Heifer age of puberty

[ANAZAZI]

I am fine with heifers starting to cycle at twelve months. When we let the bulls in the youngest possible heifer is thirteen months, most are of course 15 months when the bulls get there. As long as they are bred I am fine, if not bred they are culls no matter why they were not bred.

The thread about the "teen pregnancies" and the one about scrotal circumference and its relation to early cycling got me to bring the subject up again: is there any breeder on this forum that ever has heifers cycling too late? Is this at all a real world problem?

Heifers not getting pregnant happens of course, but is late cycling the reason at all?

 

[BRYANT]

breed can make difference on how soon they start to cycle.
I don't know if you have many Brahman or Brahman cross cattle where you are from but a lot of the time they will be much older before they start to cycle. If you only gave them to 15 months to breed I think you would be culling some that did not need to be culled. just my :2cents: :2cents:

 

[dun]

Our heifers are typically cycling by 9-10 months. We had a bull that had a 44cm scrotal at 11 months. When we did a Repro Tract Score on his daughters at 11 months they were all under developed. Kept one of them, she didn;t start to cycle till she was 21 months old.
I lay it down to the exception that proves the rule.
Kind of funny that the bull mid way through his second breeding season went sterile.

 

[wbvs58]

I think one of the main reasons that a heifer doesn't go in calf is behavioural that is she doesn't stand for the bull to do his job. I had that problem a few years ago when running the heifers with the main herd, the bull I was using was not dominant over the bull calves and chase them off and when the heifers came on heat it was a bit of a free for all with all the bull calves trying to get their end in and so the heifers got a bit peed off with it and would run off whenever anything mounted. Once I seperated them off with the bull they settled on the next cycle. I do think this happens a lot as being a reason that heifers don't conceive they just don't allow the bull to do his job, possibly with a bit more age they may be more receptive but then this is what we are selecting for, high fertility. We may keep 10 heifers when we really only need 8 to cover those that don't conceive for whatever reason.
Using AI on heifers probably does not do this "receptive trait" much good over a period of time.

Ken

 

[Lucky_P]

Anazazi,
We rarely have heifers exhibiting early puberty, especially since we moved back to predominantly Angus sires- though I have had two heifers in this year's spring calf crop that were in heat prior to weaning(at 7 months) - but they were Simmental and Shorthorn sired...
It's often difficult for us to get all the heifers we retain as replacements to breed up at 14-16 months... they're often just not cycling by then. We have 'rolled' more heifers to the next breeding/calving season (we do split spring/fall here) than I've liked, the last 2 years. Hopefully, those breeding at 18-19 months of age will be less likely to 'fall out' by not re-breeding in a timely manner as first-calvers.

 

[ANAZAZI]

So this is an issue with Brahman cattle, and with Simmenthals? Any other breeds where late cycling in heifers is an issue?

 

[dun]

So this is an issue with Brahman cattle, and with Simmenthals? Any other breeds where late cycling in heifers is an issue?

The only Brahman influenced acattle that I have experience with are Santa Gertrudis, they cycled right along with the other heifers and calved at 24-25 months. But that was almost 50 years ago. Our Simmenthal and Gelbvieh cross heifers breed right along with our Red Angus and Red Angus Hereford heifers. The only ones we had problems with were pure Red Angus. But I put that at the foot of the particular bull that sired them.
All of our 1B ( greater then 86% angus) cows all go back to Simmenthals.

 

[WalnutCrest]

this article hits some of these topics

 

[Supa Dexta]

He was saying the sims came into heat sooner than the angus, not late.

I've heard belgian blues are late to reach puberty, but I haven't bred any myself. And it tends to be the big muscled breeds that mature late, and the smaller more milk oriented reach puberty sooner.

 

[wbvs58]

So this is an issue with Brahman cattle, and with Simmenthals? Any other breeds where late cycling in heifers is an issue?

I think with Brahman cattle a lot of the problem would be nutrition as they are the breed of choice on most of the marginal country in Northern Australia and late puberty can be a blessing where bulls are running all year with the cows plus there will be a population of Mickey bulls. The biggest problem lies with getting them back in calf after their first calf.
Ken

 

[Muddy]

He was saying the sims came into heat sooner than the angus, not late.

I've heard belgian blues are late to reach puberty, but I haven't bred any myself. And it tends to be the big muscled breeds that mature late, and the smaller more milk oriented reach puberty sooner.

Neighbors had two 15 months old full blooded Belgian Blue heifers calved unassisted last summer. No idea who's the sire of these calves as they have three bulls at that time.

