Gelbvieh Advantage at Grund Beef Genetics

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. The Cattleman’s Corner is brought to you nationally by the American Gelbvieh Association.

Jerry Grund from Grund Beef Genetics on today’s program. Jerry Grund and his family raise Gelbvieh cattle in Sharon Springs, Kansas. We had a chance to catch up with Jerry the other day and talk about his program.

Let’s listen in to that interview. Tell us a little bit about your program, if you would please, Jerry, with the balancers and the Gelbvieh breed. We started into the balancers very hard, but those cows are so fertile.

What drew us to this breed was in the 1980s, the U.S. mark that a meat animal research center had shown the fertility, the milking ability, the mothering ability of the Gelbvieh and the balancer cattle, and that started us right down on the road of making productive cows that hit the profits that we tried to achieve. So, we started down that road, and we’ve incorporated a lot of balancer genetics, and those cows seem to last, you know, compared to purebred cattle that are any other breed, but we can get three to four years more production out of these balancer cows, because they’re thriftier, they’re hardier, you know, they’re more fertile than just a straightbred Angus or Gelbvieh cow. A lot of these bulls are produced out of Dam of Merits.

Those are high-end, productive cows that have met the requirements of being one of the elite cows in the American Gelbvieh Association. Plus, these bulls, we focused a lot on growth and carcass traits where we feed out our own cattle, plus we have a lot of guys that background their cattle to 800 pounds. So, we want to make sure not only are we just using good maternal genetics, that we have the terminal genetics in there, too, that they’re highly accepted with the feedlots and the packers.

Jerry Grund, Grund Beef Genetics in Sharon Springs, Kansas. That’s going to do it for today’s program. Thanks again for listening, and may God bless.

I’m Brian Hale.