Frustrating 3 year olds

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Chocolate Cow

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West Central Kansas
This group calved last year with very few problems. Boy, are they making up for it now. We've had no winter to stress them and they're being fed better than they deserve. I've had two calve and walk away from their newborn. One offered her 2 week old calf up as a sacrifice to the coyote gods. 4 aborted sometime after preg check. One stepped on her calf and broke it's leg and another is headed to town because she can't milk enough to keep her calf from starving. I'm looking at a 25% drop out on my 3 year olds. Mercy-that's an expensive deal..3 years old, 1 calf and headed to town. :cry2:
 
Sorry to hear about your troubles. That sounds very frustrating. It seems like when it rains it pours sometimes. How far along were the 4 that aborted when they were preg checked? I'm not sure how large your group is, but having several abort would be a concern to me. I've got zero patience for them if they abandon their calves. I'd consider shipping them too and see about getting some replacements that will raise and take care of their calves. I had one abandon her calf last year, and we parted ways quickly. I hope the rest of your calving goes much better with healthy calves and zero issues. :tiphat:
 
How large is the group? Even in a large group I'd be very concerned about the 4 losing the calves. Trich might be an issue.
 
This was a group of 40. Angus. They were summered here at home because ownership transfer of a pasture was delayed. No other bull was in with them other than the one I put with them.
The interesting thing I'm seeing is the ones falling out have a distinctive appearance to them. Hound gutted, rough coated, hard-doing look to them. Looks like I need to send a bull to town as I'm wondering if these are his daughters. I run multi-sire groups, so this takes some thought as to where to put the blame. It's sure frustrating. Thanks for letting me 'frustrate'!
 
Although many people cannot do this with larger groups of cattle, we have multiple pastures that the largest will not hold more than 35 or 40, most have 15-20, and use a single bull in each group. I am a fanatic about knowing who the sire and dam is of each and every heifer we raise. The only time we used 2 bulls was when one of ours was shooting blanks, did not want to lose the season and put a young angus and the young red poll bull in. Not hard to tell which calves were which even when they came out black.

Hope you get it figured out soon. The abortions might be trich or even lepto....
 

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