Silver said:
gcreekrch said:
Quite happy here to make bunches of saleable 8, 9 and 10 year old cows as breds . It seems that is about the age that many of them develop bags that require assistance for the calf to get its first meal. I don't have time for much of that.
It is also good to keep a herd young and salable at all times, it gives an operation options it might not otherwise have.
Agreed on some of that.. Definitely don't like bad bags, regardless of age.. and the worst part of it is the ones with bad bags usually kick like heck if you do try to help
The part I'm on the fence about is culling just because of age... Danged if you do and danged if you don't... If you cull perfectly good cows for age alone, you'll never know what their failure point will be, and raising heifers, well, it takes 2 years of feed til they have a calf.. Culling between 8 and 10 makes 6 to 8 calves, if you can increase it to 10-12 calves that's a lot more time to write off those two unproductive years, besides I've usually got far more culls (for good reason) on younger animals.. not breeding back, not producing well enough, structural problems.. the ones that get older usually have the basics down pat.
I do get the point of keeping a young herd though... I have one 15 year old that'll calf in the fall, she's my dad's pet.. she makes big calves, but if you look at it as % of her own weight, not that impressive (she's all of 1800 lbs and then some)
I can just say I'm glad I didn't cull this one for age, pictured at 16 years old (Zeus's grandma)