Early weaning?

[Stocker Steve]

Have you seen any benfits with early weaning with smaller heifers? I am thinking about weaning calves at 9 to 12 weeks for two of them. They are about 950 pound wf heifers and raising a big calf on improved pasture.

 

[KNERSIE]

Unless its a drought situation and you don't have the grass to give them a fair chance, I'd rather let them get on with doing their job of raising their calves. If they aren't suited for your situation its better to find out sooner rather than later. If they lose so much condition that they turn up open then you have your answer if they will work for you or not. They'll catch up alot between weaning their calves at the normal 7 months and calving again. The early weaned heifers will need special care and attention if you want them to be breeding size at the start of the next breeding season, I'd rather let the cows do their job or if they prove they cannot you'll be better off by getting rid of them.

 

[Stocker Steve]

Giving them a fair chance sounds like a practical approach. I had one heavy milking simi/herf heifer like that last year - - she weaned an 800 pound calf but never grew much, and then calved right at the start of her second season.

Knersie - What percent of your bred heifers get culled before their second calf?

 

[KNERSIE]

Giving them a fair chance sounds like a practical approach. I had one heavy milking simi/herf heifer like that last year - - she weaned an 800 pound calf but never grew much, and then calved right at the start of her second season.

Knersie - What percent of your bred heifers get culled before their second calf?

Very few of the retained heifers born here gets culled, the bought in heifers the % is much larger. I'd say 10% of my own heifers gets culled either for not milking heavy enough or failing to breed back on time, about 30%- 40% of bought in heifers never make it to their second calving.

Every so often I get it wrong with an AI bull and that % goes up, but I haven't used any new bulls for the last 4 years so its pretty steady at the moment.

 

[Alan]

A weaning ? For Harley. seems to me you posted a pic of a bull calf a while back, what stuck me is I believe you stated it was about 8 months old and you were getting ready to wean it. Is that correct? Will you leave a calf on a cow for 8 months, I assume to help with the calves development (?). I'm considering leaving an AI calf on a good milking cow longer than the 205 day time line. In the pic the calf was nursing if that helps you recall.

BTW, anyone feel free to input, I know I said Harley, but this is not a pm to him. I'll appreciate any and all input..... Not intending to hijack this thread,just seemed like the question fit.

Thanks,
Alan

 

[KNERSIE]

Alan, my breeding season is 66 days long, I wean all my registered calves on the same day. I try not to wean before 7 months old meaning the older calves are closer to 9 months old when I wean them physically. I've been forced to play around with weaning age because of drought when I had two calving seasons and came to the conclusion that early weaning requires expensive inputs in my environment where the feed quality is low at best and the supply is very unreliable therefore I need to utelise whatever cheap gain I can get. For me there is no cheaper gain than the cow's milk.

The official weaning weight get taken at the optimum time according to a computer programme provided by our Logix system. I take all the weights on the same day to make the contemporary group larger. This neccesarily means some calves are 6 months old and others are 8 months old, but the vast majority will be around 205 days old.

If your cows are still in good condition there is no harm done by leaving the calves on them for longer, especially if you have the type of cows that tend to get overconditioned when idle. I believe that an 8 month old calf has much less of a setback at weaning as opposed to a 6 month old calf.

 

[TSR]

I have weaned early several times and as has been said, the calves are more fragile,more likely to have problems of some sort without some extra care.