Rearing Breeding Heifers

Muckit

There's another option open in the beef sector at the moment that is being flogged by IFJ/Teagasc etc.... rearing good replacement breeding heifers for the suckler farmer.

The benefits to the suckler farmer:

• Can focus on breeding for terminal traits
• Can keep on his stock bull for maximum number of years (as no breeding daughters in the herd) So he gets maximum value from a good animal thats producing the goods.
• Less groups of animals so easier manage the herd (no heifers running in a separate to avoid the farmers own stock bull)

What do lads think of this... a viable operation? Are the criteria that defines a good breeding heifer as clear as what defines a good beef heifer? (ie would different farmers be looking for different traits?)

flatout11

Muckit wrote: »

There's another option open in the beef sector at the moment that is being flogged by IFJ/Teagasc etc.... rearing good replacement breeding heifers for the suckler farmer.


The benefits to the suckler farmer:

• Can focus on breeding for terminal traits
• Can keep on his stock bull for maximum number of years (as no breeding daughters in the herd) So he gets maximum value from a good animal thats producing the goods.
• Less groups of animals so easier manage the herd (no heifers running in a separate to avoid the farmers own stock bull)

What do lads think of this... a viable operation? Are the criteria that defines a good breeding heifer as clear as what defines a good beef heifer? (ie would different farmers be looking for different traits?)

and had any of them (ifj/teagasc) the balls to suggest what breed or cross to be producing

the idea is nice but i cant see it working due to a lack of commitment on breeding a certain type of animal

reilig

Muckit wrote: »

There's another option open in the beef sector at the moment that is being flogged by IFJ/Teagasc etc.... rearing good replacement breeding heifers for the suckler farmer.

The benefits to the suckler farmer:

• Can focus on breeding for terminal traits
• Can keep on his stock bull for maximum number of years (as no breeding daughters in the herd) So he gets maximum value from a good animal thats producing the goods.
• Less groups of animals so easier manage the herd (no heifers running in a separate to avoid the farmers own stock bull)

What do lads think of this... a viable operation? Are the criteria that defines a good breeding heifer as clear as what defines a good beef heifer? (ie would different farmers be looking for different traits?)

I know 1 lad doing it over your way (Near Kilrikle). He buys in young CH, LIM and SIM calves, feeds them on grass until 20 months and bulls them with a "handy" limousin stock bull. Sells them "scanned in calf" at 25 to 26 months. They are usually pretty strong. He sold some in Loughrea last saturday. Prices were in the region of €1600 to €1900. Its a good year for it. But other years, smilar in-calf heifers got it hard to cross €1200.

Muckit

reilig wrote: »

I know 1 lad doing it over your way (Near Kilrikle). He buys in young CH, LIM and SIM calves, feeds them on grass until 20 months and bulls them with a "handy" limousin stock bull. Sells them "scanned in calf" at 25 to 26 months. They are usually pretty strong. He sold some in Loughrea last saturday. Prices were in the region of €1600 to €1900. Its a good year for it. But other years, smilar in-calf heifers got it hard to cross €1200.

I see a dairy lad up the road from us at the same crack. He doesn't do too much wrong. He bought in growthy limousin heifers to graze an outfarm after silage was taken off. Has his hereford stock bull in with them after he cleaned up after the dairy cows.

Bizzum

Would this system work for a suckler farmer if he put, for example, a Sim bull to all his cows, with the aim of producing high end replacement females?

Joe the Plumber

Its mainly two types of heifers sucklers farmers want,

• 1st cross from British Friesian
• 2nd cross from BF

A lot of them going away from the strong beefy doubled muscled cows as too hard to caf down. Too many losses and too hard to get back in calf.

Best way to find a couple off BF milking herds and buy the sucks direct from the farmer,

After a couple of years you could have a lovely system going. IMO

flatout11

Joe the Plumber wrote: »

Its mainly two types of heifers sucklers farmers want,

• 1st cross from British Friesian
• 2nd cross from BF

A lot of them going away from the strong beefy doubled muscled cows as too hard to caf down. Too many losses and too hard to get back in calf.

Best way to find a couple off BF milking herds and buy the sucks direct from the farmer,

After a couple of years you could have a lovely system going. IMO

are there many British Friesian herds milking?????

as i said before the problem will be quantity if there going through orgainised sales eg ballymote sim sale you need numbers ie over 100 and consistency

Joe the Plumber

flatout11 wrote: »

are there many British Friesian herds milking?????

as i said before the problem will be quantity if there going through orgainised sales eg ballymote sim sale you need numbers ie over 100 and consistency

I know of plenty in my area (kerry).

