Heifers not bred back

[Jessica06]

Farmerjan, I think we are on the same page! Great minds think alike. We usually toodle our fall heifers along and breed them in the spring with our just-yearlings and always have more of the fall heifers breed, breed back, and wean bigger calves. The only extra cost we usually have in them is mineral.

 

[Midtenn]

Kind of goes along with my thinking. I knew the gamble of breeding them at 14 months. Could have held them back and probably avoided some of this. Either way, it's 6 months lost production any way you cut it. But I do think the unusually high percentage this year is due somewhat to the weather. And now that you mentioned it, I remember that when the rain came and the grass really greened back up and they were crapping straight out is when I started getting concerned about how they were dropping off, couldn't hold flesh. I had hi-mag mineral out all during this time but they didn't eat it I thought just because the multimin was doing its job.
So now I'm thinking what supplement would they need in these conditions (when the grass is going straight through them)?

 

[farmerjan]

Farmerjan, I think we are on the same page! Great minds think alike. We usually toodle our fall heifers along and breed them in the spring with our just-yearlings and always have more of the fall heifers breed, breed back, and wean bigger calves. The only extra cost we usually have in them is mineral.

Thank you. I have just found that pushing them doesn't work well for us because we don't push them for growth early on. In fact at a recent bull sale, one of the 2 guys who sell bulls there said that he has found that getting his heifers to calve at about 30 months works better for him and that he has less calving problems and they seem to milk a little better. I keep saying that a 15 yr old girl can have a baby, but waiting til she is 18 yrs old is better. So, I would rather wait the extra 6 months on the front end, than lose 6 months in the middle or lose the heifer all together.

 

[js1234]

Keeping first calf heifers that don't breed back is risky and one of the most potentially damaging decisions one can make for his herds pofitablity due to the risk being taken with the reproductive efficiency of your herd. Those slow breeding traits ought not to be given an opportunity to propagate. AI bred AND a 90 day cleanup season, then coming to the chute open is unacceptable no matter how hot or dry it has been. The one caveat of course being if the bull isn't a a sound breeder. I'd semen test him and while he's there, swab him for trich too since that's good business and you can check that off the list for moving forward.
I do agree that there is no correlation between this issue and any given breed.

We all need animals that fit our environment. That is the hard and expensive part of the learning curve in animal breeding. This sounds stupid at first: mere culling is not breeding selection of livestock. Merely culling every year does not yield better results until you learn how to select proper breeders for your area, forages and management. Otherwise you cull the same problems every year.

Just because a bull grows well, has the right pedigree or any other positives or sale lines does not make him a great breeder. Study your environment and see what overall type, size and thickness any native cattle or ruminant wildlife have and begin to see if you want that or are willing to pay more in quality pastures and feed to keep something different. I still think that we ruin ourselves by not judging bulls for libido rather than the main emphasis for carcass and growth.

Agreed. I sometimes think we put even too much emphasis on semen testing. It means nothing unless the bull is athletic and he has to be persistent.

It all has to come together to make a bull that is going to cover the country, go find the hot cows and the semen works when he gets there.
I won't buy a bull that doesn't have good feet, good legs and wants to work. Infact, I've not bought many bulls because they seemed too docile. Nothing disgusts me more than driving into a field where we have say 10 bulls kicked out with 200 cows on 3,000 acres and 8 of the 10 bulls are laying around in the round in the flat waiting for a cow to find them while 2 bulls run themselves ragged trying to bred a couple hundred cows. Best semen test in the world won't help that. However, semen tests are crucial and if not performed prior to purchase and before every season thereafter, the rancher is knowingly operating with a question mark. Given costs of testing versus the cost of a 50% breed up, makes zero sense not to.
We are starting to see docility scores in bulls. I was just telling one of our bull suppliers who sells us 15-20 bulls a year that this "stat" concerns me. We run on big country and the cowboys ride out every morning, I doth wan dangerous cattle or cattle that are so goofy they don't perform well. That said, many of his docility score 1's (gentlest) seemed frankly dopey to me and many of his 4's (wildest that they will sell, scale goes to 5 but 5's are beefed) handled the way a bull that is going to go work for a living ought to handle.

 

[Waterway65]

If there isn't a disease problem I'll bet on a serious nutrition problem. Speaking from past experience. I had a preg check much like yours and since then I have doubled down on nutrition. Last preg check I had one old cow who had bred real late and one yearling that just kept coming in heat. My best preg test ever.

 

[js1234]

We all need animals that fit our environment. That is the hard and expensive part of the learning curve in animal breeding. This sounds stupid at first: mere culling is not breeding selection of livestock. Merely culling every year does not yield better results until you learn how to select proper breeders for your area, forages and management. Otherwise you cull the same problems every year.

Just because a bull grows well, has the right pedigree or any other positives or sale lines does not make him a great breeder. Study your environment and see what overall type, size and thickness any native cattle or ruminant wildlife have and begin to see if you want that or are willing to pay more in quality pastures and feed to keep something different. I still think that we ruin ourselves by not judging bulls for libido rather than the main emphasis for carcass and growth.

I agree that there are many, many components to culling criteria, not least of which is the breed in general and animal in particular being the right fit to the ranches' environment.
Where I disagree with you, unless I'm not understanding you, is that culling poor breeders is always the right culling decision. As I mentioned, no one management decision can have a more detrimental affect on a herd more quickly than allowing poor breeders to stay in the herd, propagating their undesirable reproductive traits.
Open cows drain cash flow and are the most expensive animal a rancher can own. It is the managers responsibility to remove them from the equation at the earliest opportunity.

