Culling Cows

[randiliana]

In reference to the other thread.

Would you cull this cow....There are so many reasons to cull...Here's my list of reasons to cull. Keep in mind that we run about a 60 day breeding/calving season

1. Not Bred Back
2. Late calving, of course we do run a 60 day season, so if they are too late the problem is a non-issue..
3. Poor Production - no milk, below average production for more than 1 year, below minimum production standards as a heifer.
4. Bad Temperament - want to kill you anytime, or at calving time, hard to work, runaways, the kind that stir the whole herd up.
5. Calving difficulties - C-sections, assists, vag prolapse, uterine prolapse
6. Poor Conformation, udders, feet
7. Age - depends on production and ability to breed back, and exactly what her age IS
8. Health - lumps, eye problems, lameness issues
9. Death or possible death of calf - Depends on the reason, no milk, scours, management issue. Depends if she accepts a orphan calf.
10. Poor Mothering Ability, won't take calf, takes work to get her to accept calf.

So there's my list, some things are a 1 strike, some are 2 or 3, and some only come into play if we need to reduce numbers, or if the problem is or becomes so bad that we have to spend a lot of time dealing with it...

For example, not bred would get her culled immediately, there would be no second chances. Really bad production from a heifer would result in her being culled after her first calf. If she wants to kill me, her life span is severely shortened, cause I'd rather it be her, than me.....

So/so production might get her a second chance to prove herself...A poor udder wouldn't necessarily get her culled, maybe not even for a few years, so long as she raises a calf every year and doesn't require any work for her to do it. Several of the things on the list are self limiting, age, health, late calving, calving problems are all fairly likely to end up in the NOT BRED category sooner or later, just depends how long you are willing to deal with them, or how life threatening they are. There isn't a lot of return from a dead cow....

 

[backhoeboogie]

There's a shortage of cows. People are not culling as hard. Most everyone had already culled heavy back in the drought.

So I go down your list and everything cited is valid.

I hate a cow that likes to try the fences. Sometimes I simply don't like one. Anything is an excuse to cut her lose.

 

[Nesikep]

I have kept a couple that you'd have gotten rid of first strike... Perhaps some of the reasons were our management at the time (Lack of minerals). Tizia was one such case, she had an amazing heifer for her first try (I think she was close to 700 lbs at weaning), but didn't breed back, we decided to keep her, and she was hit and miss for breeding back, she would be early, then catch up fine, then get late again.. That's when I did a blood test on her for minerals and found out the root cause. Mega is her daughter an has conceived first time every time.
Then I have Prada, who was a first timer this year, Last year at breeding, I saw her bred, then everything was quiet and in the fall she was in heat again.. I think she may have slipped the calf at some point. She ended up raising a nice calf and breeding back 6 weeks later with no troubles, so as long as she really works hard, I'll see what she can do, but I won't tolerate any repetitions on this.
I have one heifer that raised a dink last year.. I had her with some yearlings and I think they were nursing her before she calved and it all went to heck in a handbasket for her.. Again, no repetitions of that, this calf better be at least respectable.
I've kept a couple for longer than I normally would with vaginal prolapses.. I am gambling on 1 more year for the second time.. without question I don't keep offspring, and they're gone this fall.. I had the space to keep them so I did, that's changed now.
We have culled very hard for udders and feet, and we don't have much of anything troublesome left..
Attitude... Snooty cows are gone pretty quick... If they really never need help at calving and are protective for a day or two I don't mind too much.. I'm going to be on my toes anyhow, but longer than that gets shipped... One exception has been an old cow with a big droopy udder.. She's mean as a witch at calving time, and has a bag so low the calf can't find it.. So down the chute she goes, gets milked out once, the calf gets hooked on, and she's usually OK after that.. We've kept 3 heifers from her and they've all been very good. I also have an excellent cow that tests the fences, but she's phenotypically one I can say I want a lot more of... Hoping to get a couple more daughters from her... she's 11 and isn't smartening up

I don't usually cull on age... something else has to give. Some cows just don't ever make something worth keeping as a replacement, but are troublefree terminal calf machines.. I keep them until I have something better coming along.
It's taken a lot of culling to get to where we are, and there's certainly more to do going forward... With what we started off with if we culled everything we didn't like we wouldn't have had anything left... We had lots of troublemakers.. the kind that always duck out of the herd before the gate, then go through the fence to get back with them, mean ones, fence busters, and all the physical problems on top of it.

