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Bull performance is only one part that contributes information recorded by the Leachman ranch, with Lee Leachman saying cow measurements are just as important.
“We measure all the cows every year because we’re selecting against cow size. All things being equal, we want a big carcase and a small cow. Is that hard to do? Yeah.
"If you think about it you have an optimum carcase weight, you want the progeny you feed to hit the optimum carcase weight and you want to do that with as small a cow as you can do.
“Financially, we are taking the steers to 1,550lbs (703kg), we can do that with a 1,300lb cow, not much smaller than that.
Looking to the future, carbon emissions are becoming an ever-more common talking point, but through selecting against cow size the Leachman Company is indirectly selecting for lower emissions
"If you come back 10 years from now, I’m going to say now we’re making a 1,600lb (725kg) slaughter animal and we’re doing it with a 1,200lb (544kg) cow. Or I’m going to say the cow still weighs 1,300lb but she eats 10% less.
"I really don’t care how big she is, I just care how much she eats. If she was a great big cow and didn’t eat anything that would be even better, because we get the cull value also.”
Looking to the future, carbon emissions are becoming an ever-more common talking point, but through selecting against cow size the Leachman Company is indirectly selecting for lower emissions."
The emissions test
“The less they eat, the less emissions they have, so we’re already going to win that battle.
"I’ve got a smaller cow that reproduces more and a calf that feeds more efficiently and has a higher red meat yield. I win the emissions test. It’s all emissions driven by output, right? It’s how much emissions you had to make one pound of beef.
"That’s how they’re going to measure that and the biggest culprit in that is the cow because the cow is there all year. That’s where selecting for the cow to be smaller is good financially and also good on emissions.”
If I make an animal that’s really good in the feedlot and slaughters well but is bad for the cow, I’m going to lose business
Not stopping there, the ranch also looks to the commercial buyers of their bulls for feedback on which of the Leachman seed stock bulls are performing.
“Most of the people that we sell to in the US, they have a cow and they sell the calf at weaning. If I make an animal that’s really good in the feedlot and slaughters well but is bad for the cow, I’m going to lose business. So what has to happen there? Fertility has to go up, cow feed cost has to go down and the cows have to have longevity.
“There’s one herd in Montana that has 35,000 cows and breeds all to our bulls.
If you take how many pounds they weaned and divide that by how many cows they put with the bull, so that takes into account the opens, the pregnancy losses, loss at birth and weaning growth, then they’re up 12% over the last number of years.”
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