Dairy heifers

[cowman]

Was talking to a local farmer the other day and he was telling me a local custom feed lot had about 1200 dairy heifers that it was feeding for customers in California. Apparently they are all bred and starting to spring!
Now I'm not just too sure how that is going to turn out when these darned heifers have calves? Do they knock the calves on the head and hope the heifers dry up without ruining their udders? I wonder how that will affect their lifetime production?
I'd sure hate to be the guy who owns those heifers! No matter what happens he has a big problem on his hands?

[dalek]

A lot of the guys here with heifers calving are offering to trade them straight up for open heifers hoping that by the time THOSE heifers calve the border will be open. The better heifers calving now are finding homes and replacing cows getting the .22 cull, the poorer ones are going to slaughter.
Personally I have a hard time finding sympathy for anyone in the US who thought they'd take advantage of our situation by buying up a bunch of cheap heifers gambling that the border would open. Particularly when the Mexicans had buyers purchase over 9000 heifers in Ontario and Quebec, only to have the Americans turn around and blackmail the Mexican government into cancelling their approval of the deal and now those dealers are stuck. Also knowing that bob calves in parts of California now are over $500 US and heifers $3-4000

[grassguy]

I believe these American dairies depend on Canada for up to 80,000 head per year. The shortage of replacements has the price of milk in California in the $6/ gallon plus area I have heard. Perhaps Mr and Mrs Milk Consumer are the ones to put the screws to USDA and open the border.

[ALICIA]

The dairy farmers in the US have been on our side from the start because they know that they need our dairy heifers very badly. The big dairy farms are milking up to 4 times in a 24 hr period and this plays hell on the dairy cattle. They only last about 3 to 4 yrs. in a herd.

[dalek]

Alicia very few dairy farmers in the US are on our side. Most of the buyers are the large 1000 cow herds, mostly Dutch-owned, who make up a very small percentage of the number of dairy farmers. This is where the last two groups of heifers we sold went. Both new farms in the last 5-8 years with 1500-2000 cows, and neither farm has ever bred an animal. The small and medium-sized dairy farmers are happy as can be to be getting record prices for their milk, never mind how much they're screwing the consumer.

[ALICIA]

I think you for the up date. The only one from around my area that was sending holstein heifers to the states I believe was Magon, and I think he was sending about 200 or so a week.

[dalek]

Yeah we've sold some through Mangan's before.
Also, 3X and 4X milking actually make cows last longer. The problem with some US herds is that they don't bother breeding or raising heifers, just calve out a heifer and stick her on BST for 1000-1200 days then ship her out again. The border closure has actually only been part of the reason for high milk prices, they also had production problems at Monsanto that have had US dairy producers rationed for BST, so they could only get about half of what they had been using. Meaning that half of the cows were pulled off BST and the withdrawal dropped production bigtime. A lot of the big herds are spending millions building their own heifer facilities now and breeding again, so the Canadian heifer market might never come back all the way.

[ALICIA]

That statement makes me think, just maybe all of Agriculture may be don't but for a very few.