Early Breeding

[Anonymous]

During the past few months, I've been slowly buying more and more nurse cows to raise our Holstein heifer calves that we custom raise. On a few occasions, the owner has sold some of the heifers back to us. The owner likes to breed his heifers at 15months old, but has said people are breeding at 1 year old. We've been as successful breeding heifers @ 1 year as with waiting, but have any of ya'll had problems with this early breeding?

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[Anonymous]

Havent done it myself, bt a dairy down the road does. The key is that the heifers be really well grown out and cycling. His yearling Holstins run 1100 to 1300 lbs. and look more like coming two year olds.

dun

> During the past few months, I've
> been slowly buying more and more
> nurse cows to raise our Holstein
> heifer calves that we custom
> raise. On a few occasions, the
> owner has sold some of the heifers
> back to us. The owner likes to
> breed his heifers at 15months old,
> but has said people are breeding
> at 1 year old. We've been as
> successful breeding heifers @ 1
> year as with waiting, but have any
> of ya'll had problems with this
> early breeding?

 

[Anonymous]

the target in my part of the world is to have your heifers calve at 24 months. it works extremely well with holsteins and derivatives of that breed, my experience is that early maturing beef breeds can handle it very well too. BUT it depends on how long you want to keep your animals. i have my Belgian Blues calve only twice, then they get fattened (50% replacement), so their is no real problem, but when you want to keep them for longer times, you have to make sure that the heifers get properly developed, and with some breeds that will take three extra months, some even six. but like i said, it's no problem for FH.

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[Anonymous]

> the target in my part of the world
> is to have your heifers calve at
> 24 months. it works extremely well
> with holsteins and derivatives of
> that breed, my experience is that
> early maturing beef breeds can
> handle it very well too. BUT it
> depends on how long you want to
> keep your animals. i have my
> Belgian Blues calve only twice,
> then they get fattened (50%
> replacement), so their is no real
> problem, but when you want to keep
> them for longer times, you have to
> make sure that the heifers get
> properly developed, and with some
> breeds that will take three extra
> months, some even six. but like i
> said, it's no problem for FH. Belgian Blues sound interesting from what I have been able to find on them. Please tell about your operation, weaning age and weights, finishing program, and marketing criteria.

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[Anonymous]

all my cattle is fullblood BB

i have 49 registered cows, all bred and calved this year, nothing died, so i'm a happy bunny this spring. i also have around 250 bulls for fattening and all the female calves are kept for replacement or sold as registered replacement heifers. bred or not. i also sell the occasional breeding bull, but it's not really part of my business.

we wean at an average of 300 kg (660 pounds) between 6 and 8 months of age. i start the fattening as soon as they are weaned, with a ration of sillaged corn + sillaged grass until they reach 400 kg (880 pounds), then it's a ration of broken triticale and sillaged corn until 650 kg (1430 pounds) and then it's sillaged corn and broken barley until 750 kg (1650 pounds). then it's the slaughterhouse for 'em. i produce all the feed myself to cut the costs a bit. cows that have been bred twice are fattened too.

all bulls are fattened under a supermarketlabel guaranteeing me a lowest price, or whatever they are worth on the market. this gives me the guarantee that i will make money, as long as the bulls meet the SEUROP (they have to be S, which is the highest quality) and fat classifications (scale of 1 to 5 where 1 is the smallest fat cover). in the fat classification i have to meat two, three is acceptable for only 10% of the total delivered by me, otherwise i can loose the contract the next year. for me this is a very good way of marketing my bulls.

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[Anonymous]

Cattle are usually sexually matured by the time they've reached weaning age (7-9 months). Variable depend on the breed and the situation in which the calves are in. We've seen heifer get bred at 8 months (on accident) and grow to close their expected height and more often than not they turn out to be successful mothers. Now, there is every instance to a situation and we've also seen heifers that get bred early and never fully mature to be a successful breeder.

I know that early breeding is used on a somewhat regular basis in show cattle if the particular calf shows too much growth and the individual person wants to stop the calf from growing. This is the same for show bulls and heifers.

 

[Anonymous]

a bull won't stop growing if you let him breed.

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