Not sure how much land Muckit has, but to be turning out over a 100/year considering you have them from sucks you'd want a lot of land.

Anyway its about supply demand on the day. better off drip feeding out bunches of 8/10 to different marts and putting them in the paper/internet.

There is always buyers for properly done in-calf heifers.

Also very important not to put them in calf too young. stunts their growth otherwise. at least 20/22 months calving at 30/32 months.

reilig

Joe the Plumber wrote: »

Its mainly two types of heifers sucklers farmers want,

• 1st cross from British Friesian
• 2nd cross from BF

A lot of them going away from the strong beefy doubled muscled cows as too hard to caf down. Too many losses and too hard to get back in calf.

Best way to find a couple off BF milking herds and buy the sucks direct from the farmer,

After a couple of years you could have a lovely system going. IMO

What type of bull would you be putting on a british freisian to get a calf with good hair, thick bone structure and to limit its height? (ie to get a calf that doesn't look like a freisan?)

Quite a large proportion of my herd would be from a diary background, but they would be 4th or 5th generation simmental bred from cows that we had when we finished milking in 1993.

I see my father in law with cows that are a 1st cross off freisan cows & Hereford Bull. They consistantly have the worst selling calves - although they have loads of milk, the bone or muscle structure just isn't there and they come in the most unfavoured colours for buyers. You wouldn't even be tempted to keep a heifer as a replacement. A cow like this costs as much to keep as a cow that will breed a good calf. Thankfully he has bought replacement heifers and these cows will exit this winter while the price for cull cows is good.

Getting milk into your herd is a dilema that nobody has an exact answer for.

Atilathehun

Bizzum wrote: »

Would this system work for a suckler farmer if he put, for example, a Sim bull to all his cows, with the aim of producing high end replacement females?

I've done that this year. Four heifers and four cows all bulled to AI simmental. Here's hoping I get a bunch of heifers.
Have two pure non reg charolais cows which I put to simmental few years back. Got one heifer out of the two. She is now rearing her first calf, and absolutely delighted with her milk supply and calf quality. Lim calf out of CWI Dovea.

pakalasa

reilig wrote: »

Getting milk into your herd is a dilema that nobody has an exact answer for.

Would a Limousin cross simmental not deliver the goods. I'm hoping it will anyway. It will be a few years before I know for sure though.

reilig

pakalasa wrote: »

Would a Limousin cross simmental not deliver the goods. I'm hoping it will anyway. It will be a few years before I know for sure though.

I'm sure it would help!!

Joe the Plumber

reilig wrote: »

What type of bull would you be putting on a british freisian to get a calf with good hair, thick bone structure and to limit its height? (ie to get a calf that doesn't look like a freisan?)

Quite a large proportion of my herd would be from a diary background, but they would be 4th or 5th generation simmental bred from cows that we had when we finished milking in 1993.

I see my father in law with cows that are a 1st cross off freisan cows & Hereford Bull. They consistantly have the worst selling calves - although they have loads of milk, the bone or muscle structure just isn't there and they come in the most unfavoured colours for buyers. You wouldn't even be tempted to keep a heifer as a replacement. A cow like this costs as much to keep as a cow that will breed a good calf. Thankfully he has bought replacement heifers and these cows will exit this winter while the price for cull cows is good.

Getting milk into your herd is a dilema that nobody has an exact answer for.

Alot of these dairy men have LIM or SIM stock bulls. these heifers crossed with LIM, BB, or PARTH bring good quality weanlings.

I have a few of these myself thats how I know.

If you want to be very hi-tech about it you should test your replacement heifer for the cullard gene.

If she has it, thats what brings the quality.

It avoids waiting 2years to find out.

Tora Bora

Spent few hours in Ennis this morning. Huge sale. Two things fairly obvious.
1. Premium price paid for blues in past years, almost non existant today.
2. Calves showing creep feed discounted, compared to counterparts
not creep fed, or only very lightly fed. I'd have to say, it's doubtful if
creep feed is paying at all this year.

The cow with plenty milk, is delivering a nice premium, by way of no creep feed for calves.

pakalasa

On creep feeding - 1 1/2 Kgs per day for 6 weeks comes to about 16 Euro per head (270 euro /tonne ration). It's a classic case of guys not knowing their costs. If the cow costs 500E a year to keep, then in the overall scheme of things, it's feck all.
Creep feeding reduces pneumonia and makes the whole weaning process a lot less stressful for all involved. Money well spent!

