Bred heifers

[cowman]

I just got thinking about how the customer views bred heifers?
It would seem if they are over 1100 lbs the price starts to improve...1200 lbs is better! No one seems to want those small under 900 lb. heifers...or at least sure don't want to pay much for them?...or maybe it's just the sales I attend?
Now I suspect an 18 month old heifer that weighs in at 1200 lbs(assuming it is growth not fat) will mature into a cow in that 1600 lb. range and an 1100 lb. heifer close to 1500? I suspect that is probably about the best size for this area with decent grass and fairly lush conditions?
I find it very difficult to keep my cows in that 1400-1500 lb. range but I do know if you throw away the old grain pail when they are weaned you can grow them up to mature at a lesser weight.
I know many of you have different views on cow size and that is okay. I do believe there is always a trade off? Maxxing out profit usually involves keeping costs low while pushing production? You can go wrong either way real fast?

[grassfarmer]

Cowman, "I find it very difficult to keep my cows in that 1400-1500 lb. range but I do know if you throw away the old grain pail when they are weaned you can grow them up to mature at a lesser weight."
I thought from previous posts that you had thrown away the grain pail a long time ago?

[PureCountry]

Cowman, sometimes the things you write baffle me...'''the best size for this area..." ???

The best size cow for an area is the one that generates the most revenue with the least expense.

REVENUE - EXPENSE = PROFIT

If someone in your area can make money with 1800lb. cows, good on 'em.

If someone else in your area can make money with 1000lb. cows, good on them, too.

I've never made great money off of 1800lb. cows in our area, and I've done much better with a 12-1300lb. - PROVIDING THEY ARE CHOSEN FROM STRUCTURALLY SOUND STOCK FOR THE RIGHT REASONS, FOR THE RIGHT APLLICATION.

The size of your cows is not the correlation to a profit margin, so much as the manner in which you manage them.

[15444]

Our straightbred and purebred Hereford bred heifers are running in the 15-23 month range and weigh between 800 and 1000 lbs, currently pricing them at $800. Generally in our area, people who are interested in buying British heifers are not scared to buy them at that size, as they are aiming for moderate-sized cows with grass-gained flesh. Producers who are breeding Continental cross commercial cattle are typically the ones looking for the 1100-1200 lb bred heifers with a little bit of shine to them. Our heifers never see grain and typically mature out to 1200-1400 lbs. We only have a handful of cows over the 1600 lb mark and most of those will be hitching a ride to Winnipeg this fall.

[PureCountry]

Amen to that.

[cswilson]

I've sold hundreds of heifers -blacks and baldies-at under 1,000 at a pretty good premium-most 'real' cattleman can see through the barley. You take away that feed bucket from weaning to yearling and you'll get alot more productive cow in a quite a bit smaller package. I sell breeding stock that are totally garanteed-I've had to replace 3 head in last ten years. Greener heifers are a bit of a hard sell but once they buy them they are hooked. We were averaging $1500 a heifer in the yard pre BSE-got $1200 a pair this spring and considered myself lucky.

[cowman]

grassfarmer: Yep, threw it away quite awhile ago! If I didn't I'd be raising 1400 lb./18 month heifers!
About 1997 I started introducing Red Angus genetics through American AI bulls. Before that we used Sim and Charlais on a purebred horned herford herd. I still think some of those Char cross cows were the best we ever raised!
I suspect in central Alberta the big crossbred heifers are popular because the fact is this is basically a grain growing area and cows are usually a sideline? We can raise some extremely good crops and I would venture that crop land is more profitable?...maybe I should say...before the CROW rate was killed? Seemed like every man and his dog got into cattle then!
If I lived in the "desert" I guess I would try to stick with a really tough cow...like the old time hereford or Angus!

[grassfarmer]

Those sound like cheap heifers 15444 either for purebreds or commercials. I wouldn't be interested in running a quality breeding program selling bred heifers for that kind of money. Do folks in Ontario not have money to buy replacements? Surely they should be worth $800 as weaned heifer calves if they look like making a good cow?

