Shouldnt salebarns identify "Freemartins"?

[dun]

"A sterile or otherwise sexually imperfect female calf born as the twin of a bull calf. " It appears as though even if the heifer can concieve, she still could be considered a freemartin if some of her sexual organs were imperfect. The question is, does any heifer born twin with a bull have all the correct parts and is capable of concieving. The 90% everyone keeps bringing up just refers to the calf being sterile.

Not all twin calves share the same placenta. Those that don;t, about 10%, are not sterile. Freemartins cvan range anywhere from having a vestule penis to just insufficent hormones to maintain a pregnancy Those that do cycle and can conceive but don;t carry in the past were refered to as "functional freemartins", but I don;t know of any of them actaully being DNA tested to see if they were true freemartins from being exposed to the bulls hormones in the embryonic stage. Some are as obvious as a black bean in white cats butt, others the only way to tell for sure is to do a DNA test.

dun

 

[norriscathy]

During the previous drought here we destocked and hauled some very good cows to the sale barn. They didn;t bring squat because the whole area was in drought and nobody had any feed. A few folks hauled cows to KS and got more, but after the trucking bill it was about a wash. Depends on how wide spread a drought is. I feel for the folks in tx and OK. We had 3 years of drought then 2 good years and now we're back in a drought again. Not as bad as that area yet


That's why I was going to OK City. Hoping people in Missouri and the Kansas still had grass.
dun

 

[memanpa]

caustic! you make money om em?? buying at an auction?
who would have thought you could do that?
and to think i made a few bucks last year buying some other peoples problem stock ( problem was they needed money!, needed feed, lost leases etc, and sold some good stock) their loss my gain!

yes it is a buyer beware situation!

 

[Craig-TX]

We've bought cows and yearlings heifers at the sale barn on a number of occasions. Probably 1 out of 10 turns out to be a bad deal. Those are pretty good oods I think for buying totally unknown cattle. But I figured the cost of those that were bad was just the cost of doing business. It's like shooting dice, some times you win and sometimes you crapout.

dun

Well put. Over the decades there have been a lot more cattlemen make money off sale barn cows than there have who made money off registered. A lot more.

 

[Beefy]

a salebarn should identify freemartins IF they identify every flaw each animal coming through the ring has.

 

[stocky]

There are Dairy cattle auctions in this area. At a dairy auction, all heifers are checked and anounced as sound, freemartins, or questionable when they come into the ring. You have the right to check them before you load them and if they are not as anounced you have the right to not load them and you dont own them. These heifers are sold by the head (so many dollars for the animal, not cents per pound)
The other 20 auctions within 100 miles are beef cattle or multi-purpose auctions and they do not automatically check each heifer. Since they are beef auctions, it is expected that if a holstein heifer comes in, she isnt any good. Sometimes they are good, but it is up to the buyer to decide whether she is or not, she wont be guaranteed and will be sold by the pound.
There are alot of dairies that sell their top quality heifers. The heifers that arent top quality, they sell at the beef auction as 400-600 lb feeder heifers. With these heifers, they snip their teats off when they are young, so no one can take them and sell them as dairy heifers. If you dont look closely in the ring, you dont notice and you can end up buying these heifers, thinking they are good.
You can either raise her to butcher or raise her to 500 lbs and sell her for about 80 cents per pound as a feeder heifer and get your initial cost back and some of the expenses