calving progress

[rockridgecattle]

So tommorow is day 21. The start of a new cylce for us. I was comparing cows calving times with last year. Some good, some not so good. What i mean is some cycled earlier and some cycled later.
Right now we are sitting at 77% done out of 96 cows. I'm kinda happy with that considering we had two of three bulls go down last year. One 16 days into bull turn out, never to return to the herd, and one at the 20 day mark and out for a week. That left one bull for the older cows and he was getting tired.

We can see the the results of the bulls going down cause right now there are only a couple within a few days. Plus we had a higher than normal open rate. We shipped out 8 cows because they were open. This was rather disappointing cause we had to ship some nice cows. But also gave an excuse to ship not so nice cows as well.
All the 13 year old cows are atleast one cycle late. A couple are just starting to bag. They are some of our best cows and we are hoping for all hiefers from them, and hoping they calve within the 45 day mark to keep for replacements.
All in all so far so good i think, room for improvement.

got a quesion though

We had a cow (now 11 years old) abort December '06 (three months early). She got sick because she did not clean proper. we did not see the abortion, but noticed she was not "well". We got the vet out and the vet figured she calved a week prior. We kept her to give her a chance. Thing is she should have been the first one to calve with no calf on in the summer. But she is just starting to bag. My question is, the delay in breed back due to the retained placenta? Would you give her yet another chance to get back into the groove?

RR

 

[milkmaid]

RR-- it's been awhile, but I think I read cows are most fertile up to about 145 days post calving. After that conception rates are lower. Unless you had the cow in question palpated to determine she was "open, clean, and cycling" when you put the bulls out, it's impossible to say if the delay in settling is a result of her not being completely clean (still having a lingering uterine infection), a result of uterine adhesions and scarring (sometimes a result of a uterine infection), or just lower fertility since she had gone that long since calving. I'd be inclined to give her another chance, but there's just me... and I tend to give everything at least one more chance than I really should. :lol:

 

[Aaron]

6-7 months for her to abort and get ready to bred again is 2-3 times the amount of time for a cow's uterine tract to flush out. Your right in the fact that she should have been the first to calve. The fact you kept her this long....if she falls relatively close in with the other cows for calving, you might as well keep her. But if she retains her placenta again just junk her. Abortions don't help, but a retained placenta will always push a cow 1 month forward in her breeding...probably 2 months.

In other news, how is your cow with the eating problem?

 

[rockridgecattle]

MM, this cow in question had 6 months to get ready for the bull so she would have almost 5 months to get to the 145 day mark. We aggressively treated her when the vet diagnosed her, approx a week after the abortion. And if memory serves, she had cleaned the majority of the placenta, but not all. We treated for 10 days, anti biotics and anti inflamatory. So maybe the drugs helped to set her back?

Lastly my husband made an observation about our herd, wondering if any one else notices this.
About a hour maybe two, the cows get a real glazed look in their eyes before they start to calve. once they get this glassy eyed look he notices they start to get down to business.
Any one else notice this?

 

[rockridgecattle]

Aaron, after giving her a few treatments in the head gate that day she is eating well and chewing her cud and not coughing.
We gave her rumemaker with 1/2 to one cup of grain. We did not have rumenx boluses so we thought rumemaker at a bit higher than normal dosage should work.
While she was in the head gate she got and drank 5 gallons of water and some fine bromegrass hay. Husband figures he had put down some real old hay for bedding and it might have had an adverse reaction to her, as they ate their bedding. It seemed to bother some of the younger cows later in the day, but not as bad as her.

Thanks for asking