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Post by Sherry on Jan 21, 2008 23:57:26 GMT -5
I am curious to know at what age you all put your heifers into breeding? Also, how long after calving do you wait to put your girls back in with the bull?
Come on, don't be shy, we want to hear from you.
Cedarview Farm
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Post by christinat on Jan 24, 2008 12:23:40 GMT -5
We typically breed them at 700+ lbs, or when we visually feel they are big enough to give birth to a 70 lb calf. As they will keep growing for several months after becoming pregnant, it's a good way to safe guard calving ease. We have noted that most heifers are getting exposed at 12 to 15 months of age. I don't like to expose them before they are 1 year old.
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Post by haymike56 on Feb 15, 2008 14:54:45 GMT -5
We have about 12 -14 WP cows and typicaly the calves are born in April or May and the heifers are returned to the herd in july of the following year. I guess we are lucky as we haven't had any still borns in about 5 years. We do have an occasional one that dosen't get bred. Thisbreed seems to be fairly low maintenance and very easy to work with. Now that I have said that, this spring will probably be bad for us.
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Post by gwenger on Feb 15, 2008 16:28:18 GMT -5
We breed our heifers at about 15 months of age to bring them in at about 2 years old. We calve in March and April and put our bull with the heard on June 10th. The last couple of years we have been putting our heifers with the bull on May 20th that let's us calve out our heifers before the rest of the heard starts calving. We find that this allows us to pay more attention to the first calf heifers.
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Post by Mark on Feb 15, 2008 16:35:52 GMT -5
That is really good advice. Our herd is small and we have not gotten to that point yet, but the advice is really sound, especially about breeding the first time heifers separate from the main herd.
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Post by larry on Mar 2, 2008 15:52:32 GMT -5
I breed 20-25 heifers each year A.I. and want them to calf at two years of age. I usually have them start a month sooner thatn the rest of the cows.
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