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i just saw this and i wouldnt take the first set for free if your building a herd. Those cattle lost out a lot during growing and development stages. Would take a long time to get them in shape if they ever got that way. You did good on the 2nd set. Welcome to the brangus world. If i can help at all, let me know. I have about 300 momma cows and do Ai/Et work. good luck with your cows.
 
So its been a year and 5 months since I started this thread....I have to say that since starting in cattle, I have enjoyed very few things more than I have enjoyed working with them. There is a certain defined since of satisfaction from what Animals grow and seem completely happy in their new surroundings.

In May of 09 - we bought the 20 pairs. We lost 1 calf the first week to pneumonia and her mom went lame with hoof rot about 3 days later. We had to tranquilize her to treat the hoof rot as she was very aggressive while injured. She has since recovered and is raising a very nice bull calf. In September of 09 we bought a registered Black Brangus bull with very good conformation and low 60-61lb birth weight and 665lb wean weight. He was a bit young 21 months, but I figured with heifers it would be ideal.

Out of the 20 that could have been 3in1's we ended up with 6 calves. The remaining 14 came out open. We put the bull on the 14 open cattle in September when he was bought and as of last weekend we had 9 calves out of him, so still 5 open cows (25%) not too good. We merged the herds the first week of August to let the bull have access to the 19 heifers (about 15-18 months old)....At some point, I think July I bought another 5 pairs of black baldies bringing our cow count to 25. I believe that I have worn that bull a bit too ragged trying to cover 25 cows and 19 heifers, so we have just purchased 2 more registered bulls to reduce his workload. The bull lost about 500lbs during his first turn out. He gained it back over the winter, but since turning him back in with the heifers he has lost another 300 or so.

We are still planning on retaining heifers though I believe that mother nature is against that idea because of the 15 calves 14 of them were bull calves.

Many things went exactly as I had planned and we had a few hiccups here and there. So far we have had no cows get out of the pastures, or even have any of our fences be challenged. The cattle comes to cubes like its crack, so moving them from pasture to pasture takes nothing more than a bag of cubes and pulling the UTV out....We learned quite a bit about wintering the cattle on Rye grass, and when and how it needs to be planted. We had our first year of making hay this year, and got to play the game of rain/no-rain and waiting on the custom baler to show up....he was much later than promised and much of our grass had headed out before he got there...

What didnt go as planned? Hurricane IKE wiped out our bridge and the cattle are afraid to cross the new wooden one. That is a pain b/c we have to pen them and trailer them to the front 65 acres if we want it grazed....the back 700 has no bridges so once were in the back were home free....Our neighbor was allowing us to cross them on his crossing but that has ended since he leased his pasture to a new person who is not friendly to the idea. Also, we had intended to have a defined breeding season and to run the bulls separate....as it turns out, we failed at that. Keeping the bull alone was not a good option for us, and having bought calves of varying ages we did not want to sacrifice the months of keeping them open...

Now going forward I would really like to get back to the plan of a defined calving season...its a pain to try to figure out which cow should have calved by now, and which should be 2-3 months pregnant....I have not figure out how I am going to go forward at this point, but its a transition that needs to take place, and I guess at some point I will just have to bite the bullet and keep a few cows open longer than I want. I would say our biggest failure has been our calving rates and our ability to keep good records of which cows calved and when.

So to sum it up we went from 20 pairs (40) to 64 in one year, learned alot, spent even more than we learned, and have made absolutely no money. We do have about 12 steers ready to be sold, but since my daughter was born in May I have had no time to load them up and sell them off since I work solely on weekends. Hopefully Ill get to that before too long and the prices crater. If they do crater I will hold them over until the spring and sell them as 1.5 yr old steers....they will probably weigh in around 1200-1500lbs at that point.

Any ideas on getting back on a defined breeding season? Comments, suggestions?
 
Mark after going back and looking at your original post and the pictures, you definitely had a lot of work ahead of you. All things considered it looks like you're on the right track. Best Wishes. :clap:
 
You just want to be careful with the open cows over the winter. They require much less feed than those with calves at side and if you have several you can over feed and wind up with an overly fat cow that won't breed back. I went thru the same thing and wanted to get my cows calving in a 90 day window. I have heard of SOME PEOPLE :D who have overfed and got their cows too fat to breed back.
 
I dont offer any feed at all in the winter. I have a pasture rotation that leaves stored feed until January when I move them into shin deep rye grass (assuming it all comes up).

We planted 35acres of millet in the early summer, baled the first cut for a safety stock of hay, this weekend we will move the herd into the millet's regrowth until end of November, (pasture also has about 50 additional acres of native grasses/weeds) then 1st of December they will go into a 135 acre pasture of stockpiled Bermuda grass, bahia, and some various weeds that came up after the second clipping (pasture is about 50% unsuitable marsh grass). Once that is eaten down and the rye has sufficient growth to withstand grazing they will move into the 135 acres of rye and stay there until early summer again. If I had the time to go more frequently I would limit graze what I have, but ever since the baby came along I cant even be sure I will get there once a week, so I have to leave access to more than is needed.

The only feed offered is 2 bags of cubes once per week (or two) to keep them following the UTV for making pasture rotation easy.

This summer we are going to work up and improve with lime/fertilizer and leveling about 60 acres that will get replanted with native grasses until we no longer have any of that intrusive marsh grass wrecking our pastures...Once reworked we will fence it off to make smaller pastures for more rotation. We intend to repeat that process each year on an additional 60 acres until the entire ranch has been improved and cross fenced.
 

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