Age of cows

[DiamondSCattleCo]

Point taken Gaucho. I always forget there are guys who still swear that FS7 cows are the way to make money.

When I mention a 1200 lb cow, I mean a good little FS4, 12 - 1300 lb cow. Compact, deep ribbed. Nature didn't select those types up here, but those are the kind that keep costs low.

Rod

[hayburner]

Farmers-son ..Your spread sheet is a good start.You ask for comments ..I believe you have to compare feed conversion in the formula. Weather conditions must also be a factor as you can not compare the weaning weights year after year. A medium frame cow can have many variances in her calf depending on how hard the winter conditions were on her body fat reserve for new born's milk supply.
When I first started out I kept consice records on the cow herd gestation time and found some interesting facts that the cows that have a shorter carrying time had calves that daily rate of gain was much higher than cows that carried longer. We started only keeping heifers from short gestation cows and found that the tract was passed on to their offspring. A calf born two weeks earlier gained higher than calves that were still in womb. There was a huge difference in the time frame that cows carry their calver. We did not use twins in the program for obivious reasons that a cow well kick out twins alot earlier.

[hayburner]

Correction tract should have read trait.

[hayburner]

Correction tract should have read trait.

[cswilson]

Short gestation sires usually calve a bit better for obvious reasons. it's amazing how many calves some guys have before they're scheduled start date.

[Horse]

I used to A_I a good percentage of my cows and I dont have real records to back up my claim The cows that calved larger calves had larger cervexes that were scared and I feel did not seal therefore did not catch or aborted in the 2-3 month range and then mabey rebred or not. I always used a cleanup bull but there was opens then to.

[hayburner]

You are right about the bulls also. When we buy bulls we always attempt to find out the lenght of time his mother carried him. The information is sometimes impossible to get but since alot of breeders AI we can get the information we need and since we started asking our regular bull suppliers they know keep track for us. We feed with a processor and the bulls activity is recorded every day of what cows were cycling.

[hayburner]

PS I forgot to mention the data base as a recovery time frame in it as well. The time from calving to the time enters her first cycle.We found some interesting data here when we started to see dramatic change when we changed mineral % arround.

[perfecho]

What factor(s) made the greatest impact?

[hayburner]

When we first started this program we began testing our winter feed and tried to match the mineral that was required. After a few years we began experimenting with phosporous levels and magnesium,calicum. What we found was the younger cows had a completely different requirement after calving to bring them in to first heat cycle than the older herd. Once we started to increase phos. a week or to before calving the younger cows had no problems with birth sacs not breaking and with cleaning . Once she calved the phos levels were reduce to a 1:1 calicum and Phos. the number of youner cows catching on the first cycle improved dramaticly. Instead of flushing with grain we started to balance our mineral.