Beef farmers rate the Hereford cross dam high for its qualities of hardiness, docility, milking ability and ease of management. The basic principle governing cattle production is that a breed must be fit to survive and thrive in the environment in which it is raised, on a cost-effective basis.
The breed must have a reasonable balance between productive traits and carcass excellence, always remembering that without the first the second is irrelevant.
The Hereford breed, the worlds most numerous beef breed has singularly met these important economic criteria. Put another way — a breed to succeed to-day must possess one or more unique traits that are needed by the commercial beef industry together with the other characteristics required such as: fertility, calving ease, calf survival rate, milking ability, hardiness, longevity, rustling ability, fast rate of liveweightgain, good feed conversion, conformation and carcass quality. The Hereford female has established herself as a superior mother cow with the capacity to meet producers demands for productivity and efficiency.
Fertility and reproduction affects the profit potential of a cowherd more than any other trait. It is five times more important than the growth traits and ten times as important as carcass traits.
Hereford popularity and widespread usage has come about because the females have the ability to wean a calf every year, rebreed quickly and do it adapting to the available feed supply. Results show Herefords to be significantly superior in weaning more total kilos of calf. The biggest difference recorded was in the area of pregnancy rate where the straight Hereford group has a 97 percent pregnancy compared to only an 82 percent rate for the cows bred to exotic bulls.
A majority of Hereford females reach puberty by the time they are 14 months of age. This means that they have a proper growth and development of their reproductive system to calve as two-year-olds.
Therefore, they are able to keep a short calving season when added to the mature cowherd. The modern Hereford sire is well muscled with good size and volume with strong feet and legs and is built to withstand the rigours of tough breeding seasons. The bull must serve each cow in heat.
In this field the Hereford bull excels. These same Teagasc figures also show that a similar amount of feed will finish 78 Hereford cross steers to their recommended carcass weight of Kgs. Thirteen weeks sooner allowing a surplus of 11 tons of concentrate unused. Add to this the reduction in capital investment in housing, finance and bank interest for an additional 13 weeks and it is clear why Herefords are the clear choice. In addition due to its eating quality and eligibility for Hereford Prime the Hereford beef will make a premium price and will most likely be sold to a premium retail outlet here at home or in continental Europe.
It is equally likely to sell to a high-class restaurant through its countrywide distributors in Ireland or again through its distributors in mainland Europe. Teagasc also inform us that average stocking rate per animal sold per year for the spring system are 1 acre for Hereford crosses, 1.
Hereford farmers can take advantage of premium prices from a number of premium Hereford Beef Schemes strategically placed across the country delivering a bonus price to producers. The schemes operate to the highest standards and are Bord Bia Quality assured.
Key characteristics: Excellent meat quality Early maturity and high performance on forage based diets Adaptability — Herefords thrive in a wide variety of environmental conditions Excellent temperament Easy calving ability Good fertility Longevity Main reasons to choose Irish Hereford Physical Characteristics Irish Herefords generally have a deep rich red body with a white face, crest, underside, socks and brush to tail.
The more densely populated eastern area of the United States, including herds in New England, was the early home of Herefords and from there they fanned out to the South and West as the population expanded and the demand for beef increased. Records of the New York State Fair reveal that 11 Herefords were exhibited there in and were highly praised. Several breeders were active in exhibiting at fairs and exhibitions in the East and Midwest where the Herefords met with great success.
Perhaps the greatest early interest in the breed came from the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia where T. Miller was awarded a medal for the first-prize herd. These breeders were instrumental in the movement of Herefords to Wyoming, other mountain states and the Northwest. Gudgell and Simpson of Missouri made their start in Four years later, they were to gain everlasting renown in the Hereford world through importing and concentrating on the great young sire Anxiety 4. No other bull comes close to the stature of Anxiety 4 for he is often credited as being the "Father of American Herefords" and "the bull that gave Herefords hindquarters.
The Hereford industry in America passed a great milestone of progress on June 22, , when a few breeders met in Chicago at the Grand Pacific Hotel to lay the foundation for the organization of the American Hereford Association, essentially for the two-fold purpose of keeping the breed's records and promoting the interests of Hereford breeders.
