trimming hooves POLL

Gather App
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Inventry

Trimming feet

  • 1 We own a hoof trimming chute and trim them regularly.

    Votes: 1 1.6%

  • 2 We have a trimmer out to do them

    Votes: 3 4.9%

  • 3 We only trim right before we sell them

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • 4 We never trim if they need it they hit the road

    Votes: 35 57.4%

  • 5 We trim the odd one if it becomes a serious problem for them

    Votes: 22 36.1%
  • Total voters
    61
Regolith that is why I omitted dairy, we had the no tilt hoof trimmer every month out to trim the hooves on our fresh cattle, why fresh cattle ??? as you know fresh cows hooves are softer and grow faster than dry cows.. BUT we put them in very extreme conditions like a concrete slatted freestall barn . We also have classifiers that know how to judge an animals feet even though they have just been trimmed ; they know if this is a problem of circumstance or genetics.. Totally different ballgame than beef.

That being said I really would like a beef herd that has perfect feet in any condition, but shytt happens and usually we are responsible for it . I cull harder for udders than for feet and so far have had to trim one RA cow which only raised terminals for me and she hit the slaughter house last fall .

It is an interesting topic though .. :)
 
not on cows... not on goats...

if she needs a pedicure, she's not for me. if she just wants one... might be a different story. : )
 
Well, we only trim if there some sort of injury that caused the long feet. Long feet won't automatically put a cow in the cull pen, if she is raising a good calf, year in and year out and her feet aren't causing her to have difficulties we'll keep her. Now, having said all that, out of 140 head that we have right now, we have 1 cow that just naturally has bad feet, and 1 that has long toes on one back foot due to an injury to her hip.

The way I see it though, is, that if I have 140 head of cows, and out of that 140 head, 139 of them have NO major feet problems, why would I keep that 1 cow with foot issues?? Our cows have to travel at least 1 mile between watering holes, bad feet make it hard for a cow to do that, raise a calf and stay in condition. Same thing with a bad attitude or bad udder, why, if the majority of your herd has NO problems would you keep that 1% that has issues. It is a pretty good indication that those cows do NOT fit your operation.

I don't have a problem keeping replacements from our poor footed cow, but then, her feet are a result of the fact that she is seriously sickle hocked (there's a story behind her), and sickle hocks are a pretty easy conformation defect to see. We've got 2 of her heifers kept right now, and I don't expect either to have a problem.
 

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