you probably haven't started using yet. But those in the Southeast are ecstatic about the fact that the American Angus association now has hair shed EPDs or H S is what they will be in the catalog. And this is a sires ability to make progeny who are going to shed early and shed off well. And, and, um, top cut is a rockstar for this. Uh, top 1% of the breed and we've seen it here. Uh, they are early shedding cattle, slick haired. so that's just one more in the long lines of pluses uh, that we've got to these top cut cattle. You know, phenotypically they're nice cattle. They're not going to come at you with this stoutness that some of these really big bone, big, high, super high octane cattle may have. But man, when you put together things like he puts together a dollar maternal and the top 1% with$109 am, um,$173. Beef up to a$333 combined, which ranks in the top 3% of the breed. There's just so much good in these cattle, and I think you're going to really appreciate both the number profile, but the moderation of frame and, and just, um, um, Kind of balance of, of numbers that you get with these top cut sons. And, and again, we'll have those in both the, both coming two year olds and the yearling division, most of those will be calving, ease bulls. A lot of them will be out of heifers first calf heifers, but some will be out of cows as well. So, excited, um, to continue to have those top cut progeny. Uh, that offer so many things for our customers. In this sale and in future ones. Next I'm going to cover a bull that this is going to be one of the last groups that we've had. Conneely cool. A lot of you have, have loved these cool sens throughout the years, especially if, if you're looking for. Just kind of a deep sided, easier fleshing type of phenotype. Uh, these cool bulls have, have really resonated and really worked for a lot of our customers. similar to safe and sound. He's not necessarily a standout in any one trait. Uh, but they're fertile cattle. Uh, they come lighter than average at birth. They hit the ground running. They're very quiet, dispositioned, cattle. It's it's one of the best bulls that I've probably used in my lifetime to quiet a set of cattle down, if you need to, he's a top 1% for his docility PD at a 35. excellent dollar maternal cattle. He's in the top 10%, a good heifer pregnancy in the top 15% big scrotal cattle. He just does a lot of things really well. And a lot of you have already used cool sons, but we do have a few more in this year's sale. And as, as we, uh, as we finish out his probably four year term that we've been using him here in, in, uh, in our herd. And he's, he's done everything. We've asked him to. Another bull that we've used before. And we'll see a, these will be some of the last ones that we have out of, or by deer valley growth fund. Um, kind of the opposite of what some of the bulls that I was talking about. Moderating growth back deer valley growth fund will add growth. He'll add substance. He'll add bone. He'll add a look. Um, man, those are just super powerful cattle and nearly everybody that walks into a pen that's got some growth funds, sons. There I is naturally going to be drawn toward the growth fund sons. Um, top 2% weaning weight EPD, top 1% of a yearling weight of the breed. At a 92 and a 1 68 yearling weight, respectively. Um, he's, that's his specialty and he does it very, very well. he will add some frame and he will add some mature size to those daughters. Uh, but he also ads pounds and adds growth and adds a look and, and, um, consequently, you know, using the top 1% for the dollar weaning, top 3% for dollar feed lot, so. If you're selling pounds. If you are even using a bull to maybe even sell heifers and steers and you want the most pounds you can get a growth fund is, is a very good option. And, um, those bulls and we've we've matched growth fund up on higher marbling and, you know, a more maternal type cattle that are maybe a little easier shedding. And that's worked really well. And that's what we've attempted to do, going forth as well. So these will be some of the last growth funds. We do also have a son of growth fund that we used, and he will be the sire of about six or eight bulls in the yearling division. Uh, E&B rival 1 75. Um, bred by our friends, the Benoits up in north central, Kansas. It has been a growth fund son out of a canola confidence plus daughter. That, um, has a little more marbling, EPD, a little more ribeye area. So a little better in product merit maybe than the growth fund cattle. Maybe not quite as stout and his big rib is what the growth funds are, but that's an exciting ah, that's an exciting bull that we started using. We'll just have this group and maybe a few more here coming up of the rivals, but, um, does a lot of the things that, uh, that growth on didn't and that's the beauty of genetics that we can that we can blend those together uh, some newer sires that we have used, and these will be in the fall yearling little division. Um, the first bull in law, 72 of the yearlings will be a son of Baldrige Gibson. Gibson's a confidence plus son out of a Prophet cow that goes back to a really famous cow in the Angus breed Baldrige, Isabel Y 69. just a cool look to those cattle. Great from the profile really puts a lot of flash, you know, a longer neck and, and just. Really stylish from the side and lot 72, as you look at that picture, and as you watch his video, I think you'll see that. Um, it puts quite a bit of growth into those progeny Gibson himself is in the top 10% of both weaning and yearling way DPDs and, um, he has also, I think, kind of straightened up some of those softer pastured cattle, maybe put a little deeper heel into some of them and his, his claw and angle ePDs we'll back that up as we look at them in the top 3% and 2% respectively for claw and angle EPD. the Gibsons are, are just really eye appealing cattle. And, um, this was an interesting story on how he came into the select sires study was a mature bull that, uh, they went out looking for a bull that, that had a little data. And it kind of proved himself the old fashioned way, and I always, I always like, I'm a sucker for the old school bulls that do it that way. And so we use him, this'll be, uh, well, I have a few more next spring. Uh, but we're, we're, uh, trying some new bulls and this was one of them that we tried and really liked, really liked the way those cattle looked from the side. And, um, and I think that those will, those will find a lot of friends on sale day.