Atilathehun

pakalasa wrote: »

On creep feeding - 1 1/2 Kgs per day for 6 weeks comes to about 16 Euro per head (270 euro /tonne ration). It's a classic case of guys not knowing their costs. If the cow costs 500E a year to keep, then in the overall scheme of things, it's feck all.
Creep feeding reduces pneumonia and makes the whole weaning process a lot less stressful for all involved. Money well spent!

Trouble is, the calves turning up at the sales are not weaned! Even the ones in the so called welfare scheme. Calves in Ennis today, bawling like crazy. Weaned my ass.

pakalasa

Well, I wean mine every year. You wont hear mine bawling. It earns you a premium too. Experienced buyers, like yerself , will know a weaned one, so they're fooling nobody but themselves.

bogman_bass

flatout11 wrote: »

are there many British Friesian herds milking?????

if you go down to tipperary/ south kilkenny you'll find a lot of BF heards. Basically in doveas traditional sales area where they have always pushed the breed

Bodacious

Joe the Plumber wrote: »

reilig wrote: »

What type of bull would you be putting on a british freisian to get a calf with good hair, thick bone structure and to limit its height? (ie to get a calf that doesn't look like a freisan?)

Quite a large proportion of my herd would be from a diary background, but they would be 4th or 5th generation simmental bred from cows that we had when we finished milking in 1993.

I see my father in law with cows that are a 1st cross off freisan cows & Hereford Bull. They consistantly have the worst selling calves - although they have loads of milk, the bone or muscle structure just isn't there and they come in the most unfavoured colours for buyers. You wouldn't even be tempted to keep a heifer as a replacement. A cow like this costs as much to keep as a cow that will breed a good calf. Thankfully he has bought replacement heifers and these cows will exit this winter while the price for cull cows is good.

Getting milk into your herd is a dilema that nobody has an exact answer for.

Alot of these dairy men have LIM or SIM stock bulls. these heifers crossed with LIM, BB, or PARTH bring good quality weanlings.

I have a few of these myself thats how I know.

If you want to be very hi-tech about it you should test your replacement heifer for the cullard gene.

If she has it, thats what brings the quality.

It avoids waiting 2years to find out.

That testing for the Culard gene sounds interesting .. Where can you get it done and rough costing?

If they have this gene would you expect automatically less pelvic width and chances of monster calves at birth?

Muckit

Tora Bora wrote: »

Spent few hours in Ennis this morning. Huge sale. Two things fairly obvious.
1. Premium price paid for blues in past years, almost non existant today.
2. Calves showing creep feed discounted, compared to counterparts
not creep fed, or only very lightly fed. I'd have to say, it's doubtful if
creep feed is paying at all this year.

The cow with plenty milk, is delivering a nice premium, by way of no creep feed for calves.

Ah hmmm :rolleyes: <- smug grin

Muckit

pakalasa wrote: »

It's a classic case of guys not knowing their costs.

It's very hard cost your system when you don't know how much each individual weanling is eating. Your example of 1.5kgs is an average. Any guy with a conventional creep feeder can't know exactly what each individual animal is costing him to produce, as he doesn't know how much have individually ate. All he knows is their individual selling price (if sold as singles). Top dairy lads on the other hand, will feed calves on milk to a set amount with chipped collars.

Take it a step further... what is the individual cost of keeping each cow. How much does she eat (grass and silage) and how much milk does she produce from that grass. ie is she a good converter of grass into milk. If you knew all this information, coupled with the weight gain of their progeny, you would be as good as any ICBF database and could cull and breed accordingly from the stats obtained.

Ford4000

Ive always reared a few heifers, could buy them anytime when finances allowed, bought in as weanlings sometimes stronger kept on till around 22-24 months, never inside always grazed and wintered out, pay no more than 500-550 for them, minimal meal feeding and i mean minimal, sell for 900-1300 depending, dont bother bulling them normally as the buyer would like to choose his bull, always some profit for little outlay, would love to get into it in a bigger way but need to clear,tidy and fence a couple more fields first and try to find the capital too:o

Tora Bora

Muckit wrote: »

Ah hmmm :rolleyes: <- smug grin

And that piece of sign language means what exactly

blue5000

Muckit wrote: »

It's very hard cost your system right when you don't know how much each individual weanling is eating. Your example of 1.5kgs is an average. Any guy with a conventional creep feeder doesn't know exactly what each individual animal is costing him to produce.QUOTE]

It's even harder to work it out when some small cnnt of a cow gets into the creep feeder and makes a pig of herself!!:(

Muckit

Tora Bora wrote: »

And that piece of sign language means what exactly

It wasn't a punt at you. Basically I was saying exactly what your saying a while back and some other lads didn't agree.....

