Thanks everyone!
Bek, that calf will turn out just like her mother, a chocolate.
Doc:
- our animals are registered, so part of our breeding goal is to retain females in our own herd to better it. We sell some females into other established studs, but the majority of our females go to commercial herds as breeders. We leave 2 or 3 bull calves intact out of around 80 each year, which we will grow out to 18 months to 2 years. We will generally show them a little and put them over a few cows to see what their calves are like, before selling them either into other studs or to commercial herds. Steers are sent off around 12 - 16 months.
- the cows are pretty variable in frame size. We aim for our females to be around 6 to 6.5. The two chocolate cows would be around a 6.5, the silver cow with the premmie would be a 6.8 and the 6 year old silver cow is every bit 7 frame. She'd have to be the biggest girl we've got.
- for BCS, I'm not sure if we have the same system as you. We have a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 = emaciated and 5 = obese. We aim for the females to be in BCS 3 pre-joining and pre-calving. The first cow and the one with the premmie would be about a 3, the other two would be a 4.
- I'm no good at guess weights on females, and I hesitate to give you a weight on them, because it will be so inaccurate. I can guesstimate bulls and steers, but not females. Maybe someone else can have a guess?
- as far as feeding goes, you can probably see the state of the feed in that paddock. It's green, but its basically just ground cover. We have been offering free choice hay to get them through. Mind you, the 6 yo and the bottom chocolate cow were getting fat in a pasture similar to this without the hay! Those two can live off the smell of an oily rag - very easy doing animals.
- we generally dont have too many reproductive problems. We calve all year round and usually dont have problems with re-breeding intervals, calving problems, etc.
Hope that answered all your questions, sorry it turned out to be a novel lol
