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Breeding / Calving Issues
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<blockquote data-quote="Lucky_P" data-source="post: 1171633" data-attributes="member: 12607"><p>cloud9,</p><p>There's still some of those folks who subscribe to the mantra: "If you never pull a calf, you'll never have to." </p><p>Several ways one could take that statement, but my interpretation is that if you don't assist a problem calving, you'll either have a dead calf, dead cow, or both - and if the cow doesn't raise a calf, she's gone. Problem solved.</p><p>I'm into minimal inputs, but won't take that much of a hands-off approach. I will not just let 'em die without giving it 'the old college try'. In planning my breeding decisions, calving ease is first and foremost - a dead calf has a distressingly low weaning weight; even on my mature cows, I'm not going with a hard-calving bull - I may not go for negative BW, but I'm not going far below breed average; I don't care if I never have to pull another calf - but I know that as long as I have 'em, that there's the possibility that I may have to from time to time.</p><p></p><p>Modern cattle breeding and feeding - including the use of AI and epds/ebvs, genomics, and all the other stuff probably have decreased the incidence of calving problems - with those tools you can have a better idea of what's coming your way - even if not in 100% of the cases. </p><p>Back in the day...grandpa probably had no idea what sort of birth weights or calf conformation a purchased bull was going to produce; yours may never had had any wrecks, but others did. </p><p>And there's no doubt in my mind that we're producing better cattle than in the past; yeah, you can make some money today on 'nothing special' calves with a 350-400 lb weaning weight - but I'd sure rather be producing 650 lb weaners that still have some growth potential about 'em, and will produce a quality carcass for the consumer - hopefully fostering greater demand for BEEF!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lucky_P, post: 1171633, member: 12607"] cloud9, There's still some of those folks who subscribe to the mantra: "If you never pull a calf, you'll never have to." Several ways one could take that statement, but my interpretation is that if you don't assist a problem calving, you'll either have a dead calf, dead cow, or both - and if the cow doesn't raise a calf, she's gone. Problem solved. I'm into minimal inputs, but won't take that much of a hands-off approach. I will not just let 'em die without giving it 'the old college try'. In planning my breeding decisions, calving ease is first and foremost - a dead calf has a distressingly low weaning weight; even on my mature cows, I'm not going with a hard-calving bull - I may not go for negative BW, but I'm not going far below breed average; I don't care if I never have to pull another calf - but I know that as long as I have 'em, that there's the possibility that I may have to from time to time. Modern cattle breeding and feeding - including the use of AI and epds/ebvs, genomics, and all the other stuff probably have decreased the incidence of calving problems - with those tools you can have a better idea of what's coming your way - even if not in 100% of the cases. Back in the day...grandpa probably had no idea what sort of birth weights or calf conformation a purchased bull was going to produce; yours may never had had any wrecks, but others did. And there's no doubt in my mind that we're producing better cattle than in the past; yeah, you can make some money today on 'nothing special' calves with a 350-400 lb weaning weight - but I'd sure rather be producing 650 lb weaners that still have some growth potential about 'em, and will produce a quality carcass for the consumer - hopefully fostering greater demand for BEEF! [/QUOTE]
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