replacement heifers

[BryanM]

I am not sure where to put this question; what do you do with your replacement heifers, the ones that you keep from your own cows? do you keep the heifer and cow/ mother of heifer in the same pasture or pen?

this is why I ask I kept two heifer calves put both the cows are pregnant again actually nine days out. Do the heifers try and steal milk from cows before the cows give birth again? taking the colostrum? how about afterthey are born?

or do you just separate heifers from moms? hope that makes sense?

 

[dun]

We do one of 2 things. If we have a bull we run him with the bred cows till calving is about to start then pull him and put the replacments back with the cows. If we don't have a bull we wean the replacments for around 45 days and when we ship the steers we put the young heifers back with the cow herd. We've only ever had one replacment go back to nursing, that was after the cows had started to calve. We penned her with a steer we were finishing and finished and butchered her and sold the steer. That was around 8-9 years ago

 

[Backbone Ranch]

After we wean the heifers, we generally keep them separated from their moms for 2 months. We then put the heifers back into the cow herd after two months. We have only had one go back to nursing. We had to separate the heifers from the cow herd again, but we haven't had a problem with the heifer since.

 

[BryanM]

we separated the calves for at least 3 months, but I am not sure mom will fight of the old calve for the new one! this is the first time I retained my own heifers! so still learning what works best, and I don't want old calves stealing colostrum before new calves get a good dose of it?

 

[Dega Moo]

Heifers are pulled at weaning, given a few weeks of 'lot' time, free hay and some light rations, sorted replacement versus meat. Replacements moved into a separate pasture and kept together as a herd. When the time comes, we'll AI and put a couple of heifer safe clean up bulls in. We'll usually AI again and put mature bulls in for the 2nd breeding season. We'll move them into one of the main herds after weaning their 1st calves.

 

[5th Generation]

We keep heifers separate until breeding time. We feed them a grow ration, they wont grow properly with the cows since they only receive hay and grass.

 

[Rafter S]

After weaning I keep mine separate from the mature cows until they're about 6 months bred. They get 5-6 lbs. of good 12.5% protein feed per day through the winter and my best hay.

 

[wbvs58]

We are in bad drought this year, I have weaned all my bull calves about 2 months early but all the heifers I have left on their mothers. The whole lot are going into a 500 acre scrub block that has plenty of low quality feed. They will be supplemented with whole cottonseed about 1 kg/day and free access to a molasses/urea liquid. I am going to let the cows/calves wean themselves or when I pull them out of there just before the earliest ones start calving and the heifers will be seperated then and run as a seperate group when I will pick out the ones I am keeping.
This strategy will keep them out of my hair for a while and I will only have my 1st calvers on the home block over autumn and first half of winter and hopefully enough grass will be stockpiled to get me through to spring. If this strategy works I may adopt it in future years.
Ken

 

[lithuanian farmer]

Our calves are mainly spring borned, so after weaning we keep heifers separated for two winters, we give them meal that they'll be the size we need for breeding or for selling, because we choose replacements just when heifers are ~2 years old, when they finally shows their potencial and then we let the chosen ones into the herd in about April where they run with a bull.