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Cattle Boards
Breeding / Calving Issues
Choosing Embryo Recipient Cows/Heifers
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<blockquote data-quote="WRFarms" data-source="post: 1347625" data-attributes="member: 24663"><p>The best recipients are fertile and good milking. Fertility is hard to judge unless you have some background information. Generally the cows that calve earliest in the season among their peers are the most fertile. The cows that raise the heaviest calf are generally the best milking. Age and breed aren't as relevant as past performance. This is all very easy if you have that information. If you're not picking from your own stock, you need to find a local breeder and work directly with him to buy the animals you need. Someone with good records that you judge to be honest should be able to sell you the kind of cow you need, but it won't be cheap. </p><p></p><p>When you're going into it totally blind, you're better off to make an arrangement with a good nearby commercial operation to act as a multiplier herd for you. You would pay the cost of implanting his cows that meet your criteria and then you would buy the resulting ET calves from him at fair market prices + a premium, typically around $150/head. To clarify, you would be paying the calf's value in lbs and not its perceived value as an ET calf. Some years this will cost you more and some years it will save you money, but overall it reduces risk. </p><p></p><p>The last thing I would do is go out and buy unknown cattle to be recipients for embryo's that cost half as much as the cow did. I wouldn't use a milk cow for a beef calf, or the other way around. It adds unnecessary complication into judging the calf and reduces the calf's value both to yourself and to a knowledgeable buyer. It depends on your goals though and there are lots of ways to boost a calf's performance and EPDs beyond its own quality. I wouldn't use a heifer either, even though they can often perform as well as a cow it still adds an unnecessary degree of uncertainty that you don't want anywhere near a valuable embryo.</p><p></p><p>EDIT: I'd like to add to my comment about ET calves out of a different breed recipient cow. The various breed associations group ET calves into contemporary groups based on their surrogate's breed. You'll have more accurate EPDs if you use a same breed recipient and you'll have less regression towards mean values. Staying within beef breeds for beef calves and within dairy breeds for dairy calves will add the least uncertainty. This is most relevant to you if you intend to use EPDs at all or have buyers that do, but it's still relevant to the average breeder so far as the uncertainty over the ET calf's individual performance is concerned.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="WRFarms, post: 1347625, member: 24663"] The best recipients are fertile and good milking. Fertility is hard to judge unless you have some background information. Generally the cows that calve earliest in the season among their peers are the most fertile. The cows that raise the heaviest calf are generally the best milking. Age and breed aren't as relevant as past performance. This is all very easy if you have that information. If you're not picking from your own stock, you need to find a local breeder and work directly with him to buy the animals you need. Someone with good records that you judge to be honest should be able to sell you the kind of cow you need, but it won't be cheap. When you're going into it totally blind, you're better off to make an arrangement with a good nearby commercial operation to act as a multiplier herd for you. You would pay the cost of implanting his cows that meet your criteria and then you would buy the resulting ET calves from him at fair market prices + a premium, typically around $150/head. To clarify, you would be paying the calf's value in lbs and not its perceived value as an ET calf. Some years this will cost you more and some years it will save you money, but overall it reduces risk. The last thing I would do is go out and buy unknown cattle to be recipients for embryo's that cost half as much as the cow did. I wouldn't use a milk cow for a beef calf, or the other way around. It adds unnecessary complication into judging the calf and reduces the calf's value both to yourself and to a knowledgeable buyer. It depends on your goals though and there are lots of ways to boost a calf's performance and EPDs beyond its own quality. I wouldn't use a heifer either, even though they can often perform as well as a cow it still adds an unnecessary degree of uncertainty that you don't want anywhere near a valuable embryo. EDIT: I'd like to add to my comment about ET calves out of a different breed recipient cow. The various breed associations group ET calves into contemporary groups based on their surrogate's breed. You'll have more accurate EPDs if you use a same breed recipient and you'll have less regression towards mean values. Staying within beef breeds for beef calves and within dairy breeds for dairy calves will add the least uncertainty. This is most relevant to you if you intend to use EPDs at all or have buyers that do, but it's still relevant to the average breeder so far as the uncertainty over the ET calf's individual performance is concerned. [/QUOTE]
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