Our Selection and Management Program

Las Anitas is a family agricultural business that carries out its activity in Durazno and Flores fields. Based on the natural field (70% of the company's total) and on livestock as the main sector, the genetic program has been acting as a supplier of bulls and semen for its own use for many years.

There are 350 mother cows that are currently responsible for producing the replacement bulls and heifers that the company uses and also offers to the market every year. They are born and are at the foot of their mother for 7 months in the natural field. They are weaned on winter pastures to ensure their correct development and once pregnant with their first calf they always go on to produce on natural fields again. Our philosophy in this sense is simple: let the cows work for us and not us for them. The one who gets pregnant every year, It has a good udder and weans a heavy calf and is still in production. The one that does not do so goes into winter. We are very demanding in terms of functionality characteristics: udder, legs, natural field maintenance and above all things the weaning of healthy and heavy calves.

The bulls also spend their first 7 months of life at the foot of the mother only on natural fields. Depending on the climatic and therefore forage conditions of the field, they are weaned at around 220 and 240 kg on average every year. Once weaned, they enter their first winter in the corral at Estancia El Paraguay. This ensures proper development of their physiques, since the diet is high in fiber content and low in energy content. Starting in spring, they go to pastures and natural fields until they are prepared for the Auction that begins the following fall. In order for them to express their full potential, they enter meadows and winter greening supported by a diet based on sorghum silage + corn grain, all of their own production. We demand that they comply with what every male breeder must have in our opinion: structural correction, dense muscle masses and bull character.

 To the already mentioned phenotypic characteristics that we work on, we add an extensive list of objective measurements that help us in genetic progress. These bulls are measured and weighed at the following stages of their lives:

• Birth
• Weaning
• 15 months (scrotal circumference is also measured)
• 18 months (intramuscular fat and steak eye area are also measured)

In addition, all their mothers are weighed at the time of weaning, in order to generate data for the EPD of Adult Weight of the Cow.

These bulls go out year after year to work in different environments, and are designed for use in grazing conditions in natural fields, since the vast majority of our clients work that way. So we see that our bulls work on Route 31 between Tacuarembó and Salto as satisfactorily as in La Paloma, Rocha, to cite just one example. 

When you invest in “Los Toros de Alfonso” you are investing in GENETIC IMPROVEMENT. A reliable program with more than 80 years of work in our fields.