I promised to say more about our decision to purchase Elmo Picasso 1023/7 (P). Even before he entered the showgrounds at Beef 2018, we knew he was a bull who might suit our breeding program. Now that he’s at home and showing every sign of the talent of his Spanish namesake, we’re confident that our Picasso will be a ‘modern master’ in Rockley’s breeding program.
Fertility is our priority selection criterion as it’s the number one profit driver. Below I summarise the bull selection considerations that led to our purchase of Picasso. We looked for evidence that he is likely to be highly fertile and we assessed his appearance against our 7 Elite Breeding Attributes.
Marks for fertility
These factors suggest that Picasso’s fertility is very good:
- His dam, Elmo Lady Lucille 855/5 (P) (pictured below), conceived at 16.5 months. She had two calves in a row with a days-to-calving interval of 358 and was pregnancy tested heavily back in calf.
- He had semen collected successfully straight after Beef 2018, a great achievement at only 19 months of age and so soon after a stressful event.
- For a bull of his age, he has a very evident large scrotal circumference.
- His grandmother is still producing in the Elmo herd.
- His sire also collected high quality semen at 19 months of age
Picasso’s dam – Elmo Lady Lucille 855/5 (P)
Phenotype positives
We rate Picasso and his family very highly against our 7 Elite Breeding Attributes:
- Polled
- Structurally correct, he placed second in his class at Beef 2018.
- Quiet temperament
- Abundance of length and width
- Clean underline
- Do-ability, showing strong signals of fleshing ability with his raw data at time of showing, with figures for Rib of 8, P8 of 13.
- His dam was also shown and came second in her class at Beef 2018. She’s a very structurally correct female with a sound udder.
We have sent hair samples from Picasso for genomics testing. This will provide BREEDPLAN figures for him, and a benchmark against which we plan to improve his accuracies and also test him for the polled gene and tenderness.
We plan to use Picasso in a fixed time artificial insemination (FTAI) program this year and also in IVF programs.
Results at Rocky Repro
The following table shows Picasso’s results during a short stay at Rocky Repro. Please note his first collection was only two weeks after Beef, which likely explains the relatively poor result.
Overall, we are very happy with these results for such a young bull and after the stress of Beef. We are confident in our selection and eagerly await Picasso’s progeny, who we expect to match well with our females.
To talk further about Picasso or any aspect of our breeding program, please call me (Ashley) on 0408 780 810.
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