 

[Taurus]

Don't forget 11 and 12.

11. Cows that won't be weaned.
12. Dink calves. We culled two cows for that reason.

 

[Tim/South]

With dink calves I may be culling the bull.

 

[Rafter S]

Randiliana mentioned temperament as a reason for culling. I agree, and that covers 2 kinds. The ones that want to fight for no good reason, and the ones that don't want to go in the pen.

 

[Nesikep]

We had 2 cows that would fight endlessly, especially after calving... until there was a better fight going on, then they'd team up. I don't mind if they fight and establish the order, but I keep the fights 1 on 1 as I've had a cow really hurt her hip when she was fighting 2 at a time. My old cow Rosie did NOT like fights going on... She'd go break them up in her 'old cow wisdom'. Fighting around calves is a no-no too.
We got rid of one of the fighters and we were good for a while.
Next year the other fighter got into a row with her sister.. they fought for a full hour as hard as they could. It was hilarious to watch them.. they were so tired they could hardly walk, they just leaned their heads against each other and glared.

 

[randiliana]

Dink calves would be under poor production....

We run 150 cows, short of the heifers, there isn't one that I am afraid of, definitely cautious at calving time, because even the quiet ones can have a bad day, but not 1 that I know will try to get me. As far as protective mamas go, I figure that if they can't tell the difference between me and a coyote then they can do that somewhere else. They see me (and DH) on the ground pretty much every day all winter, and probably 5-6 times a day at calving time. There are so many GOOD quiet cows, why deal with something that wants to try and kill you?

On the other end of the temperament scale, the ones that are so scared of you or being in the corral. Those ones just cause so many issues when you are gathering, penning and sorting. First off, they get the whole herd worked up, second, they do their darndest to stay out of any pen, and thirdly, they are the ones most likely to run you over when you are sorting, either because they feel cornered with nowhere else to go, or because they are trying so hard to get away from you. New cows we will give a year or so, to see if they will settle, but after that, its obvious that they are just problem cows.

 

[randiliana]

Dink calves would be under poor production....

We run 150 cows, short of the heifers, there isn't one that I am afraid of, definitely cautious at calving time, because even the quiet ones can have a bad day, but not 1 that I know will try to get me. As far as protective mamas go, I figure that if they can't tell the difference between me and a coyote then they can do that somewhere else. They see me (and DH) on the ground pretty much every day all winter, and probably 5-6 times a day at calving time. There are so many GOOD quiet cows, why deal with something that wants to try and kill you?

On the other end of the temperament scale, the ones that are so scared of you or being in the corral. Those ones just cause so many issues when you are gathering, penning and sorting. First off, they get the whole herd worked up, second, they do their darndest to stay out of any pen, and thirdly, they are the ones most likely to run you over when you are sorting, either because they feel cornered with nowhere else to go, or because they are trying so hard to get away from you. New cows we will give a year or so, to see if they will settle, but after that, its obvious that they are just problem cows.

 

[randiliana]

Nesi, all those, except maybe the Dry cows, are subject to management issues. Providing that there are no management issues causing the problems, then they are culled on the above criteria. Obviously, I wouldn't cull a heifer that raised a poor calf if I knew that the calf were sick, or if we knew we had mineral deficiencies that were causing the problems.

But, the dry thing just gets me, it is expensive to keep a cow, and to keep one for 4 years that only raises one calf is awfully expensive, especially if you consider that you could have had a cow that produced every one of those years. Sentiments aside, even if you are having some sort of issue that is causing them to not breed back, it is pretty expensive. I know, we went through it with a bull that didn't breed any cows.

 

[Nesikep]

We've fixed our deficiencies now, and things have improved.

I know I have a tendency to give a second chance too easily, but 3rds don't happen much.

