The Dakotan:
And now time for this week's edition of Ranching Issues. Here's Neil Roberts.
Neil Roberts:
Welcome to another edition of Ranching Issues. Our guest this week is Noonan area rancher and former NDSU livestock specialist. John Dhuyvetter. And John, we're in the middle of the bull sales schedule on the calendar Lots of opportunities out there to buy local and improve your herd, right?
John Dhuyvetter:
Oh, this state has some tremendous cattle breeders, some tremendous cattle. And as we look through the catalogs, show in the mailbox or walk through some bullpens, we can see all the effort that's gone into using the technology to produce a document. These cattle, we got genetic predictions for about every trait you can think of. And of all those different traits. It gets kind of confusing. And a lot of times we can even narrow them down into some indexes which combine those for maternal function or those for feedlot function, which makes it simpler to look at one or a few numbers rather than that whole array of maybe 15 to 20.
Neil Roberts:
All right. Good stuff, John. And hey, we'll talk more on bull sales when we come back.
The Dakotan:
You're listening to Ranching Issues with Neil Roberts on the Dakotan Network.
Neil Roberts:
Talking bull sales across the region today on ranching issues. Since John do better and John, you said something interesting over the break to me. You said the right bull for the right person. Right.
John Dhuyvetter:
We've got a lot of tremendous cattle, but they're not all suited to every situation. I mean, kind of hard to have. One package of genetics serve all functions of this diverse industry for feedlot cattle. We want high growth and high carcass trade. But for our maternal bulls, it'll sire the heifers that go back into our cause. We want them to probably be a little smaller stature, lower maintenance and their needs, and be really strong in fertility and longevity traits versus some of the traits that are more important to the cattle feeders.So depending on what you're going to use, you should find bulls that fit that. There's good bulls for all those categories and they exist in this state.
Neil Roberts:
Good stuff. As always, John, thanks for joining us again. And that will bring this report to a close call next time. I'm Neil Roberts.
The Dakotan:
You're listening to the Dakotan Network. Real, Honest, Local News.