[cswilson]

grassfarmer some guys out east will pay_I've sent heifers out there myself.

[almoy]

We just sold 875 lb OPEN heifers for $990 at the auction mart.

[15444]

gf: I was told by a Manitoba Charolais bull breeder a few years back that our area is the worst place to sell in Canada, due our commercial breeders being extremely stingy with their money and not paying nearly as much as what breeders in the West will pay for bulls, cows, calves, etc. A good bull at a spring sale in Manitoba that sells for $2500 would only fetch $1600 tops in this area. Only area purebred breeders will pay over $2500 for a herd bull and over $1800 for cow/calf pairs. The commercial guys will not pay for breeding stock, and as a result, we as purebred breeders have to sell our stock cheap (Good deals for those out West that want good stock for lower than average prices). Alot of good bulls are sold for $1000 - $1500, Cow/calf pairs for $1000 - $1400, and bred heifers for $900 or less.

If cows were going over the border, than prices on everything would be about $200 - $300 higher than what I quoted.

[grassfarmer]

Interesting 15444, there weren't a lot of English settlers in your area were there? ;o)
Getting back to the weight of cows/ heifers issue one thing that has always intrigued me is this. When a heifer calf gets bred by accident(usually about 6-7 months)she usually calves OK in a ranch, if not a feedlot situation. If the calf is live and you let her rear it she usually comes in open. If the calf is removed from her and you breed her back to the bull she usually settles. In both cases she is getting a bit of a rest compared to a normal first calf heifer before her second calving ( she maybe deserves it)but in my experience will go on to be a trouble free, productive cow capable of reaching her teenage years - but she will never grow beyond about 1200lbs.
On the other hand in Scotland most cattle are still bred at 2 to calve at 3 - the land is just poorer plus there is always less grass because of tighter stocking rates. Calving at 2 just does not work on cows that have to live out during the high rainfall winters. You end up with cows that
are big enough but struggle to maintain condition and to conceive - they just seem to struggle all their lives. If you calve at 2.5 years
you need a fall and a spring herd
and you need to keep fall calving cows
in barns all winter. Calving at 2.5 in the fall and allowing them to slip through to spring calvers the next time makes them grow into huge cows.
In a way what I'm saying is to get the "most efficient" cow ie good milk
plus growth genetics to pass onto her calf yet do it from a feed efficient size ie small,breeding heifer calves seems to turn in the result we are looking for. We would be thought of as crazy for implementing this as a policy but isn't it in fact the way nature would do it? No-one pulls the bulls in nature and females do get bred young - then with that tough challenge to overcome they take a while to breed back - is this in fact how nature controls the ever increasing mature size problem we great managers of cattle have?

[cswilson]

When I switched from January to Fall calving years ago that's exactly how I did it-I just exposed my 10-11 month old heifer calves and calved them the next fall. It worked quite well-I bought alot of early bred heifers from neighbors over the years too. I find that you don't get many average type cows that way-it either wipes them out or you get a very good cow. In fact one of the commercial cows I want to flush started life as a 15 month calver-has never missed and also popped a set of twins out along the way-she's 11 and has raised 12 calves.

[15444]

Hahaha, you guessed right gf!...when I entered that last post, I was kicking myself, thinking I should have mentioned that, yes, this whole area was settled in the 1870-1890's primarily by stingy Scots and Irishmen, and then complemented 50 years later by equally stingy Ukrainians and Scandinavians. Some how those genes evaded me!

[cowman]

1554: So why not just send them for beef? Why lose money so some jerk gets cheap cows?
$1600 for a yearling bull is about where the price should be...after all how much is a fat 1200 lb. steer worth? Now mind you that is if you develop him fairly cheap and don't run up a bunch of BS expenses against him like most purebred outfits do! Still running purebreds is a lot of time and work and usually isn't worth the effort. What is the average length of term for purebred outfits? It seems to me I saw a quote of about 5 years! A whole lot of rich boys like to play the old purebred game and hobnob with the big boys, but for somebody who wants to make money it usually is a loser.