Culling conundrum

[Nesikep]

I was wondering.. given two scenarios what you folks would do

Scenario 1
You have a heifer that bred late, you saw the bull with her in the spring, then nothing for 4 months, then again the bull was with her.. perhaps she miscarried? who knows what happened.. She raised the calf really well though, and is 7 weeks earlier the next year.. Lets assume she keeps doing well and catches up.. Her full sister and her mother are 'ideal' cows and come from a line of long-lived cows.


Scenario 2
You have a 5 year old cow, raises nice heifers, you've kept 2 of them as replacements, the first one has had a calf and is doing well, the second is a yearling,... but the cow comes up open in the fall.


Now many of you will say you'll cull the heifer in scenario 1, and certainly not keep any replacements, but what about scenario 2? I bet no one would get rid of the heifers they kept already.. The truth is we all keep replacements before we know how the cow really is... but if something surfaces, we aren't getting rid of the whole line.

 

[dun]

In the first scenerio I kept 1 heifer that was late breeding and moved up the next year, she just didn;t move up enough so she got wheels. I've culled a number of older cows from the second scenerio.

 

[cow pollinater]

On the first one she'd have been gone for me when she didn't breed up the first time. A yearling heifer is worth a bunch of money so I won't hang on to one just to turn her into a cull cow if she's not doing what I want.
On#2 Fertility is about 90% environment. You'll see trends in fertility with certain cow families but it's not so heritable that if the cow shows up open all of her daughters will to. She's just an open cow... No biggy. Pound her out and move on. The easiest way to address it in the future is with heterosis involving breeds with a reputation for fertility. You'll never have 100% breedup every year but you can get close.

 

[bigbull338]

i have gotten to where i would cull both.as a matter of fact i culled a heavy bred 9yr old cow because she was late calving.she calved 4 days ago.but in your deal id cull both cows.

 

[dun]

The young we kept (mistake) was out of the only cow we have sired by a bull that I really wanted the influence of.
If not for that she would have been gone the first preg check.. I'll admit I waffled about her the whole time she was here.

 

[kucala5]

We are small with big hearts and find that difficult. We know we must start culling some of our first mamas that brought in the ship. Good luck with your decision.

 

[Putangitangi]

I was thinking about this whole thing yesterday as I watched a really nice cow outside my house. After three calves she came up empty for some reason. You guys would have said send her away, but I kept her. Her then yearling became a really productive young cow, now carrying her third and the best upcoming two-year-old this season is her next daughter, the one I wouldn't have had if I'd not kept the cow.

I think it all depends on what you're doing, still building the lines you want or making everyone work for their keep in every year and those who drop out don't matter. As often as not I've lost on keeping cows like that, hoping they'll come right, but the ones I have kept which worked have more than proved the worth of taking the risk, so I still consider it pretty carefully when it happens.

In both your scenarios I tend to keep for the time being, but the strike goes against the ones which don't carry and that influences how I view their daughters too, if there's ever an issue there.

 

[Nesikep]

With the grandma of this cow in question, back in the days before we had any mineral supplementation, she made good calves, but seemed to always take in the 2nd or 3rd cycle.. She milked well and you couldn't tell her calves were younger in the fall, so it wasn't a big deal.. she had 16 calves, and her last one was born on time.. she's turning out to be a good cow too.

The old cow's sister was one that got a second chance as well.. she was the heaviest milker of all the cows, when she calved on time... Her steers were always around 750lb at weaning, but when she calved early, she wouldn't breed back.. she's the one that I got the blood work done on and determined what my deficiencies here were.. She is Mega's mother, and Mega has been a great producer and bred the first time every time (she's 5 now).. She's the one that had a stroke and went tits-up on me 2 years ago... really badly wanted a sister for Mega.. no such luck.

 

[WalnutCrest]

Answers are a bit different if you're (i) building numbers AND either (a) can't find someone you can custom graze some steers or (b) don't want to buy your own stocker steers ... vs ... (ii) at capacity (or need to reduce numbers a bit).

If (i)(a), keep both (if you can).
If (i)(b), keep both (if you can).
If (ii), cut at least one, probably both.

And, if either (i) is the answer, once you're at capacity, either/both of these two would be at the top of my list. And, if either (i) was your answer, I'd start trying to find someone who will hire you to custom graze some steers and/or buy your own stockers and buy 'em cheap and run 'em cheap.

Good luck to you.

 

[Nesikep]

The second cow is a theoretical cow.. My original question was more along the lines of. if you knew the 5 year old cow was going to come up open, would you have kept heifers from her...

I am at capacity, and will be getting rid of some cows this fall, and again next fall.. I don't have a shortage of reasonable cows to cull.. Have a 7 year old that just started making decent calves... I'm never keeping a heifer from her.. but it's kinda stupid to sell her when she finally makes decent calves... I have a couple cows that'll be 12 years old next year that don't ever make replacement quality heifers either.. Roma, she's a pet, her sisters are awesome producers but she really dropped the ball.. she's a good craigslist candidate.. well halterbroke and generally behaved.

 

[Putangitangi]

That a cow will never produce a replacement heifer became for me a reason to cull, eventually, when there was little else to list.

 

[highgrit]

Boy we sure do things differently. I'm always looking for a reason to cull a cow. I have no use for slackers or freeloaders.

 

[gizmom]

I really think culling has a whole lot to do with where you are in your individual program at the time you preg check. I don't think we can give you a cull don't cull opinion because we don't know all the details of where you are in your program.