Microphone (Yeti Stereo Microphone)-2: 18:04

Another new sire that will have sons of, in this year's sale. And some of the first sons honestly, available in the country have. Are going to be by a bull called Connealy commerce. Again, like Connealy cool, bred up in the Sandhills in Nebraska, by our good friends, the Connealy family. And, um, we'll have about 10 sons of commerce and actually we'll have quite a few more of these Commerce's as we go forth. We've been using him a lot on our Virgin heifers, a few cows uh, he's a Sunbeam son that, um, I think Connealys are really excited about this bull as well said that he puts a lot of rib depth and, and make some nice females.

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You know, he has a really cool pedigree for that. He's got S. You know, a tremendous spread from is, you know, birth to two a year laying in a specific like calving ease he's in the top 5% of the breed for calving direct. The calves they're not super small, but they're shaped, right, and I'm just, haven't had any problem breeding him to heifers. And then he turns around and is in the top 2% to 3% of the end of the breed for weaning weight, yearling weight at 92 for weaning and 160 for yearling weight. And so. Cattle have got a lot of grow to them. They hit the ground running. Um, it's, it's fun to look at cattle like that. They still scan very well. He's a 0.93 for marbling EPD, 1.14 for ribeye area, APD. And again, you put all of these strengths together. And he ends up in the top 10% of the breed for, for. The dollar combined, uh, And so that's a bull that, that you'll see a lot of sons, coming in our program over the next couple of years. And one that we're really excited about. Uh, the last bullet we'll touch on is to Tehama Testament. And again, similar to patriarch a he's a patriarch son bread in the, uh, in the Borror program up there in Northern California. And. And man, I tell you what. These bulls have an immense amount of herd bull character. I mean, if, if you walk into a pan and see one striding out there and a lot of bone and a lot of chest width and just this masculine looking 12, 13 month old bull, when the rest of them are still kind of coming into their own look. Uh, he's probably going to be a Testament. They just have that herd bull look and, and the daughters are just gorgeous. I talked to Bryce a couple, weeks ago at the American Angus association meetings. And. He is really high on these Testament daughters. And I think that that's going to be his strong suit as well. And, this is a, this is a bull that just. Uh, it's pretty cool to see. Um, again, how genetics can kind of come together, patriarch son out of a sitz wisdom, uh, back to final answer cow and again, a bull that's spread out pretty well. And as EPDs still double-digit calving ease and, in the upper end or upper half, at least for growth and marbling and things like that, actually he's a 1.2, two for marbling today. And that's moved up a little bit, I believe in top 10% of the breed. So, uh, Again, not huge cattle. They are going to be the right size in my opinion, with a lot of rib shape and a lot of depth and still enough. Uh, performance for a lot of our, especially in maybe a little lower input type of a program. but one that I think just they, they're going to do a lot of good for a lot of folks. And if you haven't already been using patriarch and are looking for kind of the next generation, uh, this may be an option for you as well. There. So that will hit most of the sires. There's a few smaller sire groups that we just have a couple in that I didn't get to mention, but a lot of those are bulls you probably already know a little bit about, or sons or grandsons of some of the sires that we just talked about. You know, and I always have to remind myself and, and others that I talk with that. The sire is only half the equation. The cow side of that pedigree on these bulls that we're selling can not be discounted. Um, you know, science tells us that she's offering half the genetics. I think as we learn more about things like fetal programming and epigenetics and all these things that the smart folks are passing down to us. I think we learn that maybe she's even more than just half. Um, and, and a lot of Cal men have said that for years. Horse horsemen the same way. So some of these individual bulls that we sell next Saturday maybe a little different than their sires typical outcome because of what that dam gave them. But as a whole, I think this kind of synopsis will give you a little bit of an idea of, of what we've seen on average or in general here in the Dalebanks program. So I said I was going to dig a little bit deeper on our philosophy of cattle breeding. And I don't know that this is anything monumental. Um, but I, I do like to