Planning for the first calving - what breed?

[jode]

I need to breed my longhorn and brown swiss heifers. I'd like to minimize the chances of birthing complications by going with a low-birthweight breed sire. Any suggestions? A guy at the sale barn actually suggested longhorns. I'd really prefer to use a Brown swiss on Brown swiss and longhorn on longhorn if it can be done "safely."

[sammyd]

Sure it can be done safely.
Consult the calving ease tables in an AI book and select that way.
We dairy farmed for years and never bred to different breeds on first calf heifers. Just picked a Holstein bull that had a better calving ease if we though there might be a problem.
If you have decent sized healthy animals there shouldn't be any problem.

[JKB07]

If you want to keep the milking lines in you BS heifers (I hope you would) I would go with a jersey bull. The calves will be small, so no claving trouble, and the calves will be unbelievable milkers and beautiful. I have useed this cross myself, and have been reall pleased. If you use a BS bull, you may run into calving trouble, the calves will be HUGE..... hope this helps


JKB

[jode]

Thanks to all for the info.

A BS/Jersey mix sounds like a nice cow, and it would get me through that first calving with a smaller calf which sounds great.

Sounds like a plan.

[KSALguy]

put a Jersey bull over all of them, even the Longhorn would make a decent mix with the jersey.

[wr]

I've used dair bulls on longhorn heifers and the resulting calves are actually quite nice. There is no reason you should have any calving problems - especially since longhorns and known for their calving ease.