cows ability to be bred back

[houstoncutter]

The main things that govern if a cow breeds back are difficulty of calving, body condition and nutritional plane. Others thing that can affect it is the weather and fertility of the animal. I'm sure there are others but those would be the biggies as far as I'm concerned.
It's kind of like my neices that are only 10 months apart, their mother believed that as long as she was breast feeding she couldn;t get pregnant.[/quote

Maybe momma was good body score condition...lol

 

[WalnutCrest]

We have two different approaches towards using 'breed back" to sort out the varying quality of the females in the herd.

First, we believe we really only know the quality of our heifers after they've calved their second calf. We do this by either putting an embryo in or AI'ing our heifers at around 13-14 months and then running them with a bull until they're around 15 months ... preg checking 60 days or so later ... anyone open is sold or eaten. Then, as soon as the first heifer calves, the whole group of heifers are put in with the bull(s); the bulls are removed at the same time for the heifers as for the cows. Everyone is preg checked about 60 days later ... anyone open is sold or eaten. We (basically) use the calving interval between the first and second calf as the primary measure to determine which heifers are better than others ... sort of an innate fertility measure.

Second, we use calving interval ... which ones get bred on the first attempt at breeding ... to continue to track relative innate fertility within the adult cows.

On a regular basis, we'll eat the lower end cows (unless we're trying to grow numbers), in an effort to further concentrate our best genetics throughout the herd. The very best cows are used as embryo donors.