share this because it. Everybody has a little different perspective on breeding cattle. You know, breeding cattle today has gotten pretty complex and there are plenty of discussions about whether that's good or bad or whatever, and I'll leave those for another day. But honestly, it is a way bigger feat to breed cattle today than it has probably ever been. Um, our American Angus association publishes, I believe it's 22 expected progeny differences for different traits. We've got several EPDs that, that they're working on on a research basis that'll probably become available in the next year to two years. Plus we got nine multi trait selection indices that take these EPD traits and run them through an economic index. And we've got an even more inclusive. Um, Tool to select these cattle. And then on top, all this paper and all these data points, we've got tons of foundation traits, subjective traits, whatever we want to call them that we select for within our herd to. Maintain a functional Cal base. Then after we get all these data points, we've got a balancing act of blending, pedigrees and cattle types to achieve. Just the right amount of, of outcross and of complementarity between these lines. And yet enough consistency that we can have a set of bulls to offer to you or a set of females in our own herd that are, they're going to breed true and breed. As their EPDs predict and is as consistent as they can. I don't bring all of this up to complain about how hard our job is or to be braggadocious about what it is we're able to accomplish. It's it's just what we do here. We believe that if any of these steps aren't done. The data analysis, the consideration for, you know, The maternal side and our management and the pedigrees and everything else. If we leave out any of those steps, The end result is probably going to be seed stock that's not very valuable to our customer. And so what we try to do with Practical. Profitable. Genetics. Breeding philosophy is take something that's pretty complex today. And boil it down to simpler decisions for you, for our customers. I read one time that Albert Einstein said genius is making complex ideas, simple, not making simple ideas complex. And we've all been there. We've all sat in that room. When somebody turns something in to something a whole lot tougher than what it is. We're trying to do the exact opposite. After years, decades of discussion with you, our customers and colleagues in the business. We set thresholds for traits that you all tell us help achieve sustained profit in your herds. Sometimes this may be a minimum, sometimes it may be a maximum. Sometimes it may be an optimum range in the middle. And quite often, what we were doing five and 10 years ago with the set of traits may have to be adjusted because the market has adjusted or folks management has adjusted or results of past decisions that you all have made on your cow herds. Good or bad, may dictate that you do something slightly different today than you did five or 10 years ago. So. There are some of these traits that we put immense amounts of pressure on and others that we put a lot less, if any, on we know there're correlations, genetic correlations, phenotypic correlations between these traits. We know there are some antagonisms to selecting one and getting unintended consequences of another. And we had, we try to keep those dynamics in mind as well as we make these decisions. We do everything we can to let today's beef industry and the context of how we manage and market cattle. Be our guide as we select these traits. And then, and this is probably the most important part: we let mother nature help us govern these decisions. Um, with all these tools we have at our disposal, her ability to tell us when we get a little far out of bounds is probably something that's as important as anything. Um, traits like reproductive efficiency, fertility. They're lowly heritable, which means that they're greatly affected by feed management and the environment. So that's why we try to handle these cows in a similar, some would even say more conservative way than what you our typical commercial cow calf producer does. Um, And when we do that mother nature usually lets us know when we got out of bounds on a trait. We ended up with an open heifer, a cow, and she goes to the sale barn and we figure out that we may have pushed the envelope a little too far. And so we, we feel like mother nature-- as cruel as she can be sometimes. And as hard as it is on the pocket book or on our ego, To sell those good ones that didn't make it because they weren't able to. Get bread or stay bread or whatever the case may be. We still believe that she is a tremendous governor in this genetic selection process. So after we've analyzed the industry and our customer's needs, we go