weaning calves

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tcolvin

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South Georgia
Most of you have seen my post on pasturing, fertilizing and more. My problem is I know I'm overloaded with cows to the pasture size. At what age is it safe to pull calves from mom to give her and the pasture a break. I don't want to stunt the calves but I need to reduce pasture pressure. The calves I talking about will be 5 months old next week and are grazing and eating cotton seed with sweet feed mixed in. I use to wean at 5-5-1/2 months but that was before I had 8 calves at one time with 3 more to be by august this year. Someone told me 4 months would be fine but I have always done sometime up to 6 months. If I move them now they will have good grass and cotton seed/sweet feed mix.
 
Not terribly related but these 3 are less than 3 months old coming off nurse cows.

They are weaned today! Notice the rough hair coats and hard weaned appearance. They've not been getting "enough" nutrition. Too many calves, not enough cow/milk. The ones I've left on the nurse cows will do better now.

They will get a good amount of feed and grass pasture and hay til fall. I'm renting them out to some folks who don't wanna mow their acreage...

I'd estimate 200 to 250lbs here. Yours should do much better and require less feed. Maybe.....

20230521_180707.jpg
 
Most of you have seen my post on pasturing, fertilizing and more. My problem is I know I'm overloaded with cows to the pasture size. At what age is it safe to pull calves from mom to give her and the pasture a break. I don't want to stunt the calves but I need to reduce pasture pressure. The calves I talking about will be 5 months old next week and are grazing and eating cotton seed with sweet feed mixed in. I use to wean at 5-5-1/2 months but that was before I had 8 calves at one time with 3 more to be by august this year. Someone told me 4 months would be fine but I have always done sometime up to 6 months. If I move them now they will have good grass and cotton seed/sweet feed mix.
They are plenty old enough. How much do they weigh? Where abouts in south Ga are you, @tcolvin ? Best thing to do is to load them on the trailer and wean them on the way to the next sale after Memorial day closest to you. Save your grass for the cows.
 
Not terribly related but these 3 are less than 3 months old coming off nurse cows.

They are weaned today! Notice the rough hair coats and hard weaned appearance. They've not been getting "enough" nutrition. Too many calves, not enough cow/milk. The ones I've left on the nurse cows will do better now.

They will get a good amount of feed and grass pasture and hay til fall. I'm renting them out to some folks who don't wanna mow their acreage...

I'd estimate 200 to 250lbs here. Yours should do much better and require less feed. Maybe.....

View attachment 30459
Mind might be a little bigger but not much. Mind will be 4 months old next week. I know when they are first weaned off they take a few days to settle in from leaving mama. I have another small pasture but haven't put fence around it yet. It would be out of site of mom. The pastures I'm moving mind to are right across a dirt road maybe 30 feet from fence to fence. Calves and moms will congregate at the fence and moo one another for a week. I gotta get my other pasture fenced in. But it is what it is and I'll do what I have to to survive. But if things keep going up, that may solve my problem. I hope not but I don't have my own hay and prices have doubled since I started 10 years ago. Now around me the hay people are buying the smaller balers (4 x 5 ) and still want $70 a bale delivered or same price if you pick it up. Cotton seed here is now $360 a ton. Was $285/ton 3 years ago. Calf prices are a little better but doesn't pay back these increases. Fertilizer had gone crazy so I don't get to fertilize like I want to. But a country boy can survive they say. I just have to make good moves, and tough calls.
 
They are plenty old enough. How much do they weigh? Where abouts in south Ga are you, @tcolvin ? Best thing to do is to load them on the trailer and wean them on the way to the next sale after Memorial day closest to you. Save your grass for the cows.
I'm in South Georgia. They weigh my guess 250-275 maybe little more. Right now they will bring 300 roughly each. If I keep them until 7 months old $750-$825 (600+lbs) if market don't bottom out. I have 3 rotational 1/2-3/4 acre pastures for my goats that's loaded with grass. I thinking of selling out the goats because of so much maintenance on them and at 76 I'm slowing down.
 

I'm in South Georgia. They weigh my guess 250-275 maybe little more. Right now they will bring 300 roughly each. If I keep them until 7 months old $750-$825 (600+lbs) if market don't bottom out. I have 3 rotational 1/2-3/4 acre pastures for my goats that's loaded with grass. I thinking of selling out the goats because of so much maintenance on them and at 76 I'm slowing down.
Yes, I just asked where in south GA? What stockyard are you selling at that calves are selling so cheap?! That is awfully small for 5 months old. What kind of cows do you have?: And bull? We are weaning 500+ steers at 6 mos out of Corriennte cows. By Brangus bulls. These are kinda between Cordelle and Unadilla. If your calves are 5 mos old and only weight 250 lbs, no way they gonna more than double that weight in two months, especially if you wean them!
 
I'm in South Georgia. They weigh my guess 250-275 maybe little more. Right now they will bring 300 roughly each. If I keep them until 7 months old $750-$825 (600+lbs) if market don't bottom out. I have 3 rotational 1/2-3/4 acre pastures for my goats that's loaded with grass. I thinking of selling out the goats because of so much maintenance on them and at 76 I'm slowing down.
I bought calves that size yesterday and they averaged 2.18 but they weren't very good..
I use a 14% mix feed of soyhulls, corn, and gluten. But add liquid molasses until i get them eating well. The molasses will get them to licking the feed and eating it quicker. What i bought yesterday were eating tonight.
 
Everyone else nailed it. 5 months will do and the sale barn is just about printing damn money right now, wean them on the trailer or just pull them and feed them until you can get them to town and call it done. With everything as unpredictable as it is, I would not want to be crossing into the hot months with more stock than you've got grass for. It don't take much at all for a dry spot to hit you high and then you're up schitt's creek for sure.
 
That's really small for their age.
How do they look?
Are they filled out , or poor with a lot of bone showing.
If their in good shape they will do good in the sale barn.
I bought cattle last week in two different sale barns ,Tuesday and Wednesday, cows went up $12 from day to day, calves jumped a little too, they were selling good.
 

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