Iowa-beef - 1/19/2025 14:09 I think the point you're missing is if there is adequate enough feed available to grow a heifer calf into an average size frame cow then your cows are being overfed. After I sold my cows off to focus on other things my son wanted to have some around again.... bought a nice group of 80 that are due with their 3rd calves from a cousin in North Dakota. Got them in November. They'll Calve mid April on rye grass. If we keep having an open winter we won't feed them any harvested feed at all other than access to an liquid feed tank tank wheel to provide their mineral and some protein to help digest the roughage they are foraging. They're out on a 470 acre stalk field right now and will rotate them if we don't get any snow to another field. They're in perfect shape. Not overly fat but just a good working weight. I can see them out of my window right now they are spread out grazing on a hill that is protected from the wind chill of negative 10. Now if i tried to raise a heifer calf out there with them they them the heifer calf would not properly grow to an adequate mature size nor probably breed when I wanted her to. So now..I don't see any problems with the way you raise your replacement heifers as for a small producer it's probably just as easy and cheap to not have another pen to mess with. But for others as you can see it absolutely would not work and for you to critique them is just not fair. We'll breed 30 or so heifers this spring to add to the herd next year and would definitely not want to raise them with the cows out in the stalk field