How can they propagate their fertility issues if I'm only keeping them as terminal? Worst case is it cost $200 in hay and mineral for one winter, they come up open, and i sell them in the spring . Even then the market could improve.
Best case they produce a calf to sell for 10 years

Agreed, kept for terminal, of course none of their pros or cons reproductive or otherwise will be propagated so that particular concern with a poor breeder would be moot.
A cow has one job, bringing a calf to the weaning pens every year. When she fails to do so, she has failed at her job. Everyone's production costs are different but with cheating that cow up from Spring to Fall calving, shortening the time between preg checks, $200 for ground/feed seems realistic enough. There are of course a few other costs such as whatever each breeding in terms of bull expense costs (about $40 for us), their share of meds, labor, maintenance and everything else that animal unit for half a year accrues. Not to mention the opportunity cost of tying up some of a finite resource like land and capital that could be used on an animal that generates revenue every year on a cow that was a free loader for at least one year no matter what she does moving forward.
In our experience, the real value in a first calf heifer that doesn't breed back like the OP's is to put them on feed and sell them on the rail. They are hands down the easiest class of open female to add value to by feeding over the receipts from selling at the local sale barn, most of the time, even above and beyond if they get sold to a rebreed guy at said auction. Those heifers still grade really good and are young enough that they really feed quite reasonably.
Finding loads that can see a large majority of the cattle in them, if not very nearly all of them cut into cow steaks for their HRI customers and to a lesser extent, their non grade affiliated label customers is very attractive to Cow killing plants. At least out here, we see them bid VERY aggressively in the beef above standing the freight etc. to get loads of those types of cattle procured.

 

[js1234]

If there isn't a disease problem I'll bet on a serious nutrition problem. Speaking from past experience. I had a preg check much like yours and since then I have doubled down on nutrition. Last preg check I had one old cow who had bred real late and one yearling that just kept coming in heat. My best preg test ever.

I don't think one can ever underestimate the value of having the nutrition of the cowherd where it needs to be.

 

[angus9259]

Kind of goes along with my thinking. I knew the gamble of breeding them at 14 months.

I breed at 14 months and get the same results as breeding at 15 months. They are supposed to calve at 24 months. +- a month shouldn't be much of a gamble

 

[Jessica06]

Kind of goes along with my thinking. I knew the gamble of breeding them at 14 months. Could have held them back and probably avoided some of this. Either way, it's 6 months lost production any way you cut it. But I do think the unusually high percentage this year is due somewhat to the weather. And now that you mentioned it, I remember that when the rain came and the grass really greened back up and they were crapping straight out is when I started getting concerned about how they were dropping off, couldn't hold flesh. I had hi-mag mineral out all during this time but they didn't eat it I thought just because the multimin was doing its job.
So now I'm thinking what supplement would they need in these conditions (when the grass is going straight through them)?

Most of the ranchers around here put hay out when it gets really wet. We didn't; hindsight is 20/20.

 

[Nesikep]

when the grass goes right though them, the best hay to put out for them is a barley or oat hay, grass is next best

 

[Nite Hawk]

Have experienced the same problem and it is frustrating, However remember, the heifer is growing, just "made" a calf, lactating for how many months, -still growing herself,- and expected to get pregnant again.. Big drain on her body.
Also, have discussed this with an AI fellow, who told me he found many of the un-fertile first calf heifers, often have a very very low grade uterine infection, that once treated, restored them to fertility. He told me that often there is no visible indications of infection, but once treated they came around...

 

[TexasBred]

If there isn't a disease problem I'll bet on a serious nutrition problem. Speaking from past experience. I had a preg check much like yours and since then I have doubled down on nutrition. Last preg check I had one old cow who had bred real late and one yearling that just kept coming in heat. My best preg test ever.

I don't think one can ever underestimate the value of having the nutrition of the cowherd where it needs to be.

Truer words were never spoken. We talk about and worry about disease and seldom consider the value of a good nutritional program. Too many saying "she'll do what I want on what feed I got or she's growing wheels" when the big problem is ME...the owner.

 

[BK9954]

After reading this article to this link, it talks about fumbling the ball if nutritional requirments are not significantly increased after a heifer has her first calf. I look at my feeding for my heifers a little different after this.

http://www.noble.org/ag/livestock/develop-heifers/

 

[BK9954]

Have experienced the same problem and it is frustrating, However remember, the heifer is growing, just "made" a calf, lactating for how many months, -still growing herself,- and expected to get pregnant again.. Big drain on her body.
Also, have discussed this with an AI fellow, who told me he found many of the un-fertile first calf heifers, often have a very very low grade uterine infection, that once treated, restored them to fertility. He told me that often there is no visible indications of infection, but once treated they came around...

What did they treat it with?

 

[Nite Hawk]

I am not sure what he treated it with, but I believe it was a uterine infusion of some sort..
sorry I don't know more...

 

[Brute 23]

I don't care how hot or dry it was... the brahman heifers should have bred back for sure. Being that many of them did not breed back I would be looking for a culprit but at the same time I would not cut those any slack.

The bad thing about the high cattle prices was all kinds of people were selling "replacement heifers".