Just wondering if anyone else has had big calves out of Cherokee. AI'd him to heifers last year and just started calving and so for the first five look like this 93lb bull, 86lb Hfr, 83lb hfr, 80lb hfr, and 97lb hfr. All calved easy enough and calves sure look good, but i wasnt expecting that high of bw. The bred heifers are commercial angus, and were fed a relatively high concentration ration because corn silage and distillers is alot cheaper than hay, and since i have started feeding such a ration i have seen bw increase. Taking into account the feed ration, hybrid vigor, and a very frigid winter, i can see how they would be throwing larger calves than expected, but i didnt see a nearly 88lb average comming. Still have 40 heifers to calve, around 12 more that were AI'd to Cherokee so i will have more updates and pictures coming. I am still glad i used him to this point because he looks to get very pricey in the future.
Cherokee Canyon calves
- Thread starter goodbeef
- Start date
We used him a lot a couple of years ago. Out of mature cows the heaviest calf was 78 pounds. It was a week late and a bull. The one positive I noticed was the calves were the most vigorous I've ever seen for newborns
dun
dun
thanks for the reply, my heifers are due to start tomarrow so they have actually been early, and i agree about the vigor. I think these little buggers have just been waiting to juemp up and suck. Everyone of them has gotten up and started sucking within just a few minutes. They might be larger than i expected but as you can tell i am really pretty exited about them.
bigbull338
Well-known member
with those high of bith weights.sounds like you have been over feeding the heifers.an growing the calves in their bellies.id cut the feed ration back on the rest.or you could be pulling alot of calves.
they were only getting 10lb corn silage 14lb wet distillers grain and 5lb of ground hay and corn stalks. This was all fed as a tmr, no free choice anything other than some cornstalks they were running on. That breaks down to somewhere between 15 and 20 lb of dry matter intake. If you looked at the heifers they are definetly not fat. I might get smaller calves if i just feed hay, but i bet i cant feed hay for 46cents a day per cow like i can with the current ration.
goodbeef":3rxnw8l8 said:
What do you figure the protein and fat is of that ration? After having the problems with large calves when most everyone else seems to have small ones would make me think about increasing the cornstalks and lowering DG