to the American Angus association website. We use their sire evaluation search page, and we plug in parameters that we feel like we need in a sire, whether it's all 22 traits or. 10 to 12 of them. Uh, we make it wide enough that we get a fairly lengthy with list of bulls. And then, then we get on the phone or we get in the truck and we ask a lot of questions of of folks who've used the bulls that we're considering. Sometimes if they bred the bulls and we know their program and we know, their integrity and. We know we can call them and they'll tell us the good, bad and the ugly, but we, we do everything we can to find out what that first batch calves has been like or what those siblings have been like. And, and, um, sometimes it's about. Traits that aren't expressed in an EPD yet, and those are probably sometimes the most important parts that we can ask about since we can't find the date on that. After all this, we try to end up with the list of about five or six sires, each breeding season that we'll use. Sometimes I get weak and add a seventh, but. We made these sires to the heifers and the cow herd, and we try to match that sires strengths. To each of the cows or heifers weaknesses. Um, I wish I could say that they didn't have any weaknesses, but they all have something that we feel like we can improve upon. And, and it's not a fire and ice mating. But it is sure, a complementary meat mating that we try to fix whatever they need fixing. Once we get those progeny. Uh, we start to learn how sire has worked in our cow herd. Sometimes we realize that he didn't fit. Just because of our program or genetics or environment. Other times we learned that he was pretty good, but we may need to match him with a different set of females next year to bring out those strengths and just like most things we do around here, and you all do at your place. The goal is to get a little bit better with every breeding season, with every calf crop, incremental improvement. Given the data and the information that's available and the observations that we can make here at the ranch. So. That's it, that's it like. I started with it. It's nothing monumental. It's nothing cutting edge. As you can tell by our sale toppers or lack thereof throughout the decades, our goal is not to produce that outlier that changes the breed every year. It's to produce hundreds. That offer foundation cowherd traits, coupled with growth levels and marbling and muscle that fit today's commercial marketplace. And just, like I said, Einstein said earlier, the result seems simple, but the process behind it is a little complex and that's, that's what we do. That's our job. It's what we've done for 120 years now. Admittedly. Great-grandfather barrier was not likely online doing sire sorts at 10 o'clock or midnight, but a. It's what we have tried to do. He used to say. I let's see if I can remember this."We strive to produce an animal who profits his owner through his production." That's a mouthful, but whether it is on his was on his place or somebody else's place that bought him. He wanted them to profit that owner through their production. And that was his goal. It still is. It's what brought about this whole practical, profitable genetics that we talk about ad nauseum these days. So. That's that's how the bulls that we're going to sell next Saturday, the 23rd. That's how they came to be, um, again, right or wrong. That's our breeding philosophy. That's our management philosophy. And that's what we feel like, uh, fits best for our customers and the industry. So, for the final time on this year's podcast, I'm going to invite you once again to be with us in person or online for our 52nd annual bull sale. Saturday, November 23rd. We'll start at 1230 at the ranch Northwest of Eureka, Kansas. Sell about 70 coming, two year old bulls and just over 80 yearlings. We'll walk the bulls through the sale ring. Uh, plus we will also broadcast the sale online@cci.live. The catalog, searchable, catalog, flip catalog videos, phenotypic data, or. Gina typic data sheets, everything is available. At dalebanks.com. And if you'd like a printed catalog, uh, just shoot me your mailing address to my email. mattperrier@dalebanks.com and we will get one to you in the mail very quickly. So again, thank you for listening. Thank you for putting up with this week's host and guest. and I promise I won't do any more of these solo flights until next year about this time, but, uh, uh, it is always good to get on here and visit with you. I like it better when I have someone to visit back with me. But, uh, again, thanks for listening. We're coming up on Thanksgiving and I do, I mean it, when I say it, thank you for listening to this podcast. I thank you. And I thank God for all the blessings that He continues to give us. Have a great day.