One Calving Season? Or Two?

Oftentimes, it is a practice to have two calving seasons – one in the spring and one in the fall. Dr Dick Diven gave thought to the idea that in north Missouri or other areas where the predominant cool season grass is the non-native toxic endophyte fescue, fall calving might be better than spring due to some believing the toxic effects would be reduced. The observed symptoms may be reduced since the outside temperatures are typically lower thereby giving the heat stressed cattle some relief from the vaso-constricting properties of the toxic endophyte. However, our extensive results on this practice show no advantage as far as reproductive improvement or increased production. Fall calving does, however, increase winter costs due to calving out of sync with the growing season. Keeping nursing pregnant cows in condition on stockpile grasses or hay is difficult and expensive. Additionally, having two separate breeding seasons adds considerably to the labor component.

Some ranchers choose to incorporate both seasons by allowing cows which come up open (not pregnant) in one season to dropping them into the following season vs selling her or holding it until the next spring calving season. On the face of it, this may sound wise.

Consider:

1. Without very careful written records, a cow can easily be rolled into each subsequent season without ever having a calf!!
2. Replacement heifers or, worse, keeping a bull calf, out of a cow which has missed, but you don’t know it can lead to devasting long term reproductive problems in the herd at large. Cows that calve only every other year may keep her good condition and wean a nice-looking calf, but she is not profitable if given a pass every year or two or more!
3. Having two calving seasons means two times of hauling the bulls out to every single cow TWICE! And getting them back in. Pregnancy checking then reveals, that there will be spring calving cows and fall calving cows in all the various herds. In our case, there are eight herds of cows!
4. Cows will be sorted at preg check as to fall or spring calvers, then hauled to whichever location has that group. Labor, labor, labor. There is always the possibility of a mistake and a fall calver ends up with spring calvers or vice versa. Total pain in the rear.
5. Two weaning times adds to stress and labor and incurs a less uniform calf crop.
6. Does not result in fewer open cows, but it does allow slackers to slip through by giving them multiple chances to ever breed and calve.

Without careful records, regardless of how you choose to manage the seasons, the risk is great that a cow can grow old without ever bringing in a ticket. Cows often will preg check carrying a calf, but either abort or lose the calf at some point. Can anyone afford to keep such an animal? Flipping cows from one season to the next greatly increases the chances that a cow will slip through.

In my opinion, calving in one season only, spring (May-June) – not winter – and have all cows in one herd – two at the most. This drastically reduces labor and then number of bulls one needs to cover the cows.

In this day and age of huge expense increases, written records are key, making culling decisions based on those records, imperative, selecting only adapted animals to grow your herd is a must. (records should include observing and recording which cows pant or stand in the pond or ditch, don’t slick off in the summer, those which can’t take the cold and stress of mud, humidity, flies, or whatever challenges are in your environment). Many of these observations will be revealed by cows coming up open or dead. Better to minimize either by eschewing purchasing unadapted animals and hoping they will adapt. The vast majority will not.

Create Beauty and Harmony in Your World

Compare 2-Year-Olds to 3-Year-Olds

Conventional wisdom from cattle management experts as well as those in the Ag University system insists that to properly develop future cows for a profitable cow herd young females (replacement heifers) need to calve by the time they are 2 years old.  The main idea is to identify those females which are the most fertile and to select for early maturation.  But is that really the way to do so?  And is early maturity a desirable trait?  Consider that most producers (in cattle) are expecting those young females to give birth by what is a comparable human age of 14, gestate, and raise a baby every year thereafter.  Whereas, the 3 year old compares to 18.  Animal Age Calculator

There is also the ‘belief’ (because i’ve never seen any data to support this) that a cow calving as a 2 year old raises one more calf in her lifetime than the older heifers.  I cannot speak to this with my own data since i’ve not been at it long enough to gather data, but i also don’t plan to do the research and have another herd that calves as 2 year olds.  However, I’ve spoken with a few producers who have been doing this for a long time and they are just as convinced that allowing their heifers to be physically mature before calving them allows them to live longer and more productive lives.

My heifers are not exposed to a bull until they are at least 2 years old – actually most are born in May of a year and not exposed until mid-July two years later, so they are actually 2 years and 2 months old and they will calve when they are right at 3 years old the following May.

Outside the obvious lifestyle benefits for producer/rancher and the comfort and animal welfare of the livestock, I’ve put together some financial figures which will apply to my ranch and indicate to me that I’ve made the right decision for my operation.

Heifer Development Costs
		2 year old	3 year old
Value of Weaned Calf		$    630.00		450 lbs	$      1.40
Value of 2 year old			$    810.00	600 lbs	$      1.35
Hay
Pasture Year 1		$    125.00	$    125.00
Pasture Year 2			$    125.00
Salt/Mineral		$        3.00	$         6.00
Breeding Fees
Veterinarian Fees		$        5.00	$         5.00
Supplies
Labor
Interest
Insurance
Taxes
Depreciation
Machinery
Bulls		$      40.00	$      40.00	per head
Costs		$    153.00	$    281.00
Total Cost		$    803.00	$ 1,111.00
Conception Rate		70%	96%
		$1147.14	$ 1157.29
*PPI		70	50	days
Calving Assistance		18%	0%
2nd calf conception		70%	96%
Advantages:
Manage growing, breeding, gestating, calving heifers as one mob with cows
Older Heifers are physically and mentally mature with no special feed requirements
Observing older cows calving seems to teach the heifers what to do
Less than 1 % calf death loss
Calves at least 50 lbs heavier at weaning and can be weaned with the cows’ calves
No special treatment

*PPI – post partum interval – the number of days it takes for the female to recover from calving and becoming pregnant again.

