Just found your channel. Subscribed with the "Bell." I'd put this guy on some nice Salers cows and watch the calves explode. Those calves would be eating texturized calf starter (with molasses) before they were a month old. In the 1970s, in the U.S., we put Simmental bulls on Holstein milk cows; we were dairying then. Those calves were bottle-fed immediately; the newly fresh cows went right into the milking herd. Along with being bottle-fed, the Simmental/Holstein cross calves were exposed to texturized calf starter at a very young age. Many of those calves were eating starter before they were a month old. There really was no such thing as "weaning" them from milk; they were eating so much dry feed and so early that eventually they didn't even care about milk. The bull in this video is very similar to the initial Simmental bulls from the 1970s. It's great to see that these cattle are still available. Today, in the U.S., there are many Simmental cattle but the breed has been crossed and the original real Simmentals are nearly gone here. If I get a Salers cow herd put together and if I want to cross with Simmental, I might have to import a bull or buy some semen from Ireland or some country where the actual Simmentals still exist. In the 1970s, a few of the names of the bulls were: Galant, Signal, Abricot, Extra, Ueli, Monarch, King Author, Sultan. A couple of those may have been imported from Switzerland.
Recently, I've been researching Salers cattle extensively. Finally, I found something that answered nearly all of my questions. The Salers dams and the Charolais sires might be the best plan. The Charolais cows will likely require much more feed/grass to maintain condition while raising a calf than the Salers cows will, especially in rough dry high-altitude (8,000 ft. elevation) land where the grass might be thin and the water might be limited; the Salers cows will likely be able to scratch out a living better than a big Charolais cow. I think this is a very good cross though; the calves in this video are massive... just as I envisioned they would be. I needed this video! Again, this one video, after searching for hours over a period of days, answered nearly all of my questions. I'm assuming the other crossbred cattle in this video were Salers/Shorthorn crosses. They look like they have Shorthorn breeding in them. I think that would be another good cross, as would a good Simmental. I'd use the same strategy though - Salers dams with Shorthorn or Simmental sires. Keep the base cow herd as Salers. Thank you for composing this wonderfully informative video. I appreciate it. After all of the time that I put into researching this breed, one video satisfied my mind.
