What amazes me is that I hadn't heard of Mr Zietsman before today. Yet I have been saying the same thing about Body Conditions, frame size, feed intake and inputs for years Amazing how good cattlemen will come to the same conclusion
Thank you so much for sharing your Philosophy of Cattle and Veld management. common sense is not very common and nature's way has been skewed towards our human whims even though we don't often know what's good for us. In the African context I can firmly attest to our cattle being parasite resistant; "unimproved" though they may be deemed to be it looks like they have a big role to play in "improving" so called scientifically improved breeds. now it the time to return to the era of the (Yellow) fat in cattle of your father's and my grandfather's days; time to redefine our breeding and management goals!
You are lucky to still have those unimproved breed in Africa, I think India too have a lot. Here in North America, all the breeds that came here, were already selected in Europe and they've been even more selected once here. We still can breed for all the traits Johann Zietsman is talking about, but you guys start with an unfair advantage. You don't have to undo centuries of bad selection practices.
Thank you for your great book and thank you for taking the time to come here and share your brilliant yet simple philosophy of raising and breeding veld efficient beef.
I grew up on the dairy side of the cattle industry. I'm guessing at the meanings of a bunch of the terms used by the various speakers in the videos that I've watched on this channel. I've enjoyed the ones I've seen, especially the video featuring the late "Doc'" Gordon Hazard. He reminds me of a Vet that was a partner in the practice that oversaw the herd health of my family's dairy herd.
One way I've seen this play out in our cows, is in drought. We don't have a good way to measure their feed intake. But you can see the difference. I keep selecting heifers and bulls from our cows that are fat all the time, no matter what conditions they are in. The problem is buying new bulls that are the same, to keep from inbreeding.
