Live Animal Evaluation

This is a beautiful bald udder. Look for udders like this one that signifies high butterfat production. The absence of hair on the udder is the no 1 indicator of rich milk high in butterfat.  The more hair on the udder, the lower the butterfat component in the milk. Butterfat has a direct relationship to tenderness or fine textured meat.  Her tail is full of large yellow oily flakes and her ears have the yellow too like the pictures below.

I call this tail butter. Any female with large amounts of yellow flakes on the last several inches of the tail bone under the long switch hair is an animal that produces high butterfat milk. This animal will also have 4+% intra-muscular fat. This is also an indicator of tenderness and fine textured meat.

An animal with yellow wax in her ears is giving milk that is high in butterfat. This too is an indicator that that animal can produce gourmet (tender) beef.

Pictured is a bull ear.  The best situation is to have this evidence in both cows and bulls to assure the trait is passed on.

Yellow ears and flakes in the tail always correlate with tender meat.

This picture shows what is referred to, in the Milch Cow book, as Oval feathers.  Feathers can be present at various places within the escutcheon area.  Most are undesirable.  The ones shown here above the two rear teats are desirable if they are small and uniform in shape.

This escutcheon stops just above the top of udder.  She is a high producing cow and will be producing her maximum amount of milk in 30 days.  After pregnancy though, she will have a sharp decline in production. The owner of this cow waits 150 days to re-breed her to keep her quantity up for a long as possible.

Note the darker hair on the lower neck in front of the shoulders. This represents thymus gland activity. An active thymus gland represents good immune function. Notice the high sheen of the hair coat. This also is indicative of a very active immune system.  Cows like these do not get sick nor do their calves.
If I look at a cow/bull to purchase, this is the very first thing I look for. If I do not see a large thymus whorl, I have no interested in purchasing that animal.
The thymus gland gives the white blood cells their marching orders when needed to combat foreign invaders. If the hair coat is dull and there is no sign of an active thymus gland that tells me the animal is susceptible to the stresses and diseases that plague our industry.
In the dairies that feed a lot of starchy supplements the hair is short and maybe a little sheen, however the thymus and other glands are not very often visible. The sebaceous fluid (oily film on the skin) is not healthy in the grain-fed cows.

A cow/bull with a shinny streak the full length of the top of the back is an indicator that the gland system is fully active and often correlates with tender meat.  

Neck wrinkles are telltale sign of tender meat.  Notice the sheen on this animal’s hide.

Bone structure is another easy way to evaluate an animal for carcass quality.  The front legs beginning above the knees going down to the top of the hooves should give the impression of an hourglass. 

The cannon bones, which are the leg bones between the knee joints and pastern joints, should be short, fine and flat.  When you run your fingers down the sides of these bones you want them to feel flat as opposed to curved.  

Large knee joints as well as large bone structure in general correlate with a tougher meat product.  Look for knees with a balanced hourglass appearance. The hourglass shape is more pronounced on the inside of the leg, but the transition from knee to cannon to pastern should be smooth.  You want a flat knees as opposed to a knobby kneed.

Large puffy or fleshy hocks are not desirable if your goal is gourmet quality beef. You basically want skin against bone when it comes to hocks.  The Jersey is a good representation of this trait and Jersey beef can be some of the best around.

The animals below have desirable bone structure in their front legs.

The next pictures show less then desirable knees.  The cannon bones are too long on the left picture, while the knees are knobby on both.

Below shows knees that you don’t want in your slaughter animals and certainly not in your breeding animals.  The carcass from these too will be tough and laced with gristle.

Another very easy way to gage carcass quality is by assessing the hide.  You are looking for a hide that is thick yet soft and very supple, just like a deerskin glove.  I grab the hide near the last rib bone with my fingers and thumb and gently but deliberately pull out as far as I can.  I then shake my hand up and down with some rhythmic speed.  When I do this I want to see the hide in the entire mid section on that side move with my hand.  I hide that will pull out several inches and move the whole area around it when shaken is a hide that has a lot of blood flow underneath.  This healthy blood flow correlates with so many other health factors and is also a tenderness indicator.

This picture demonstrates how to evaluate the hide for carcass quality.  The animal pictured here had a hide that was soft but not very supple.  The desirable hide will pull out much further than this one.

After 30 years of observation with 25 of those years collecting and evaluating semen, I have come to the conclusion that 90% of open cows should be blamed on the low fertility bulls used on the majority of cow herds today. There are but a few bulls that do not leave cows open.
James Drayson accumulated valuable information during his 30 years of operating his bull collecting facility and before the end of his life compiled his research and findings into a book titled Herd Bull Fertility. Drayson found that testicle size and shape (conformation) starting as early as 7-8 months of age has more impact on a bull’s ability to impregnate cows that any other factor.  Almost every producer faults the cow for being open and culls her instead of finding fault in the bull.  Most producers pay no attention to bull fertility unless he is a complete failure.
Without a herd of cows that have the ability to produce fertile herd sires and using a bull with the highest amount of mobile sperm cells (1 billion/cc at 14 months) reproduction will continue to stay at the national level of 70%.
I will attempt to express the problems and some solutions with the following pictures of testicles and conformations in the following examples

This is a perfect set of testicles in conformation and structure and testosterone production. The testicles will assimilate the near perfect genetic makeup of the mail. These testicles provide 2-3 billion sperm cells per mil of seminal fluid. This bull is very masculine (large crest, wide shoulders and maintains himself when working hard). This bull will easily impregnate 80% of the cows he services in the first 21 days of the breeding season

These testicles have no neck and the testicles are long and cylinder shaped. The shape is supposed to represent a football with slightly more taper at top than bottom. This bull and any bull that has testicles shaped different than the perfect will only settle on a regular bases approximately 50-60% of the cows he services in the first 21 days of the breeding season and will leave a few of the best cows open that the fertile bull would settle.

Notice the nipples on the neck of the scrotum of this bull. Results from this kind of nipple placement on the bull  will cause his daughters to have tilted udders. Tilted udders don't produce the volume of milk a well-formed flat udder will.

Note the epididymis on the right side is on the outside bottom. The testicle is turned half around in the scrotal sack. Note the division (the V shape) between the inside bottom and also the crease or dividing line between the testicles from the bottom up to the top. This V and division will cause this bull’s daughters to have udders that are segmented and funnel shaped. They will have lower production.  The division between the back of the testicles causes a week restraining ligament in the female offspring. Those udders will sag and brake down quicker.

Another more defined division in the back of the testicles.  The right testicle overlaps the left on the bottom.  The daughters of this bull will have sloppy udders.  These misshapen testicles or any other type of scrotal or testicle deformity will always result in low sperm production and quality as well as lower testosterone which effects fertility and performance.

Below shows a perfect udder and her son with a perfect scrotal at 8 months of age. His sire (Lodge) possessed a near perfect scrotal. The cow having this udder produces high butterfat milk (enough energy and protein for proper development of her young). Her body is close to being phenotypically perfect. I have selected for this kind of udder and testicles from the beginning. This young bull will be an optimal breeding bull and will also recreate himself because of his genetic density of all desirable traits.