We mostly sell feeder calves. 4-5 wts. Mostly in the spring... but also usually 1 or 2 groups in the fall...
We try to keep 10-20 heifers for replacements. We run 150 cows in the cow calf operation.....Some years if heifers are fairly high, we might keep 5... if heifer prices are low we will keep 20-40. We were trying to raise up and calve out 20 heifers a year... so say 10% of the cow numbers, as at the time we were running 200 momma cows. But we have cut back about 50 mostly through "attrition".... open cows, old cows, raising crummy calves... things like that because we lost 2 rented places that were sold. Going to lose another as it is going on the market... whether he gets it sold anytime soon, I don't know.... We run 15-20 there and have several fields to rotate them through as it was once fenced with several paddocks for horses.
Due to a bull going bad and shooting blanks after getting a small group all pregnant, we have more fall calving cows now than we did. We also buy and background some bull calves, worked into steers, to make some more uniform groups to sell.... and we buy some "old one and done" breds, or cows with calves to turn over after the grazing season.
Normally we have about 1 or 2 opens out of a group of 10-25... usually always old cows in the group. We don't cull for age... if they have a decent calf and raise it, they can stay as long as they get bred back,.... if they have no teeth and are in good flesh, they get kept with the "grandma cows" in the winter to get a little extra in the way of corn silage and a little feed.... but in summer they go out to grass. If we figure it is their last calf, they go to a pasture where there is no bull and go on the truck when it is time to pull them off grass in the fall... usually calves go with them, but occasionally if there is a nice calf or 2 they will come back to the barn to go in the feeder groups.