A good example I had 6 cows on the cull list for this year three due to age two of them are 14 one is 15 the other three being culled for feet. All six are bred. When we preg checked we had 20 opens, found our bull had gone bad during the breeding season. Yes he was semen checked prior to putting him in, yes we called ourselves watching we just plan missed it. Now those six cows that were going to be culled are staying, the three with bad feet the calves will be considered terminal I don't want to keep anything out of them, the old girls will get some TLC in order to get another calf for cash flow. We picked through the opens sent some to town based on normal criteria but we sure couldn't afford to send all of them to town due to a bull failure. We now have a bull in with them we will give them 60 days them pull the bull re check the cows and have for the first time in 25 years spring calves. This was a bull failure not a cow failure, but because of it these cows will be sold with a calf at side in the spring. Makes me sick but part of it, and why I have to say culling decisions have to be based on where you are in your individual program. To make it suck even more we planned to send the bull to be collected as soon as we pulled him this year, we are in hopes that when we recheck him he will be ok, if so I am still going to have him collected.

gizmom

 

[Nesikep]

We don't really have the facilities (or skill) to preg check... someday it may come.. I do keep a fairly close eye on them so I usually know if the bull has been with them.

A lot of the time we didn't know if the bull was to blame, we had some bulls that didn't know which end of the cow was the business end, and we had one come up with a broken penis a week into the season.. In a way it was the best thing that ever happened, we got a much better bull as a replacement.

I don't bring outside cattle in, except for bulls.. I don't go buying stuff at the sale barn.. I would definitely cull differently if I did. As it stands I can tell you the history of any animal for 25 years. I currently have 6 bloodlines remaining out of about 20, and 2 of them are on the chopping block for eradication as well. I think of the remaining 4 lines, I *might* get rid of one more, but it'll take a while, I have a number of animals in it and they may turn out yet. The way I run around here, docility is high, I do all the cattle handling myself, I can't have high headed cows that deliberately go the wrong way and take half the herd with them passing by every gate.. For sorting it's real nice when I can slip a halter on them and bring them to where I need them, rather than bringing the entire herd into the corrals to get them sorted out.. My young bull is a good example.. I needed him with a different group of cows, so I haltered him up and he nicely followed where he needed to go. I am working on getting the sizes of my calves more uniform, I still get a few dinks every year, and that really hurts the average.. rather than pushing for a greater number of very heavy calves, I'm going to concentrate on getting less small ones. It's a long road, and I'm optimistically half way to where I want to be.

 

[Putangitangi]

I used to preg check every year, partly as community support for the local veterinary club. But their results were never anything more than confirmation of my own observations and sometimes their dating of conception confused the information I had and mine turned out to be correct, so I stopped bothering. I watch them all really closely during mating and some years I AI.

I started out with about the same number of maternal lines and am now (after nearly 20 years) down to eight still contributing (with the effect of those cows which had sons still also running through the herd's family trees). Three of those lines are down to a single cow/daughter, so could disappear unless there's reason and opportunity to keep a lot of daughters.

 

[Nesikep]

Exactly my case.. the two nearly extinct lines are down to 1 remaining member.. a 10 and an 11 year old cow now, and they just seem to be plagued by "bad luck".. thing you often would chalk up to just "shT happens".. just always happens to them.. choking on potatoes, heat stroke, uterine torsions, lump jaw and all that kind of stuff.
I am breeding a few young cows to one of my own bulls for the first time.. If I'm really happy with the calves, perhaps he gets more work next year.. he'll have 1 quality cow to breed this year, if it results in a heifer, it could be interesting

 

[Putangitangi]

The bad-luck families are an odd thing. My one remaining in one was a second-time calver last year who got bashed in the side which, I believe, caused her calf to die and we had to pull it out as she went into premature labour. Her family has been pretty good, overall, so I've kept her. She could go either way, probably badly.
The other single-line family still has mother and daughter. She's had three very nice daughters, one with a poly-cystic ovary issue (nice beef!) and the latest I sold to a friend for breeding. I'll keep the next one, if I get one and she's any good ... Daughter could produce replacements too, I hope.

I've been using my own bulls for several years, because I don't have to answer to anyone else. The main influence is by three bulls from one really nice cow I bought several years ago. She had Neospora, so the only way I could get her influence into the herd was to use her sons. That's still an experiment in progress. Most of them have been pretty good so far.

I do this because I love it. I like that I can do it without anyone else looking over my shoulder, too.

 

[Nesikep]

You have all of us looking over your shoulder

I just want to try and get more uniformity.. and it seems that it's still lacking even in calves that are 15/16th related (only differing by a great grandma)... If I can combine some of my best bloodlines and a bit of line breeding, perhaps I can achieve that.. though in the long run, considering I'm not a seedstock producer, it will probably mean to be profitable on the beef side I'll have to have 2 bulls, one for terminal, and one of my own for replacements.

 

[ANAZAZI]

The open cows are culls, young or old. Their daughters are not culled until they deserve it. It is a good cow until it becomes a cull, the same goes with its daughters.
To cull properly you need enough young cattle to replace the old. I keep all my heifers to calve once, then cull many, then they calve a second time and I cull more, and so on. The better they are the more calves they put in the herd before they are ultimately culled.

If a cow is not worth keeping replacements from, she is effectively decreasing the possible progress in the herd, because if she is replaced her replacement can start contributing to the heifer pen. Whatever heifer is better than a cow you don't like, even her daughters are better, if only to fill the spot for two or three years until they in turn can be replaced.

Cull bad luck, bad luck is a heritable trait. Do not ever make an excuse for a cow.
Do not keep open, late or dry cows.

 

[WalnutCrest]

<snip>Cull bad luck, bad luck is a heritable trait.<snip>

This made me chuckle.

While I think I agree with you, there are some here who may require double blind university studies to write it up before they will even consider the possibility.