Plan to attend annual bull sale

Carl Stafford
Published: March 25, 2008

The 50th annual sale of the Virginia BCIA Culpeper Junior bulls will be at 2 p.m. Friday, April 4 at Culpeper Agriculture Enterprises located on Route 29 just south of Culpeper. As a special guest, the Central Virginia Cattleman's Association will sell commercial, fall-calving bred Virginia Premium Assured heifers immediately following the bulls.

The sale will include 43 yearling Angus and Gelbvieh bulls. All bulls selling qualify as sires for the Virginia Quality Assured (VQA) Purple Tag Feeder Calf Program. Complete performance information will be available on all bulls.

The CVCA consignment will include 40 Angus-cross Virginia Premium Assured heifers due to calve in September and October. All heifers have been developed together, and will sell in groups of two to four head. Heifers have been bred AI to low-birth weight Angus sire LCC Dillon G689L, and sons of N Bar Prime Time D806 and New Design were used natural service as clean-up sires.

Beef producers and others who are interested are invited to visit Glenmary Farm of Rapidan to view the bulls and heifers. Glenmary Farm is perated by Tom and Kim Nixon, who can be reached at 672-7396.

For catalogs and additional information on the bulls or heifers, phone Virginia BCIA at 231-9163 or Steve Hopkins, Orange County Extension Agent, at 672-1361. You may also visit  http://bcia.apsc.vt.edu or http://cvcacattle.com .

Tested bulls have been reared in the same environment, and their differences measured, so that buyers can compare them with a high degree of confidence that their differences are due to genetics. Use the BCIA tested bull sale to select a young sire for his special traits that you need in your herd.

A balanced trait bull would not be the best in any category, but would have good marks across the board and would likely sire female offspring that would make functional cows to go back into the herd. 

Single-trait selection is often a trap producers fall into as they follow industry trends.

Today, we spend a lot of time talking about beef carcass merit and can be moving toward cattle that do very will in this area, but at the expense of other, more important traits.

As a cattle breeder, you know that the cow's first job is to be a functional female in the herd. To be functional, she has to have a calf each year. After that, you can start to choose which cows are better based upon features you prefer. Maybe you sell calves and you want maximum calf-weaning weight. This would probably come from a cow that milks well and from a calf that uses this milk plus its feed supply to produce a lot of pounds.

You be the judge, but balanced, high-quality, maternal trait beef cattle seem to avoid the extremes and provide the producer with something they can use under a variety of growing conditions on the farm.

Plan to use the BCIA bull test sale on April 4 at 2pm to find a young sire that will improve your cattle, while improving your bottom line.

Carl Stafford is Culpeper County Extension Agent, Animal Science. He can be reached at .