I was in Ballinasloe mart last Saturday and there were very few weanlings there that seemed overdone with creep. Same story as you, those that got plenty of meal weren't makin as much/kg

BeeDI

I have a smashing limousine two year old heifer, due to calf in January.
One odd thing though, is length of her tail:pac:
The tail bone comes to just below the knee. As of there is a good four inches at the end, dragging along the ground.:o

flatout11

Muckit wrote: »

It wasn't a punt at you. Basically I was saying exactly what your saying a while back and some other lads didn't agree.....

I was in Ballinasloe mart last Saturday and there were very few weanlings there that seemed overdone with creep. Same story as you, those that got plenty of meal weren't makin as much/kg

lads there is a big differance in overdone and supplemented with creep
although the price for lighter calves begs belief this year

bogman_bass

Tora Bora wrote: »

Spent few hours in Ennis this morning. Huge sale. Two things fairly obvious.
1. Premium price paid for blues in past years, almost non existant today.

Thats the thing about niche markets, when everybody does it it stops being a niche:cool:

Bizzum

Joe the Plumber wrote: »

If you want to be very hi-tech about it you should test your replacement heifer for the cullard gene.

Tell us more joe?

Joe the Plumber

Bizzum wrote: »

Tell us more joe?

Culard or myostatin are the double muscle genes in cattle, If your dam and sire are carriers this will produce the big €1000+ weanlings that everybody's trying to produce.

Not sure if there is anybody in Ireland able to test for it. Companys in England or France do it. Best look it up on-line. they can do it off a hair sample.

The trick is to get your big bone LIM/SIM x BF cow that will calf an elephant to be a carrier of the gene and she is the ultimate commercial breeding cow.

Thats enough information now for free, took me years to pick up all that.

blue5000

Joe the Plumber wrote: »

Culard or myostatin are the double muscle genes in cattle, If your dam and sire are carriers this will produce the big €1000+ weanlings that everybody's trying to produce.

Not sure if there is anybody in Ireland able to test for it. Companys in England or France do it. Best look it up on-line. they can do it off a hair sample.

The trick is to get your big bone LIM/SIM x BF cow that will calf an elephant to be a carrier of the gene and she is the ultimate commercial breeding cow.

Thats enough information now for free, took me years to pick up all that.

Thanks Joe
gets coat, freezer bags, marker pen and scissors:D

Bizzum

Joe the Plumber wrote: »

Culard or myostatin are the double muscle genes in cattle, If your dam and sire are carriers this will produce the big €1000+ weanlings that everybody's trying to produce.

Not sure if there is anybody in Ireland able to test for it. Companys in England or France do it. Best look it up on-line. they can do it off a hair sample.

The trick is to get your big bone LIM/SIM x BF cow that will calf an elephant to be a carrier of the gene and she is the ultimate commercial breeding cow.

Thats enough information now for free, took me years to pick up all that.

So it's simply a matter of introducing the double muscle gene into the herd via a shot of BB or BA or maybe even Pied.
And there was me thinking you'd involve DNA, RNA, cDNA, Exons, Amino Acid sequence alignment and Southern blot analysis:D

Joe the Plumber

Bizzum wrote: »

So it's simply a matter of introducing the double muscle gene into the herd via a shot of BB or BA or maybe even Pied.
And there was me thinking you'd involve DNA, RNA, cDNA, Exons, Amino Acid sequence alignment and Southern blot analysis:D

I see you have been busy on google!! Not that simple but thats the best way I can explain it.

Its about gene carriers,

Up to you what you do. just trying to help out BIZZUM

Bizzum

Joe the Plumber wrote: »

I see you have been busy on google!! Not that simple but thats the best way I can explain it.

Its about gene carriers,

Up to you what you do. just trying to help out BIZZUM

Jeeezus Joe, you seem to have missed my stab at humour.
No need to shout, I'm only 18" from the screen:cool:

Joe the Plumber

Bizzum wrote: »

Jeeezus Joe, you seem to have missed my stab at humour.
No need to shout, I'm only 18" from the screen:cool:

Fair enough! sorry:(

I will post some pics soon and show you my results,

1chippy

we have been using 3/4 to 7/8 limosines for cows for a fair few years and were just not getting that hybrid vigour thats needed for weanlings. We started bringing in limo cows out of sim mothers recently and very happy with the return. we go for lenght deep body and width. most come with a white face or partly white face. this tends to breed out with a good limo bull. This way you get a slightly deeper faster growing calf but still all red. The main thing i think is have an early calf.