Retained Heifer Percentage ?

[Stocker Steve]

I have been buying "good" bulls and retaining about a third of my heifer calves. I have a fair amount of variation since these are crossbred calves.

What is a typical amount for replacement quality heifers out of a straight bred herd? What are some other ways to increase the percentage of replacement quality heifers?

 

[Brute 23]

Retaining 1/3 of the herd will highly increase the odds of variation in most herds.

I would think even purebred people dont lock that large of a percentage of their herd in to one genetic line where they wont have some variation. The exception would be herds less than 10 or 15 head maybe.

 

[W.B.]

in a consistent herd you should be able to keep 2/3 of your heifers that look and perform mostly alike. Some breeds have more variation of type so that makes it harder to do and crossbreeding adds to the variability.
I would look for bloodlines that show less variation of type. Select bulls that fit your cows more phenotypically than numerically epd wise. Buy bulls from breeders that normally offer large sire groups and fewer groups for the last 20+ years. Select bulls from cow families that are prolific and long lived. Good luck.

 

[Stocker Steve]

I retained 2/3 of my last heifer crop at weaning, but they will be need to be sorted more...

It seems like there are some cow families, with average appearance, who always make nice heifers, and then some that are the opposite, so I am now factoring that into my cull list.

 

[Till-Hill]

We keep 95% of our heifers. Cull very high birth weights, bad attitudes, and late ones if we didnt pull bulls. Every few years cows get high priced we sell our commercial end of cows and registered cows to that are not the best of the best. Financially it's hard to keep them all. Feed bill gets little high. But in long run our cow herd gets better every year

 

[Brute 23]

We retain 10% or less of our calf crop. 90% of those retained I know are keepers with in a couple weeks of being born based on their mothers history. That is the cream of the herd. There may be a few stand out animals but there is no A team and B team. I'd rather stockpile grass than put an inferior animal out just for a calf, especially when dealing with the investment of a retained heifer.

 

[SBMF 2015]

We retain the top 10% of our heifers every year. With the end goal of culling 5% or less of our cows every year. We have a slow expansion of high quality females compatible to our environment.
Every calf we raise is naturally sired.

 

[Ky hills]

We don't have a set percentage to retain. I would think there is going to be quite a bit of variation even in purebred herds. The mainstream practices of sampling multiple AI sires from multiple herds would definitely result in variation too. The exceptions would be closed herds that use their own sires, and have bred for consistency.

 

[WFfarm]

What percent of what you retain end up being duds?

 

[TCRanch]

I retained 2/3 of my last heifer crop at weaning, but they will be need to be sorted more...

It seems like there are some cow families, with average appearance, who always make nice heifers, and then some that are the opposite, so I am now factoring that into my cull list.

Don't discount ugly! Irma was probably the ugliest cow I ever had: roly-poly, nappy coat, little ears, eyes always looked bloodshot. Woof!!! But she was a prolific cow and produced some of my top breeders - surprisingly, all very pretty. Irma ended up with hardware (before I started giving all my cows magnets), but she tasted great and her lineage carries on.

 

[Stocker Steve]

What percent of what you retain end up being duds?

Back in the day, half of the purchased heifers were gone after the second calf.
Pretty rare to cull retained heifers here -- maybe 5% per year.

 

[Lee VanRoss]

Depends on what you want to accomplish... If it is herd fertility only keep heifers born in the first 30 days of the calving cycle.
Your percentage of retention will increase as time passes. You wil like the results if you have the patience..

 

[Brute 23]

Depends on what you want to accomplish... If it is herd fertility only keep heifers born in the first 30 days of the calving cycle.
Your percentage of retention will increase as time passes. You wil like the results if you have the patience..

That is what I see. When we started we had all purchased cattle. We started retaining and buying. Initially we would have some that wouldnt breed or didnt pan out from one reason or another... and my culling parameters were pretty loose. I bet 50% made it at best.

Fast forward 15+ years to now with the help of good bulls, good record keeping, and experience I rarely cull for fertility or have much death loss at all... less than 1%.

 

[Silver]

Depends on what you want to accomplish... If it is herd fertility only keep heifers born in the first 30 days of the calving cycle.
Your percentage of retention will increase as time passes. You wil like the results if you have the patience..

Why 30 days? At 30 days you are accepting a good portion of heifers that were born in the second cycle. If it's okay to keep some born in the second breeding cycle why put the line there?
Heifers that are developed right will breed to calve in time with the herd that are born any time in the first two cycles. If a heifer is not bred in time the time to cull them is in the fall at preg checking time. A dry heifer coming off grass in the fall is still better money than a heifer calf sold at 200 days of age.

I like to keep a little more than half of my heifers for replacements, and do try to keep mostly the earlier born ones. But I have many older cows that calve during the first 21 days of calving season that were born after 30 days.
I like to keep the herd young and saleable at all times, so generally almost a third of the herd is first and second calvers. This also gives me the option to sell almost all my heifer calves in a tough year and still retain a relatively young herd.

 

[Warren Allison]

What are some other ways to increase the percentage of replacement quality heifers?

Increase the percentage of your cows that are top quality?

 

[moses388]

What percent of what you retain end up being duds?

1 out of 8. Kept a group of 8 heifers one year. One required a C-section to get the calf out. Sold her as soon as the Vet gave the all clear.

 

[GoWyo]

We have been growing the herd at 20% per year. We synch and a.i. breed the whole herd and then clean up bulls. All sires are maternally oriented -- no terminal types. Keep every heifer born to a.i. or the first clean up cycle that doesn't have some disqualification such as being a dink or structurally flawed. Preg check heifers ultrasound 90 days post a.i., feed the opens, sell the late breds and keep the a.i. or second cycle bred ones for replacements. Cows preg checked in October. If we have the feed will keep the late calvers and either sell them after about April 20 or calve them and sell as pairs in May/June. As we reach herd size goals, the culls will get deeper, but I am pretty happy with this herd so far and their maternal strength. Only maybe 5-10% cull rate at the moment. In another 5 years almost every young cow will be sisters or cousins to each other. We are a purebred Angus outfit and use our home raised bulls for clean up for the past 13 years. New genetics are brought in through a.i. sires, but the maternal lines consist of about a half dozen cow families. Every couple years we will purchase a cow or two at a dispersal sale that fit our profile to see how our own lines stack up in this environment with the new cows.

 

[Nesikep]

On a herd of about 20, I keep about 4 heifers a year.. in 2011 I kept 4 heifers and they're still all here and good cows, some years are better than others.. couple years ago I just had a very poor choice and kept some I didn't like all that much, one was no good and sold her after the first calf, I have some others that don't look pretty but seem to do alright. As I have better stuff that's proven itself I'll replace them

Calves are looking more and more uniform though, one closest to me here is from my homeraised bull, fits right in, a smidge darker but he's a real chunker



the nicest cows don't always make the nicest calves so sometimes it's a little hard to tell what's going to turn out good.. This heifer is a great example of that, I really like her


Momma.. a bit bony, but she does well

 

[Allenw]

If you can find a set of true line bred bulls to use that would increase your uniformity.

 

[Josher]

I'd suggest just using proven bulls. On a commercial level I'm not sure it pays to flush your best cows and implant embryos into inferior cows. But for purebreds it seems to be the ticket. We run a commercial herd. Retained heifers I'm guessing was around 25% and then we switched to using proven AI bulls. We inched up closer to 40-50% of our heifers were replacement quality. So I'm curious by flushing your best cows to these proven bulls what would your % be..