A hundred years ago, or so it seems, we used to knife cut shortly before weaning (it was a lot faster then banding), seemed like all that wonderful gain we had gotten by leaving them intact got used up after the stress of cutting.
Started knife cutting at spring workup (same thing, faster and when you're doing a bunch, time counts), calves went off feed and took a while to get going again. We finally went to banding at spring workup, a couple of weeks to a month to month and a half old. No apparent setback then or later.
It's kind of funny that our marketing association requires knife cutting, but one of the cheeses from the association usually helps us work them and we've never had a problem. He saw me cut off a band that missed a nut once, since then no questions asked. Also, when the are muscle and frame scored at the backgrounder, anything staggy gets shipped out of the program.
Now that was our experience, but there are probably equal numbers of producers that that are proponents of the knife, or burdizzos, or problem hypnosis for that matter, and their reasons are just as valid as any others. It's what works for the individual.
We have banded 7 weight steers with the calicrate and it toch months for the sack to fall off.
dun
D.R. Cattle":1crf3mvp said:
Whats the consensus on banding calves? I used to knife cut them but lately I've gotten to where I leave them intact and take advantage of better gains. It doesn't appear that I'm getting docked for leaving them intact, but I guess it's bound to happen sooner or later. Best I can gather I could band them around 400-500 lbs or a month before weaning, give them a tetanus booster and turn them back out?