Fall work day today!

[Fire Sweep Ranch]

Great weather, awesome day. We had the vet out to do our fall herd health check (that is what I call it!). Had some heifers to calfhood, a June bull calf to cut (one left, he might get cut too... not sure yet if he is bull quality). Everyone was vaccinated and wormed, and the fall herd all got Multimin injections. We are trying to improve first time conceptions to AI and embryos, so trying some new things (they went on the Vitaferm Conceptaide mineral about a month ago).
We did have two late girls, one a first calf heifer (2 years old), that did not take to AI, so we took the first calf heifer to a bull (did not have a breeding age bull at the time) and she stuck. Was ultrasounded 70 days with a heifer calf. The other we ran with our bull that won state fair when she came in heat, and she confirmed 50 days bred. Both of those are late for us, but they are bred. So everyone got pregnant. We did carry over a two year old first calf heifer that has raised one heck of an April calf, and sucked down a bit (she is probably a 4 BCS). We tried to AI her on just one heat, then decided to roll her to fall to give her time to recoup when she did not take (and it was getting late in the year).
We have one cow we are setting up to flush at the end of this month, so she was skipped (she got wormed and multimin, that was it). The entire process took all of 2 hours, working 22 cows and 5 weanling heifers (we weaned today after vaccinating), a Feb bull, two steers, a fall yearling heifer, and 7 calves. All calves were tattooed, which takes the longest to set up the gun to each individual tattoo number.
I guess no sleep for us tonight! We fence wean, but one of these days I want to get some of those Quiet wean nose flaps to see if that makes it better. I have been told they hardly make a peep!

 

[cowgirl_jenna]

Yes, noisy few days ahead! We fenceline wean too, but boy its loud for a while. Seems like the first day the cows are the worst, then the calves join in. I know there is nothing "wrong", but bellering cattle always make me nervous/up-set .

What is differnt with the mineral you mentioned? Differnt formulation? How did your AI"ing go this year? I did not have as good of luck this year, and even our bulls seemed to have more problems this year. We had severe drought/heat last year, and almost everyone settled on 1-2 breedings last year. This year we seemed to have a lot more repeats, ai and bulls. This year was wet/cool early, and it got warmer this summer, but nothing like last year. I'm still kinda puzzled over this?????

Anyway, its always nice to be done with the fall cattle work up. We will be doing ours the end of the month.
Jenna

 

[Fire Sweep Ranch]

Yes, noisy few days ahead! We fenceline wean too, but boy its loud for a while. Seems like the first day the cows are the worst, then the calves join in. I know there is nothing "wrong", but bellering cattle always make me nervous/up-set .

What is differnt with the mineral you mentioned? Differnt formulation? How did your AI"ing go this year? I did not have as good of luck this year, and even our bulls seemed to have more problems this year. We had severe drought/heat last year, and almost everyone settled on 1-2 breedings last year. This year we seemed to have a lot more repeats, ai and bulls. This year was wet/cool early, and it got warmer this summer, but nothing like last year. I'm still kinda puzzled over this?????

Anyway, its always nice to be done with the fall cattle work up. We will be doing ours the end of the month.
Jenna

Jenna-
I did the math, and we have had a 73% stick on embryos overall, which is pretty good. Our AI this spring was sub par. We had to hit several at least two cycles. We had a bad drought last year also, and that led to very poor hay over the winter. Our cows came out of the winter in pretty poor shape for what is normal around here. I am sure that contributed to it. Also, we bought two heifers for the kids to show, and both of those took on the first AI schedule. So I am trying to tighten up our window. Our fall cows are doing pretty good (started September 10th, and last calf was the first week of October). I just get nervous when I has too many come in a second and third time. We rolled a cow we are flushing to the fall (we never tried to breed), but her daughter, a 4 year old, we tried twice and decided to roll her also. I had a late calving 2 year old that only got one chance to catch, which she did not. So we are rolling her to fall also. I do not want to roll any falls to spring (we have too many spring calvers and not enough fall).
That is why I decided to change the mineral. VitaFerm is a very good brand, and around $5 to $8 higher per sack. But if I pick up my conceptions by one cycle, I am saving that in semen use!

 

[Ohrmundt Simmentals]

We separated our calves this weekend also. We also do the fenceline. We average 2 days of noise with a few peeps on the 3rd day. We also vac and wormed our cows and got it all done before the football. We'll vac and worm the calves this weekend.

Jenna
We seen a similar thing this summer to. A few more cows cycling a little later and few more repeats. We had pretty good drought here last summer also and some of our hay over the winter was not very good. The best thing we can think of is that this summer is the result of last summer.

FS
I've seen some good things about your new mineral. Hope it works well for ya, keep us posted.