breeding hiefers early

[jvicars]

i know the common practice is to bred at 14 months. anyone bred hiefers early and have success or the same success as waiting?

i have read a few threads about breeding early but nothing in common practice. thoughts?

 

[dun]

The only stuff I've seen about breeding them at 12 months was related to dairy. One of the reasons it's feasible with dairy is because of the normally higher level of nutrition they're on. The reasoning behind is that you can get them in prodcution sooner and dairy cows typically burn out faster then beef cows so getting them in production sooner "makes sense"

 

[tmaygspeara]

we breed our commerical heifer anytime after 12 months, we have a low birth weight angus bull and we have not had a problem yet.

 

[jscunn]

Our heifers are bred to calve at 22-23 months. We figure the hardest time to rebreed is after the first calf, so we breed them to calve early and give them a extra 45-60 days to recooperate before we expose them to the bull for calf number two, that way their second calf comes at 36 months and with the rest of the mature cows. It was hard to rebreed 1st calf heifers in a 60 day breeding period for us.
The size issue is not a problem for us these Angus heifers all weighed in excess of 1050lbs in April 2007 and will not be 2 until November 2007. All of them calved in September/October with zero calving problems.

 

[tlmcr]

We wanted to shift more cattle to fall calving, so we bred our January heifers to calve in September/October the following year at 20-21 months. We had no problems and did not have to pull any calves. We also were able to get most bred back for second calves within 90 days. We used a proven low birth weight bull and were probably pretty lucky.