Some Photos From the Pasture

[SPH]

First attempt at doing photos here, hope these work. All but 1 of these (the yearling bull) are from a few weeks ago when we set them out on summer pasture. Hard to believe that this same pasture ran out of creek water by early July last year during the drought which never had happened in over 30 years of grazing it and we had to bring them back to home farm where we had water still and fed CPR hay in August which was another first. So much rain this year there is plenty to eat now!

Here's our senior herd sire. He's a 3rd generation Puckster bull we bought from Rausch Herefords. This will be his 3rd calf crop and we haven't had to assist any births of his first 2 calf crops.

This is our yearling bull out of MSU TCF Revolution 4R. Picture is from early May so he's grown out even more and looks even better than he does here. Just got the GE DNA EPD work done on him and he's up to 135 YW and 65 M&G EPDs which puts him in the top 1% of the breed. Little shocked his BW EPD came back at 5.1 because he's bred for low birth weight and between him and his dam who is a Logic daughter their BW EPDs are well below breed average.

This one turned out pretty cool, just trying to get a wide shot of some of the herd and cloud cover took a little of the sunlight away.

This picture is not the best but the bull calf hiding behind this cow is one of the best calves in the pasture right now. We bought this cow off a dispersal sale from another well known Hereford herd a few years ago and she just keeps putting out great calves for us.

More calves:

This is a yearling heifer out of MSU TCF Revolution 4R. She probably would have made a nice show heifer for someone but we're confident she is going to make a fine cow for us.

 

[KNERSIE]

You obviously breed a very different type than I do. Why are your cows in such lean condition in all that grass?

 

[SPH]

You obviously breed a very different type than I do. Why are your cows in such lean condition in all that grass?

They are admittedly a little lean in these pictures and while they on on some plush grass in the pictures that is about 1 week after we turned them out on it. I'll try to get some better pictures once they put their weight back on. We just came off a rough drought year last summer and even worse we were in a rotation year on our main alfalfa hay field so their hay this winter and spring was not as good of quality as usual get as we had to feed CPR hay in the fall and early winter then feed some slightly better grass hay which in most years is stuff we'd feed last before turning out to summer pasture.

Even with the rough conditions all but 4 of our cows calved from 2/13 to 3/22 which allowed us to be really aggressive with our AI breeding program this year. Our herd is usually about 20-25 head. This year we synchronized AI breeding 18 head with seeders for 2/20 calving next year and based off watching the herd closely 3 weeks after we serviced AI we think we had around a 80% success rate. We don't pamper them but we do feed them harder prior to calving.

 

[chippie]

i do like hereford cattle. thanks for sharing your pics. you have some nice stock.
the second photo looks like it should be on a calendar.

 

[KNERSIE]

You obviously breed a very different type than I do. Why are your cows in such lean condition in all that grass?

They are admittedly a little lean in these pictures and while they on on some plush grass in the pictures that is about 1 week after we turned them out on it. I'll try to get some better pictures once they put their weight back on. We just came off a rough drought year last summer and even worse we were in a rotation year on our main alfalfa hay field so their hay this winter and spring was not as good of quality as usual get as we had to feed CPR hay in the fall and early winter then feed some slightly better grass hay which in most years is stuff we'd feed last before turning out to summer pasture.

Even with the rough conditions all but 4 of our cows calved from 2/13 to 3/22 which allowed us to be really aggressive with our AI breeding program this year. Our herd is usually about 20-25 head. This year we synchronized AI breeding 18 head with seeders for 2/20 calving next year and based off watching the herd closely 3 weeks after we serviced AI we think we had around a 80% success rate. We don't pamper them but we do feed them harder prior to calving.

Nothing beats herefords for fertility under tough conditions!

 

[TennesseeTuxedo]

Where are you located SPH? Generally speaking of course. I don't want to be too invasive.

Nice cattle.

 

[3waycross]

That 3rd picture is fantastic.

74Z heifer looks like she could grow up to be a real good cow!

Your cows in general look a lot like what we see on the eastern plains here in colo in the short grass country!