For over a century, the AHA has performed its duties with little change in the original bylaws while providing leadership for the industry that has seen Hereford cattle taken to every area, region and territory of America and become the greatest influence in the nation's beef production activity. Thus, Herefords led the way in revolutionizing beef production in America, largely through the traits of doing ability and early maturity -- getting fat at an early age and producing the ideal in "baby beef.
To get this early maturity, breeders in the late 's and 's eagerly sought out the compact type of conformation -- short, low set, wide and deep-bodied cattle -- as their preferred breeding stock.
By comparison, such cattle were naturally smaller. Their success in achieving such an animal with its abundance of fat and establishing that kind as the breed's "ideal" proved to eventually be a detriment. The market changes that surfaced in the 's caused such cattle to be penalized in price and discriminated against.
This change in market preference was first expressed in Hereford circles at the National Hereford Conference in Denver in , voiced more loudly in at a conference in Kansas City, and in the now famous conference in Wisconsin this change was very conclusively demonstrated.
Economics in cost of production required faster daily gain at less cost conversion of feed to muscle instead of fat, and far less loss in offal waste in the desired market kind. These requirements translated to more size and a different style of conformation which, in turn, presented the breeder with a tremendous challenge in modernizing the breed and turning it around to a new kind of Hereford endowed with all the basic economical traits to encompass total performance -- no desired trait achieved at the expense of another.
Accomplishing, their objective in a remarkably short time is a great tribute to the dedication of Hereford breeders, the broad genetic base of the breed, and the ability of breeders to utilize modern technology along with the practical application of the breeder's art.
The 's saw the beginning of acceptance of the performance era in Herefordom. Breeders began giving concentrated attention toward applying new-found tools such as performance testing, artificial insemination, objective measures, embryo transfers, generation turnover, and sire evaluation to effect more and more rapid genetic change in the past 25 years than perhaps had been accomplished previously since Benjamin Tomkins undertook his systematic efforts to make better beef cattle from his native Herefords.
In , the American Hereford Association embarked on an experimental program to test sires under practical feedlot conditions through their progeny in feedlot performance and carcass yield. That program was replaced by the current National Reference Sire program to identify superior sires. This program led the way for all breeds in sire testing. The beginning of the American Hereford Association's record keeping activity was expanded to include performance records and initiation of the present Total Performance Records TPR service in Having been developed over some two decades, often amended to utilize new technology and to provide maximum service to breeders, the TPR program that has evolved has proven to be a great service to individual breeders and the breed in general.
Presently, there are some two million records of performance on file in the AHA computer, stored for use to assist in selecting for improvements in future cattle generations. The late 's found breeders faced with overpowering evidence that the breed had too many cattle that simply did not measure up in the modern measures of performance and with great competition from European "exotic" breeds, Hereford followers sought out breeders and bloodlines noted for cattle of substantial size and performance.
It was fortunate for the breed that there was an ample and broad genetic base from which to select when the demand came for larger framed cattle. Breeders found the growth traits fairly easy to select for. Both day and yearling weights were accurate measures of growth, fairly easy to obtain, and they were highly heritable. Within herd selection was a long process when considering the rule of thumb of cow generation being some seven years. Many breeders began looking for short cuts.
They searched the country for sires with more frame and size, requesting and analyzing weaning and yearling weights. Leaders in beef cattle education and research stressed growth as a major criteria of performance, often ignoring or de-emphasizing the most important economical trait of beef cattle production, fertility. Breeders often selected for frame score and mature weight, and paid little heed to fertility, structural soundness, feet and legs. The "yellow and mellow" coloring, a tic of white in the back or extra white on the legs and underline became less of a selection criteria.
Where and in what bloodlines could these cattle be found to increase the frame and weight of Herefords? Voices of the speakers at the Madison, Wisconsin, conference in June, , had barely quieted when breeders started looking.
The frame 5 steers at the conference came from the Northwest. That's where many breeders headed and they found some bigger-than average framed bulls there. Some breeders selected bigger framed cattle in Canada, many of which traced to an American-bred Prince Domino son, Real Prince Domino Also about this time, breeders found the Line One cattle developed by the U. It was at the Miles City station in that a selection program commenced and the development of inbreeding several different lines with selection emphasis on yearling weights.
Of all the different lines developed at Miles City, the most prominent to date has been the Line Ones.
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