Cow dilema

[kato]

For us there are several unforgiveable crimes a cow can commit. One is coming home open. The other is agressive behaviour. Some may forgive this, or even like it, but since I once had a really bad wreck, it's become "grounds for dismissal". Won't put up with it. Life is too short for that nonsense.

A cow that won't mother it's calf will go too. We have one old girl that has become so protective of her calf that she actually walked on it! She's going down the road.

If a cow loses a calf to circumstances which are not her fault, we'll cut her some slack, especially if she'll take a twin. We always have some of those to share around.

Replacement heifers are only kept from trouble free cows who do a good job on their calves. We will not keep a heifer off a mean cow, no matter how pretty she is, or how well she performs. We've found that the disposition seems to travel down the family. If we don't like the mother, we don't keep the heifer. Over time you end up with a whole herd of cows you enjoy working with.

[SASH]

Things being as they are right now, culling is a tougher call than usual. In a normal year, before BSE, usually two cull cows would buy you one good replacement. Now, I would say that it takes close to half a dozen cull cows to buy a good replacement. Any cow that's open during preg check has to go although I have been known to be a little forgiving lately on first calf heifers if they raised a real good calf the first year. Possibly with this cow you are talking about, it could just be poor luck. I think if it was me, she'd probably stay only because of the cost difference in replacements. As soon as the market gets a little better she'd be headed to cull.