 

[SPH]

Thanks for the comments. TennesseeTuxedo: we are located in Iowa. 3waycross: 74Z is a Revolution heifer, if you follow Hereford sires at all you probably have heard of him. He's probably one of the top registration AI sires in the breed right now and yes we think she is going to make a great cow. Everyone we know that uses Revolution loves the daughters they get out of him and that yearling bull in the 2nd picture is out of him too. We still have a few yearling heifers out of the bull in the first picture that look really good right now too. We had 10 heifers in last year's calf crop and sold 6 of them, one guy bought 2 and liked them so much he came back and bought 2 more of them just a couple months later. 25 females is about all we have capacity for and that's what we have out with the bulls right now so with another 11 heifer calves in this year's crop we're going to have to either cull a few cows or agressively market some heifers or bred females to sell to stay at a managable number.

Like I said earlier, I'd like to see a little better condition on the cows right now but the past year here has been rougher than usual on them with the drought last summer then we had flood issues this spring too so they were tromping around in a lot of mud in the lots but at least they have some good grass right now that they can finally catch up. We ran out of water on our summer pasture in early July and had to move them back to our main farm where we usually save pasture for the fall and wound up feeding some CPR hay by August that probably wasn't any better in qaulity than cornstock bales would be but had no other choice if we wanted any decent hay left for the winter. We even weaned about 6 weeks earlier than usual last year to take some stress off the cows and we were amazed that they bred back like they did because some breeders around here were having more cows come up open than usual. We even had 1 cow that calved on 4/27 last year calve on 3/4 this year which was a huge jump. Just wish the 2 we have that have been late May calvers the past 2 years now would do that so we'd be done around May 1 like we prefer.

 

[SPH]

You obviously breed a very different type than I do. Why are your cows in such lean condition in all that grass?

They are admittedly a little lean in these pictures and while they on on some plush grass in the pictures that is about 1 week after we turned them out on it. I'll try to get some better pictures once they put their weight back on. We just came off a rough drought year last summer and even worse we were in a rotation year on our main alfalfa hay field so their hay this winter and spring was not as good of quality as usual get as we had to feed CPR hay in the fall and early winter then feed some slightly better grass hay which in most years is stuff we'd feed last before turning out to summer pasture.

Even with the rough conditions all but 4 of our cows calved from 2/13 to 3/22 which allowed us to be really aggressive with our AI breeding program this year. Our herd is usually about 20-25 head. This year we synchronized AI breeding 18 head with seeders for 2/20 calving next year and based off watching the herd closely 3 weeks after we serviced AI we think we had around a 80% success rate. We don't pamper them but we do feed them harder prior to calving.

Nothing beats herefords for fertility under tough conditions!

To give you an update, we did some synchronized breeding for AI this year, caught 12 of the 18 we sychronized in heat and bred for around 2/20/14 calving dates and then set all 25 out with the bulls for March 1st or later calving dates and we think 10 of the 12 stuck on their AI service so could be a busy time calving then! Cows still looking a little more lean than we would like for this time of the year even with some really plush pasture right now so we'll probably early wean to take the stress off the cows. This calf crop looks strong though, probably one of the best ones we've had in recent years so probably will consign a bull and female on our state expo sale and have several private treaty offerings as we don't have the capacity to keep more than about 25 females.

 

[KNERSIE]

Are you sure they don't have internal parasites, they should be fat by now.

 

[ALACOWMAN]

not saying they dont need worming... but our spring grass here in Al.. have a high water content, that blows right through em.. that coupled with nursing calves..they can be standing in knee deep grass and look like somebody stole their gutts..

 

[3waycross]

not saying they dont need worming... but our spring grass here in Al.. have a high water content, that blows right through em.. that coupled with nursing calves..they can be standing in knee deep grass and look like somebody stole their gutts..

That's why i said what i did about that type doing well in the shortgrass country in Eastern Colorado. My buddy sent some like that to pasture in Missouri one year and they damned near starved to death in belly hi grass

 

[SPH]

Are you sure they don't have internal parasites, they should be fat by now.

They have been poured for parasites. Our alfalfa hay field was in rotation last year so this winter they should have some good oats and alfalfa bales to eat on versus the poor quality CPR hay and grass bales they had this past winter so I think that really did not help fatten them up enough over the winter. The heifers obviously look good since they are not nursing calves but it's hit or miss with some of the cows on how some of them are putting their weight back on. They seem to be breeding back well so far that we have observed so hasn't hindered their fertility.