Open cows this fall?

[tom4018]

The meeting we attended last week had a lot of talk of lots of open cows this fall. One guy that does a lot of AI and embryo transfers was saying 40% open. The health rep there said he was hearing a lot about it with no specific cause, shifting the blame to the heat and drought.

Anyone having a lot of opens this fall?
We are preg checking Friday, I know a couple of mine have came up open. :cry2:

 

[dun]

We ran around 6%, usually we run zero or darn close to it. The bright spot is the weigh cow market seems to be holding up pretty well, the last few we shipped went for 64.50
Our vet says that a lot of herds are running around 25% open

 

[Stocker Steve]

Depends on weather and feed and age of cows and length off breeding season...
My neighbor has OK pasture, never retains a heifer, and buys old cows. He has 10 to 30% open cows depending on the weather.
I rotate like a mad man and leave the bull in. I have 2 to 4% open cows.
Vet says 15% is pretty average in this country. Never gets too hot but we can get a frost in June...

 

[SRBeef]

Open cows in a cow/calf operation seem to me to be one of the most severe problems in the cow/calf business. How can anyone stay in business with 10, 15 or 30% less income than you had planned? Are the rest of them going to be that profitable that you can stand a 15% reduction in saleable output?

As Dun points out, this year the hamburger cow market is strong enough to provide a decent price for open cows. However I sense that folks with a lot of open cows don't take open cows to market when discovered.

One of the reasons I don't AI is that you still likely go to all that expense and trouble, maybe even twice, and still have 30% open or so. They must still have a cleanup bull so you have to maintain a bull anyway so why not just let a good bull handle things (except in a specialty breeding program)?

My vet also last week was relating an experience with another customer of his who had a LOT of open cows at preg check recently.

Jim

 

[dun]

One of the reasons I don't AI is that you still likely go to all that expense and trouble, maybe even twice, and still have 30% open or so. They must still have a cleanup bull so you have to maintain a bull anyway so why not just let a good bull handle things (except in a specialty breeding program)?
Jim

Unless you do the sync and all that crap the cost to breed a cow runs a little over a buck above the cost of semen. Most semen from some top bulls runs in the 20-25 buck a unit range. You don't have to maintain a cleanup bull. Until a couple of year ago we did 100% AI on natural heats. Our opens ran less then 1% year. But that was only after years of selecting cows that would settle first service 90% plus. Once we started running a bull, not knowing when the cow cycled after calving I'm afraid we may have kept a few cows that had to bred multiple times each year.

 

[randiliana]

Different up here this year. We had 1 dry out of 120 head, and 1 dry heifer out of 37. I've heard others talking the same way. But then we had an exceptional year with lots of rain and green grass right up til freeze up.

 

[jillaroo]

We had 15% open on about 700 cows.
I was surprised that the number was so low as we were right in the middle of several major forest fires this summer. Between the smoke, flames and not being able to get near our cows for a month, I was bracing for a far worse preg check. :banana:

 

[tom4018]

Well the opens ended up higher than I had hoped. Looks like once the withdrawal period is up on the vaccines several will take a ride. Wished i would have preg check then or before, but oh well. A few that were short exposed I expected to be open so I will give them second chance to settle. At least the bull tested good. I asked him if he seen anything that I should be doing different and he said no, makes we wonder what I have done wrong.

I have not used this vet a lot, he is more realistic than the closest vet to us. He drove 30 miles to the farm, $30 farm visit, $35 for the BSE and less than $3 a head to preg check. Vet 7 miles away charges $90 to came to the farm and does not want to do a BSE on farm, $6.50 a head to preg check them at the clinic and $65 for BSE.

 

[dun]

Well the opens ended up higher than I had hoped. Looks like once the withdrawal period is up on the vaccines several will take a ride. Wished i would have preg check then or before, but oh well. A few that were short exposed I expected to be open so I will give them second chance to settle. At least the bull tested good. I asked him if he seen anything that I should be doing different and he said no, makes we wonder what I have done wrong.

I have not used this vet a lot, he is more realistic than the closest vet to us. He drove 30 miles to the farm, $30 farm visit, $35 for the BSE and less than $3 a head to preg check. Vet 7 miles away charges $90 to came to the farm and does not want to do a BSE on farm, $6.50 a head to preg check them at the clinic and $65 for BSE.

When we do fall workup the first thing that happens is they get pregged, then the decision is made as to what else will get done to them. If they're open we pour them for flys and turn them out to put on a little condition before they go to the salebarn.

 

[cypressfarms]

How in the world could a cow/calfer make it with 40% open?

Only a couple came open this year, but they were heifers (weaning their first calf). One thing that definitely helped me this year was pulling all of the calves off early. All of the cows are going into winter almost 1 full BCS better than last year.

Ofcourse an open cow with a all year round bull is a relative thing ;-)

 

[fargus]

We only had one open cow out of 30. One other who has a mean streak is taking a ride down the road this week too. 3 of 13 heifers open, but we're pushing them pretty hard and identifying the genetics that will tolerate it. Can't complain with how things went.... other than 2 of the open heifers were the first two critters through the chute. I had a small panic attack before it became clear it was a bit of a freak thing, LOL.

 

[Isomade]

Fargus,
Ill bet you bout crapped your drawers. :lol2: sounds like something that would happen to me.

 

[hillsdown]

Different up here this year. We had 1 dry out of 120 head, and 1 dry heifer out of 37. I've heard others talking the same way. But then we had an exceptional year with lots of rain and green grass right up til freeze up.

Just curious as to why you refer to them as "dry" Randi as it is not a term that I have heard associated with being open before ?

We ran 100% bred last year during the worst drought in 50 years , but we did not have extreme heat that some get during a drought thankfully. We are 100% again this year, all be it a smaller herd, and a much more forgiving summer as far as moisture goes.

 

[rockridgecattle]

Heat, drought, excess moisture do play a part in open cows. But so does body condition post calving and so does a proper mineral and nutrition program.
High open cow rates now could and very well might play back to the summer of 2009. I say this because this is the hay and or grass they were fed during the summer and winter of 2009/10 and this would determine the body condition going into the last trimester, the ability of the dam to breed back on time. Poor body condition, or poor feed or lack of mineral then will leave open cows now.
Everything that happens to a cow in the here and now will have short term effects when the calf is weaned, but the long term effects will be felt for another year or two. And depending on the severity of the weather/nutrition problem, might even be a third year before things go back to normal.

So, if you have open cows now, look back the previous year's mineral consumption as well as the pasture conditions, the quality of hay that was put up, the ease of the calving season, thriftiness of the calves that hit the ground, the scour and summer pnemonia issues, and the wean weights of the 2010 calf crop.

Open cow spikes don't just happen, there were warning signs that lead up the the open cows that just got missed.

 

[randiliana]

Different up here this year. We had 1 dry out of 120 head, and 1 dry heifer out of 37. I've heard others talking the same way. But then we had an exceptional year with lots of rain and green grass right up til freeze up.

Just curious as to why you refer to them as "dry" Randi as it is not a term that I have heard associated with being open before ?

We ran 100% bred last year during the worst drought in 50 years , but we did not have extreme heat that some get during a drought thankfully. We are 100% again this year, all be it a smaller herd, and a much more forgiving summer as far as moisture goes.

Hmm, not sure, that is just how every one talks about them around here. Vets included. We use open too.

We usually run around 5% I think, usually close to a 10% cull rate between the opens and the other stuff that needs to go.