By R. E. Hodgson
(This article was originally published in Milking Shorthorn Journal, Dec. 1955 under the title: )
“Are We Trying to Design Animals to Make Meat and Milk or Are We Building a Pretty Machine and Hoping It Will Work?”
The cows were coming up from the pasture, led by a big flat-backed roan. Her head was up, her eyes shining, her ears pointed ahead while she decided whether this two legged stranger rated fight, retreat or complete indifference. Her straight legs carried her 1700 pounds easily, as though she walked on air. When she came closer it was obvious that she packed a big square udder, so turgid with milk it seemed about to burst.
It was a sight to make an owner’s chest swell with pride and a visitor ache with pleasure, tinged with envy. She just fitted my mental picture of what a Milking (Dual Purpose) Shorthorn should be and a lot of good judges seemed to agree with me as she made a great show record in the next few years. The owner was Myron Stoner of Albert Lea, Minn., and the cow was Hannerette.
“Myron, she’s going to have a roan bull calf, and I want him.” So her son headed our herd, and as Blackwood Chief won top honors at the International. Better still, he sired a fine group of heifers—which never had a chance to show what they could do because an epidemic of brucellosis sent them to the shambles. In the 35 years since that cow led her string up from the pasture I have seen many good cows but never one that so impressed me as a perfect specimen of Milking (Dual Purpose) Shorthorn pulchritude (beauty).
This story was told to indicate that I appreciate bovine beauty as much as anyone but after years of observation I wonder whether we have over emphasized it. Sometimes I think we have bred for looks first and production second. Of course we want both, but we seldom get everything we want.
As a kid I went on the fair circuit with my dad, showing hogs and horses. He would start out with a full string and come home with the “remnants”. I couldn’t figure why he would sell the stuff that won the blue ribbons. Why not keep them to raise more blue ribbons? When I asked him about it he said, “Did you ever notice that we had papa and mama at home?” His best producers weren’t in the show string.
Over and over again, I have seen it. The most productive animals are hard workers. They may not take the prize for beauty, at least not very long, because they are working too hard to have that finish and bloom necessary for the show ring. Of course there may be exceptions but it is rare to have both. If we can’t have both, which is more important?
As I turn the question over to look at all sides, who knows what a cow should look like? The books describe “perfect” animals but where did the writers get their authority? Are all of the things we “judge” for, associated with production? Are we trying to design animals to make meat and milk or are we building a pretty machine and then hoping it will work?
Some breeders may keep cattle for the pleasure of their company (I like them too), but on the whole our purpose is to change hay, pasture and corn stalks into meat and milk. We use corn and concentrates to finish the job or to hurry it up, but hogs or chickens will make meat more efficiently than cattle on the higher priced feeds. We keep cows primarily to market our roughage. If that’s the job we want done, we want the machine which will convert the feed most efficiently. Do we build a tractor for comfort & beauty or for what it will do?
I’m not opposed to shows or showing. That is a game played by experts, but sometimes the farmer who is trying to pay off a mortgage gets confused. There is always the inference that a blue ribbon animal is also able to fatten on rough feed or make 10,000 pounds of milk on silage and hay. How much connection is there between a top show animal and a cow which will go into Tom, Dick or Harry’s barn and pasture, producing a profit under “rough” conditions?
Of course there is always the possibility of teaching Tom, Dick and Harry to give their cattle better care. I’m all for that if you mean better management, sanitation and improved pastures. If by “better care” you mean that Tom, Dick and Harry should use more concentrates, pamper their cows and forget feed costs, it may not pay. With most of us, profit comes first and looks second.
Look around a bit. Some of our beef friends have bred cattle with extremely short legs and early maturity. They may look like little fat nuggets of gold, but put one out on the ordinary range and he’d starve. Some people have bred for beef and lost the udders. Some have bred for fabulous milk records and forgotten all about costs. They represent wonderful achievements in cow designs and art, but neither one would pay bills for the ordinary farmer. He has to sell meat and milk for more than his feed and labor cost, or go broke. He’s not selling fancy breeding stock.
Our Milking (Dual Purpose) Shorthorns are perhaps the most versatile breed known. They are not so specialized as to lose either the beef or milk function. They have done the job on thousands of farms and their owners have stuck with them because they turned hay and pasture into meat and milk at a profit. They haven’t had too much help from some of the “breeders” who have been more interested in trying to beat Holstein milk records or win ribbons at the shows than in turning out efficient machines. Sometimes I suspect that our attempts to “improve” cattle have been more hindrance than help.
Isn’t it about time to set our sights on another target? If we want farmers to use our cattle, shouldn’t we be trying to build a machine which would do their job more effectively? Shouldn’t we be aiming at weight for age on a diet which is at least 90-95% roughage after the first 6 months? A cow that makes 8000 lbs of milk on such a diet, lives a long time and calves regularly, should show more profit than the pampered darlings who get a pound of expensive concentrates for every 2 or 3 pounds of milk they give.
We have such high powered cows but they would seldom take the prize at a beauty contest. They are the worker, not the bovine aristocrats. Sometimes the owner apologizes for their looks. Why does he keep such rough looking cattle? They pay. Our best breeding stock (from the roughage conversion angle) often go through life unnoticed and unhonored because they didn’t quite meet our standards for looks. Again, who knows what a profitable cow looks like?
I don’t pretend to be a skilled judge and the answers to all questions are not in my little book. Nevertheless, I have kept records on a herd of cows for almost 40 hears and they still fool me. I know what I like for looks but records are more reliable than my eyes. A big production for one year doesn’t impress me. How was she fed? How long did she last? Was she a shy breeder? What kind of a carcass did she hang up? What did her steer calves do? Her heifers? Those are the things which mean profit or loss to Tom, Dick, Harry—and me.
We know that one cow can make more meat or milk from a given amount of feed than her sisters. How she does it I don’t know and I can’t spot her by her looks. There is also evidence that efficiency in food use is inherited, not from one gene perhaps, but the inheritance is measurable. Are we capitalizing on this information in our cattle breeding operations? Do you have heifers that will weigh from 800 to 900 pounds on their first birthday, and do it almost entirely on roughage?
I’m not looking down my nose at carcass quality, conformation or milk production. I’m just asking whether they are enough without efficiency. Within our breed we have cows which will grow well and produce well on roughage and ordinary care. That kind pay the bills. Let’s put them on the pedestal and aim to reproduce their kind. I’ll bet they will average up in looks with those we have selected largely for beauty. A profitable cow looks good to me anytime. Let’s find and increase our efficient cows before their good qualities are lost in the shuffle.
Way back in 1915, W.D. Hoard, founder of Hoard’s Dairyman, said, “Milk is the fundamental question in a diary cow. It is an internal, not an external proposition. It is not indicated by color of the hair, nose, tongue, or tail. It is something deeper than these surface characteristics.” It is evident that the same statement applies to meat. Let’s look deep, measure accurately, and find those qualities.