I've seen lot of "teen" pregnancies in Angus, Holsteins, Charolais and Gelbvieh more than any breed. For some odd reason I never seen a teen pregnancy in highlands and roping cattle.

 

[WalnutCrest]

A friend raises Highland cattle. They come in very late for him ... usually not calving for the first time until they were three. He thinks it's because they were selected for color, coat length and horn length / shape for far too many years. I think he's thrown in the towel on trying to fix that.

 

[dun]

A friend raises Highland cattle. They come in very late for him ... usually not calving for the first time until they were three. He thinks it's because they were selected for color, coat length and horn length / shape for far too many years. I think he's thrown in the towel on trying to fix that.

Neighbor has 2 F1 Highland x Dexters. They calved for the first time as a 3 and a 4 year old, skipped a year and calved again. These girls run with the bull 24/7

 

[Muddy]

A friend raises Highland cattle. They come in very late for him ... usually not calving for the first time until they were three. He thinks it's because they were selected for color, coat length and horn length / shape for far too many years. I think he's thrown in the towel on trying to fix that.

Neighbor has 2 F1 Highland x Dexters. They calved for the first time as a 3 and a 4 year old, skipped a year and calved again. These girls run with the bull 24/7

I used to haul out our customers' cull dexters to the sale barn. Majority of these dexters are open and some of them didn't calved till their 3rd birthday. I had dealt with some folks with their highlands that went feral (never banding bull calves, weaning, sorting out or sold calves) but I never seen a highland heifer that got bred too early in these feral situations and they have lot of intact bulls in these herds.

 

[Nesikep]

The heifers I have that were in heat or bred too early were Shorthorn and/or Gelbvieh influenced... I haven't run all that many breed in recent years, I'll see how the Limos do, they're know for being a little later maturing... I too think that as long as they're cycling by the time the bull goes out at 14-15 months, I don't need to worry much.. they probably gain a little more weight if they aren't bawling and jumping for a day out of every 21.. that's pure speculation though.

 

[Stocker Steve]

Any other breeds where late cycling in heifers is an issue?

Limi
Run a lot of F1s, and quit preg testing the heifers since they are usually 100%.
Kept some Limi x herf one year against good advise, and half did not cycle on time to calve as 2 year olds.

 

[cow pollinater]

It's a very real problem in CA, especially during the last few years of drought. The guys that have been running middle of the road baldies for years seem to cruise along and are fine but new customers who want to jump out there and use new high power genetics wind up with a bunch of open heifers if they don't learn to help them out a little when their feed year shuts down.

 

[Lucky_P]

CP,
That's kind of how I'm looking at it, too.
We went back to Angus after 20+ years, mainly for the black coat color, 'cause we were getting creamed at the salebarn on yellow/red.
Mostly just breed-average Angus stuff... no real high performance genetics... but the resulting heifers ended up 2 frame scores bigger and several hundred pounds heavier than their old linebred SimAngus dams... and were slow to breed up, frequently came up open as first-timers. Just seem to take more groceries...

Started back to using some Simmental sires... frame scores and mature weights came back down, SM-sired heifers cycled earlier than the predominantly Angus girls.
Jury's still out, to some degree, on the Shorthorn-sired females, as the bulk of them are just now coming into production. Time will tell.

 

[Stocker Steve]

Mostly just breed-average Angus stuff... no real high performance genetics... but the resulting heifers ended up 2 frame scores bigger and several hundred pounds heavier than their old linebred SimAngus dams... and were slow to breed up, frequently came up open as first-timers. Just seem to take more groceries...
Started back to using some Simmental sires... frame scores and mature weights came back down, SM-sired heifers cycled earlier than the predominantly Angus girls.

Have average angus been bred up that much, or is there something special about your simi sire selections?

 

[Muddy]

CP,
That's kind of how I'm looking at it, too.
We went back to Angus after 20+ years, mainly for the black coat color, 'cause we were getting creamed at the salebarn on yellow/red.
Mostly just breed-average Angus stuff... no real high performance genetics... but the resulting heifers ended up 2 frame scores bigger and several hundred pounds heavier than their old linebred SimAngus dams... and were slow to breed up, frequently came up open as first-timers. Just seem to take more groceries...

Started back to using some Simmental sires... frame scores and mature weights came back down, SM-sired heifers cycled earlier than the predominantly Angus girls.
Jury's still out, to some degree, on the Shorthorn-sired females, as the bulk of them are just now coming into production. Time will tell.

You must have special Angus that cycles super slow....