The calving assistance and pregnancy rates are taken from various University research data over decades of record keeping.  Most research heifers are developed with considerable grain and feed inputs which incurs more costs including labor.  However, my comparisons are grass and forage only.  Therefore it is likely that the grass managed 2 year olds could be significantly higher open (not bred) percentages than what is illustrated here.  Whereas the 3 year old development percentages are actual from my ranch.  My grass managed 2 year olds were only 10% bred!  Ouch!

WOTB – Working on the Business – tweaking the plan to discover a bit more opportunity for profitability in ranching.  Margins are too thin for my hobby level of ranching, but trying to do my best.

Cheers!

tauna

CIDRs In, CIDRs Out, then AI

Big ranch outfits often do timed AI, but we’ve never done this, so quite the experiment for us.  There is a lot of time and cattle handling involved which translates, of course, to more labor costs.  Time will tell if all this is really worth it.  We have hired a professional AI technicial to insert the CIDRS and do the AI (artificial insemination).

18 August – Mustered the cows and replacements heifers for CIDR placement to begin at 7am along with a Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) vaccination.  Doug, the technician had a flat tire so was running about 30 minutes late.  Not a problem.  The cows sorted nicely and went through the chute with no problems.  We managed a pace of 67 cows per hour for a total of 3 1/2 hours from start of CIDR insertion to being finished.  Sorting of course, was started an hour earlier.  Weather was perfectly cloudy, cool, with rain starting after we finished!.

Allen was catching, Pat gave the shot, Doug AI’d with RIck preparing the straw and loading the AI gun. This was crucial in expediting the whole process.  Dallas brought the cows quietly into the race.  I was sorting the cows from the calves (well, except for taking this photo!)

25 August – Mustered the cows and replacements heifers in again at 4:30 removal of the CIDRS in the cows which also received the lutalyse shot\.  Sorted off the replacement heifers and held in corral overnight.  A little warm starting here in the afternoon, but not too bad.  about 82F, but began to cool off quickly.  We were finished by 7:30p.

26 August – Removal of CIDRS in heifers at 7am. Also received a shot of lutalyse. Had a couple of calves to doctor, then let the whole mob down into the timber.

27 August – 6pm – went to muster the cows into the small lot by corral.  RIck had already unrolled 4 bales of good hay, but the cows had found their way out of the timber.  Took until 7:30 to get them in!  Note to self:  Leave the cows in the small lot with high quality hay rather than turning them out and having difficulty getting them back in.  My thoughts are that they are really tired of getting poked and prodded, so were quite reluctant to move back towards the corral and with all the hormones raging at this point, they are pretty distracted.

Doug Tenhouse, our AI technician is inserting the AI syringe through the cervix and plunging the semen into the uterus.  This cow was being less than cooperative – normally, they stand up – there is no pain.

We finished about 12;30 pm and had AI’d 210 animals in five hours.  If I get 55% of the cows bred to Red Eddard, that’d be industry standard.  As expensive as this whole process is, I hope for better – only time will tell. The cows have all been inseminated with Red Eddard, a red Aberdeen Angus that was collected at Cogent and has been sold by Dunlouise Angus to another farmer.

Four straws of Red Eddard were left over since there were a few cows that, for various reason, didn’t warrant the investment of being inseminated with expensive semen. These were put in Pat’s semen tank where we found we also had leftover Black Angus and Charolais semen from when we used to AI some 20 years ago. Maybe we’ll get it all used next year.

28 August – morning start at 7am with the cows; the heifers were held until last so that the timing is right for best chance of successful AI and conception for each group.  Cows should be AI’d 60-66 hours after CIDR removal and heifers about 54-60 hours.  Both receiving a second Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) shot.  A bit late getting started.  Cows were, not surprisingly, reluctant to go into the corral, but at last they made it.  We started about 7:30 am again.  Everything went very well today, however, and we finished about 12:30pm.

Potential recip (recipient) cows. If all goes as hoped, 10 of these will become proud surrogate mommas of native Aberdeen Angus calves.

I made my final selection of cows to use for embryo transplant work

and only ended up with 17 for 10 embryos.  Hopefully, enough cows will be in standing heat this coming week and none fall out for other reasons, so that each of 10 embryos will have a new home inside a momma’s womb.  AND remain viable.

ET cows were hauled home and now I spend time each day, all day checking for standing heat and writing down the time and the cow’s ear tag number.  All cows will be hauled to Trans-Ova in Chillicothe, MO on the 4th of September for ET.  HOPE, HOPE, HOPE i get some live calves out of those embryos.  It’s SO expensive.

Dallas and I dewormed the sheep in the late afternoon – had just done it 20 days ago, but sheep were dying!  I found out that the previous owner of these sheep had already put his own flock on an 18 day deworming schedule.  Add this to the growing list of reasons why i’m selling off the sheep – more work, more expense, more loss.

Shabbat Shalom!

tauna

Red Eddard – a native born Scottish Aberdeen Angus bred by Dunlouise Angus, Kingston Farms, Forfar, Angus County, Scotland