# Black baldy breeding



## tonyb

If you breed an Angus bull to Hereford cows you'll get black baldies, right? What happens if you keep replacement heifers from that cross and breed them back to an Angus bull again -- do you still get white faced calves?

Second question (related to the first) -- if you decide to cross breed, you basically have to buy replacement heifers from the base breed, right? Otherwise you lose the hybrid vigor. So if you want to keep your own replacements, should you stick to purebreds?


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## rancher1913

good question. I've got some black baldie cows that I breed to Angus bulls and have all black babies. never thought to keep the baldies calf's as replacements, but I do keep my purebred Angus calf's as replacements. I picked up the baldies cows from Colorado state university specifically to see if the cross bred vigor gave better calves, this is my first year with them so the jury is still out.


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## randiliana

If you breed F1 Baldies to a Black bull you should get about half baldies and half solids.

The best vigour you will get, is to take a F1 cross (say Hereford x Angus) and breed those cows to an unrelated breed (say Charolais or Simmental). 

Ideally, the best way to do it, is to keep purebreds of 2 breeds to make your replacements, and then have a bull of a different breed to breed them to. But that is hard to do if you don't have a fairly large herd. Next best would be to buy your F1's. Another way to do it is to rotate your 3 breeds, you don't get quite as much hybrid vigour, but you still keep it up pretty good. But that also takes a fairly good # of cows.

If you figure you want to keep 100 crossbred cows, and breed your own replacements. Figure about a 10% replacement ratio. You would have to keep 20 purebred cows to breed to your second breed bull, because about 1/2 of those cows would have bull calves. This is also assuming that ALL the heifer calves are going to make replacements. So, now you have to keep a 120 head herd, and you are going to have to buy your purebred cows.

To do your rotation, you would start out with F1 cows, breed them to a 3rd breed, then you would take those 3way calves and breed them back to one of your original breeds, then take _those_ calves and breed them back to the other original breed. Then you would continue on breeding each group to whatever breed has the least percentage in the cows. This way, you are running 3 different groups of cattle. It's fairly complicated and you would want to keep some fairly decent records on your cows.


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## jwal10

Many of the calves will have black and white faces. We called them brockle (sp) face calves. Big whitr star with black around the eyes, some more white than others....James


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## randiliana

You could do the first scenario with a rotational scheme on your cows that are producing your replacements. Start with F1's then breed them Black Angus for a couple years, then breed them Hereford for a couple years. Keep 3/4 BA back and breed them Hereford, then keep 3/4 HH back and breed them Black Angus. The only problem with this scenario is that you are going to run into a mixed bag of colours. You'll have Blacks, Black Baldies, Herefords Black Herefords , Reds and Red Baldies eventually. If you were using Red Angus instead of Black it wouldn't be as noticeable.


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## CIW

We had to make the decision to buy our replacements. Found a reliable source and have stuck with them. Wouldn't change.
Starting out with a medium frame, F-1 heifer (Angus/Herford+) we cross onto black Limosine bulls. 
The calves are still black and black-baldy. Adding in the Limosine brings some length to the tenderloin and ribeye and about 70 lbs. at weaning. Thats money in the bank that more than makes up for the purchase of heifers annually.
We also lease out our bulls, after using them for 3 seasons, to another ranch that crosses thier mature cows onto with them. It brings an additional added value.


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## SteveO

You may never get rid of the white. I have 2 purebred lowline cows 3 generations for each and all are baldies. I guess it's all in the genes
Steve


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## oregon woodsmok

Angus to Hereford gets you Black Baldies. BWF bred back to black Angus will get you mostly BWF, and a pretty good percentage of Brockle Face. It's possible you might get solid black, but not many of them.

If you breed BWF to BWF, in large numbers, you are going to get about 25% red calves.


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