Geriatric moms

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farmerjan said:
This past year was the sad year of losing several geriatric moms... Have shipped about 20 over the last year that were in the 12-15 yr old bracket that just did not breed back... all had calves on their sides and decent calves. One that was due in Dec , had a calf that died, and we kept her on feed for about a month and she went with this last group of 8 opens... 6 had no teeth, one had been a hold back one other time and one was a younger cow that raised a mediocre calf and was open so went... it's been hard seeing some of the old faithfuls leave this year... but the prices that cull cows are bringing, we are NOT burying them for sentimental reasons...
I realize that we have to do percentages of opens compared to breds and this past year our percentages were not great...30%..... but when you factor in the age of all the opens and take that away, then our percentage of opens was not bad... Granted, that is not the "cold hard mathematical" way to do it... but it was understandable to have many more opens than "normal" with the old cows we were keeping and getting bred every year...
Got 5 more ... 3 are no teeth with little fall calves on them, couple are getting around slow... they are getting fed corn silage along with hay, doing an okay job, and this will be their last calf. They will go out to a pasture where there are no other cattle very close, no bulls, get the summer to eat grass and raise their calf... and then when the grass runs out, they will go . NOT going to foist them off on someone at a bred cow sale... so I guess that is our ethics kicking in.... and they deserve this last deal.
We do buy some of those geriatric cows with calves at sales... have done decent with them... right now not worth it to us...
Click to expand...
Teeth is the key as you well know.
I always said I was a grass farmer converting grass to cash with a bovine.
Big reason I sold down in the 2011 drought was to save the pasture.
I can buy cows tomorrow rebuilding the pasture is years.

Good grass equals good teeth BCS and longevity.
 
Yep, teeth are the biggest key.... and our grasses and land tend to be rough on the cattle teeth.... We cut our numbers some about 7-10 years ago... from over 150 down to 120 or so the past 3 years and have gotten alot more use out of pastures... but we also lost quite a few pastures, several places have been sold... so we are managing our grass better... fewer cows, more rotations.... Around here an old cow to many is 8-10... for us it is in the 12-15 range... many that have gone this past year were 2011 and 2012 born cows...
 
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