Cattle Ranch Of The Week: Raile Gelbvieh
10/08/2009 01:34PM
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Raile Gelbvieh is located in the extreme northwest corner of Kansas, northwest of St. Francis just off Highway 27. They have a family operation of primarily dryland wheat and registered Gelbvieh cattle. In 1983 they purchased their first Gelbvieh bull to use on their herd of predominantly Charolais cross cows. The decision to use Gelbvieh was made after reviewing the information coming out of the Meat Animal Research Center in Nebraska. Then, in 1987 they started to register their first animals, and today all of their cows are registered. Located in a harsh environment such as St. Francis, KS, the Gelbvieh cattle have proved that they can compete with any breed. Raile strives to breed for the economically important traits that satisfy their needs as well as their customers. Raile sells some of their breeding cattle in a few select sales and have a bull sale every March.
As you can see most of the bulls are Balancers. This is due to the fact that this is what customers prefer, according to past sales. The Meat Animal Research 
Center (MARC) proclaims that crossbred females are 30% more productive over their lifetimes. The advantages of crossbreeding effect cow efficiency, longevity, lifetime productive, weaning performance and yearling performance. If you have straight-bred Angus cows a purebred Gelbvieh will do you a tremendous amount of good. However if you already have a blend of two or more breeds in your cowherd, then a Balancer works great in that situation to keep the right balance of hybrid vigor in your herd. Remember Balancer is a trademark name that the Gelbvieh breed has given to the Gelbvieh-Angus cross in which both parents are registered in their respective breed associations. If one parent wasn’t registered, the offspring could not have a meaningful set of EPDs and other valuable information. Raile has mentioned that instead of using average daily (ADG) figures they use weight per day of age (WDA). They believe this more fairly portrays the animal’s performance while he is with his mother, as well as his post weaning gain. Again this past summer Raile did not creep feed any of the calves while they were with their dams on grass yet the sale bull’s average adjusted weaning weight was a respectful 655 pounds (with a couple having an actual weaning weight of over 800 pounds). Remember Raile are in short grass, and most 
of the time DRY country. Some seem to think that they have lost some of the milk in the breed which the Gelbvieh were known for. The bulls in this sale are well above average for the Milk EPD. The purebreds average 22 which is in the top 25% of the breed and the balancers are also the top 25% for all Balancers with an average Milk EPD of 21.
Raile has also made great strides on birth weights with the average birth weight on the sale bulls of 82 pounds. They feel that the offspring from these bulls will come easy, gain efficiently and hang a carcass that the industry wants.
For more information visit www.railegelbvieh.com.