Frame score crucial when selecting sires

Gary Sliworsky
Ag. Rep.

This is part 2 of an article that comes from Kit Pharo, Pharo Cattle Company. (Part 1 was last week.)
Frame score is an extremely valuable and useful tool when selecting future herd sires. A 3-frame yearling will almost always grow up to be a 3-frame adult. Reducing frame size requires discipline. It won’t be easy. If you are using a 4-frame bull on 6-frame cows, you will end up with 5-frame cows that are still too big.
It is extremely difficult to produce the right size and type of cows with bulls that have growth and/or milk EPDs that are above breed average. Your environment can only support so much milk and growth. When you select for high milk and growth you will seldom see any increase in weaning weight, unless you are willing to provide a high-energy supplement or creep feed –- which is seldom (if ever) cost effective.
It is extremely hard to find a source for 2 to 4 frame bulls that have average EPDs. To be average, or below average, in the seed stock business is a tough sell. That is why nearly all of those who are talking our talk are not walking our walk. Pharo Cattle Company is average — and proud of it!
It is easy to get caught up in promotional propaganda that sounds too good to be true. Bulls are very expensive. When you buy a bull you are making a major investment. You owe it to yourself to check things out before you make this type of investment. Look at the cow or cow herd that produced the bull you are interested in. No one else is as concerned about your profits and your future as you are.
Be very careful who you use as advisors. Again, no one is as concerned about your profits and your future as you are. Most of the people ranchers solicit so-called free advice from are much more concerned about their own profits than the rancher’s profits. Keep this in mind when someone else is trying to tell you what type of bulls you should be buying and using. If you don’t look out for your own best interest, no one will.
There is little doubt in my mind that smaller cows will always be more efficient than bigger cows. However, if we get our cows too small, their offspring will NOT fit the “box” established by the mainstream, commodity beef industry. Unless you are marketing your own beef, you need to keep cow size in the acceptable range. I have a few 1-frame cows (950 pounds), and they are my very best cows –- but I do not think we want to be breeding a herd of 1-frame cows to 1-frame bulls because their offspring will be too small for the existing, corn-based commodity beef industry. Offspring from cows in the 2 to 4 frame range, however, have no problem fitting the industry’s box.