I have a pretty easygoing bunch of cows now.. I give my scourgard vaccine in the field while they eat.. I might not get them all, but I get the vast majority of them. It's quite nice. They also have better hooves now, so I have many cows that never have needed to go down the chute. Today I had one cow that could use a little more food (she milked longer than the rest) and I slipped a rope over her neck and led her to the corral.. When we started it would have been an ordeal of bringing the whole herd up and then cutting the one out. I think I've got about 40% of them halterable, and 30% truly halterbroke where I don't have to worry about them pulling me along. I know with a herd the size of yours you can't put that kind of energy into that.
The first timer that was late knows me well, and is fine around me, but right after she calved, she made it clear that she didn't like my mother around her baby.

It is expensive to keep a dry cow, but it's also expensive raising her replacement... I weigh it out... there has to be a good chance of improvement, and the rest of the cow has to be good enough to warrant it.

 

[Alan]

I agree with the OP's list but for me I would add flighty or high headed cattle. The type that when I go to move them into another pasture the high headed one sprints off to the far end of the pasture and take half the herd with her.

 

[boondocks]

Here's a culling question I'm mulling now. We have a cow (registered Angus--let's call her Cow A) who gave birth to her first calf in early August. She was 26 mos old at the time. She gave birth based on her second round of AI---the first round did not take, very possibly because she had very bad pinkeye (both eyes) at the time and had minimal sight/was stressed. She ultimately got sight back (not sure if 100%--her eyes remain a bit cloudy but she seems to see fine; she remains a bit small). Anyway, she gave birth unassisted on Aug. 2 to a small heifer calf, and bred back on the first try (via AI) only 6 weeks later. So far, this makes a case for keeping her around, right? (She has decent conformation etc. but is nothing fancy).

The issue is that her calf (Trio) has pretty consistently been caught nursing another (older) cow, "Cow B". Cow B is also nursing her own calf and also adopted an orphan bottle calf. (She is maintaining condition despite this). Trio also does nurse from her own mother, A, who does seem to maintain a bag, although it is not huge.

It's difficult to say whether Trio would have gotten enough milk from her mother if the nurse cow B wasn't letting her nurse: in other words, is Cow A's small bag the cause of Trio going door-to-door looking for handouts, or the result??? I have also heard that a small bag isn't necessarily a sign of low milk production?

Until the orphan calf came along and started nursing Cow B, I only ever saw the calves nursing from their own mamas. It seems like Trio learned from the orphan that Cow B was giving handouts, and decided to belly up too. Should Cow A have tried to stop her calf from nursing another cow? Despite the small bag and cloudy eyes, I'm inclined to keep her and see how she does with Calf 2 next summer. We are having sufficient "fun" getting the cows settled on AI alone, that I'm not inclined to cull a cow that's gotten preggers on two out of three cycles despite vision issues...Thoughts? Thanks!

 

[Nesikep]

I've had calves from cows with lots of milk become incorrigible thieves. If the calf grew well enough, I'd keep her around.. most of the time they don't steal THAT much milk, and if Cow B had 2 on her already, you can be sure there wasn't enough extra to make a difference.

As long as it's a small calf stealing from a cow with lots of milk, I don't mind it, but sometimes it's the other way around and I have to do something about it.

 

[boondocks]

I've had calves from cows with lots of milk become incorrigible thieves. If the calf grew well enough, I'd keep her around.. most of the time they don't steal THAT much milk, and if Cow B had 2 on her already, you can be sure there wasn't enough extra to make a difference.

As long as it's a small calf stealing from a cow with lots of milk, I don't mind it, but sometimes it's the other way around and I have to do something about it.

The calf is a bit small but seems to be catching up. Due to the missed AI, she is a few weeks younger than her peers anyway. (Sire is Predestined).

It's hard for beginners to know what to look for, visually, in terms of retention. We have gone on some of the Angus farm outings and some of those folks have cows that look like an entirely different species. I have seen quite mannish (to my novice eye) females, and numerous jaws that look for all the world like the pics of lumpy jaw--just one example.

