Effectiveness of heifers rearing of different origin

For current beef cattle breeding, an important element should be the creation of crossbred herds based on commercial crossbreeding of dairy and dairy-beef cows with beef sires. This issue is especially relevant in traditional, promising for the development of beef cattle breeding zones of the country, such as the Southern Urals. In the Southern Urals zone, Red Steppe breed of cattle is the leading dairy breed. In order to improve the productive traits and comformation of Red Steppe cattle, they began to use crossbreeding with Angler sires. However, not all crossbred breeding stock is used to replace the herd. In this regard, extra-replacement crossbred heifers and culled cows can be successfully crossbred with sires of large beef breeds. The purpose of the work was a comparative assessment of the efficiency of heifers rearing of different origins. For the experiment, mature (5–7 years) cows of Red Steppe breed and half-blood ed crossbred herdmates with Angler breed were selected. According to the experiment the cows were inseminated with the sperm of sires of the corresponding breeds such as Group 1 (Red Steppe), Group 2 (Angler), Group 3 (Simmental), and Group 4 (Hereford). Four groups of heifers were formed from the resulting off spring such as Group 1 – purebred Red Steppe, Group 2 – half-blooded Red Steppe×Angler, Group 3 – Red Steppe×Angler×Simmental, and Group 4 – Red Steppe×Angler×Hereford. As a result of the conducted research, the advantage of rearing three-breed crossbred heifers (Red Steppe×Angler× Simmental and Red Steppe×Angler×Hereford) in comparison with purebred Red Steppe herdmates and two-breed crossbreds (Red Steppe×Angler) was proven, which was refl ected in the growth rate of young animals, the quantity and quality of the obtained products, the expression of reproductive traits of the maternal stock and the economic efficiency of beef production.