Capacity

[dun]

I was yacking with the vet when he dropped by today to look at his cows, and he came up with an intersting concept.
The more capacity a cow has in her digestive system the easier keeping she is. More guts translates to more surface area for nutrient absorption to take place so she is more efficent. That's why he thinks our cows tend to get fat when others, including his own don't.
Just an idea I found intersting.
Conversation got started when I said that I though heifers developed on forage tended to have larger barrels/capacity then those devloped on hay and grain.

dun

 

[ctlbaron]

Makes sense to me.

 

[certherfbeef]

Conversation got started when I said that I though heifers developed on forage tended to have larger barrels/capacity then those devloped on hay and grain.

Now that you mention it, guess maybe I have noticed that.

Compare show heifers to range heifers.

 

[dun]

Conversation got started when I said that I though heifers developed on forage tended to have larger barrels/capacity then those devloped on hay and grain.

Now that you mention it, guess maybe I have noticed that.

Compare show heifers to range heifers.

I had noticed the difference between heifers developed differently before this. It was just his putting it in perspective of the efficiency deal that I hadn;t thought of.
What really brought it home was 2 heifers we got last April. One was developed on local grass pasture the other came down from IA and had been developed on hay and grain. In April there wasn;t a nickels worth of difference, now I can really see the capactiy difference between them. It finally dawned on me, I'm a bit slow on the uptake at times, that I had noticed the difference before, and yup, it was pretty much those that we developed here and those that were raised on creep, grain and had been showed.

dun

 

[MikeC]

I have noticed in the past few years an increase in comments from purebred breeders wanting more gut in their cattle.

I know one breeder who measures the girth (right behind the front legs) of heifers and uses it in his culling regimen. He said it seems to correlate to better ultrasound measurements also.

 

[Big D]

Dun, do you believe the cows with more capacity are eating more feed or are they just more efficient?

 

[dun]

Dun, do you believe the cows with more capacity are eating more feed or are they just more efficient?

We had that part of the discussion too. I think they probably do eat more, but if they're more efficient they'll extract more from it. The vet figures once the gut is full it just takes longer for the stuff to pass through so they eat less. Keep in mind this isn;t scientific, just his expolanation of why his smaller barreled cows eat longer and still are a couple of BCS below mine. There are probably so many strange little issues that go into any one visible factor, trying to decipher all of those vagaries would be impossible. The one bought "pencil gut" (thank you tape for the description) spends moe time eating then the other large capacity heifers, and I think she's at least 100 lbs lighter.

dun

 

[bigbull338]

for the last 30yrs ive been picking cows based in their ribb spread. long ribbs an body means room to comsume lots of feed an forage.as well as anilty to convert an use it.a short ribbed or barraled cow cant eat near that much. scott