 

[Supa Dexta]

There's a shortage of cows. People are not culling as hard. Most everyone had already culled heavy back in the drought.

There's also record high cull prices.. They're still going.

 

[randiliana]

Here's a culling question I'm mulling now. We have a cow (registered Angus--let's call her Cow A) who gave birth to her first calf in early August. She was 26 mos old at the time. She gave birth based on her second round of AI---the first round did not take, very possibly because she had very bad pinkeye (both eyes) at the time and had minimal sight/was stressed. She ultimately got sight back (not sure if 100%--her eyes remain a bit cloudy but she seems to see fine; she remains a bit small). Anyway, she gave birth unassisted on Aug. 2 to a small heifer calf, and bred back on the first try (via AI) only 6 weeks later. So far, this makes a case for keeping her around, right? (She has decent conformation etc. but is nothing fancy).

The issue is that her calf (Trio) has pretty consistently been caught nursing another (older) cow, "Cow B". Cow B is also nursing her own calf and also adopted an orphan bottle calf. (She is maintaining condition despite this). Trio also does nurse from her own mother, A, who does seem to maintain a bag, although it is not huge.

It's difficult to say whether Trio would have gotten enough milk from her mother if the nurse cow B wasn't letting her nurse: in other words, is Cow A's small bag the cause of Trio going door-to-door looking for handouts, or the result??? I have also heard that a small bag isn't necessarily a sign of low milk production?

Until the orphan calf came along and started nursing Cow B, I only ever saw the calves nursing from their own mamas. It seems like Trio learned from the orphan that Cow B was giving handouts, and decided to belly up too. Should Cow A have tried to stop her calf from nursing another cow? Despite the small bag and cloudy eyes, I'm inclined to keep her and see how she does with Calf 2 next summer. We are having sufficient "fun" getting the cows settled on AI alone, that I'm not inclined to cull a cow that's gotten preggers on two out of three cycles despite vision issues...Thoughts? Thanks!

Unless her calf is really small and looks like it needs the extra I wouldn't be in a hurry to cull Cow A. Cow B on the other hand, if she is letting all the other calves suck her, might be more the one to cull. Calves are thieves, and if they get it figured out where they can get a free lunch they will go there. It is good that she is allowing the orphan, perhaps, but not other calves, she won't have the milk to support her own calf, the orphan and the third thief.

As far as the udder goes, they sure don't have to be big to produce milk. Size doesn't indicate milking ability, because usually the big udders are big looking because they don't have the support structure that the smaller looking ones do. And those big udders are often the ones that have problems, whether mastitis, or balloon teats, or just simply swing bags.

 

[boondocks]

Unless her calf is really small and looks like it needs the extra I wouldn't be in a hurry to cull Cow A. Cow B on the other hand, if she is letting all the other calves suck her, might be more the one to cull. Calves are thieves, and if they get it figured out where they can get a free lunch they will go there. It is good that she is allowing the orphan, perhaps, but not other calves, she won't have the milk to support her own calf, the orphan and the third thief.

As far as the udder goes, they sure don't have to be big to produce milk. Size doesn't indicate milking ability, because usually the big udders are big looking because they don't have the support structure that the smaller looking ones do. And those big udders are often the ones that have problems, whether mastitis, or balloon teats, or just simply swing bags.

Thanks Randi, good advice. I've been very surprised that Cow B let 3 calves nurse. (She was not that "squishy" before). I've been keeping a close eye and her condition is still good, and her own calf is huge, so I suspect the other 2 calves are jet getting a little here and there. Actually, they seem to be eating mostly hay now.

 

[bigbull338]

right now i use 3 main things for a cow to get culled.1 is breeding so late that you calve months after the big bunch of cows and heifers.2 age anything over 10 is watched and culled when going backwards.3 real low milk production.culled 2 cows on age and being a full year late calving.thus missing a calf crop.going to cull a cow on age and raising amost 400lb calf at 10 months old.she should be heavy bred now.so she will be sold when her calf is 4 months old or older.

 

[fitz]

These girls are going with their calves this spring:


age

diluter gene and age

daughter of 2nd cow. diluter gene