Raising Simmental in Texas

Welcome to the Cattleman’s Corner. I’m Brian Hale, sitting in for the late Howard Hale as we continue his legacy of speaking with cattlemen and women from around the globe.

This program is sponsored by the American Gelbvieh Association. But before we talk about them, I want to let you know you can find great information about cattle on our search engine, agsearch.us. That’s agsearch, A-G-S-E-A-R-C-H dot U-S. Now this from the Gelbvieh Association.

Gelbvieh and Balancer cattle are well known throughout the beef industry for their maternal strengths and superior growth, with attributes such as more pounds of calf weaned, added fertility, greater cow herd longevity, and heavier carcass weights, just to name a few. Gelbvieh and Balancer offer genetics that work for the commercial cattle business. Visit galvee.org. Greg Hale and his family are Simmental Seedstock Producers in the northern panhandle of Texas in Perryton.

They’ve been raising those Simmental for quite some time now. What type of size do you get on those cattle? Our mature cows, they’ll weigh 1,250 to 1,300. Very moderate frame cows.

You know, we might, you know, top end of the cows might weigh 1,350. But you know, we’ll wean, you know, a 680-pound calf, you know, right off the cow. And of course, our bull calves, they’ll be a little bigger than that.

But as a whole, about 680, 700-pound weaning weight. I sure like to have one that’ll sure raise at least 50% of her body weight or more. You know, typically sure do that every year.

If they can’t do that, we kind of get rid of them. We’re short grass, buffalo grass, and our grass is really strong where we’re at here. You know, we can get a lot of performance out of our cattle just off the grass.

What’s the useful life of a cow on that short grass? Oh, 12 to 14 years. Simmental Seedstock Producer from Perryton, Texas, Greg Hale. That’s it for today’s Cattleman’s Corner.

Thanks again for listening and may God bless. I’m Brian Hale.