northerngrazer - 1/20/2025 06:51

Finished preg checking the main herd of May-June calving cows and I'm starting to feel a bit defeated by my open rates being higher than I'd like. They've been a bit high for at least 5 years now, and other years I could always come up with a decent rationale (main bull went bad, drought, moving calving season) but this year just doesn't really make sense to me.

The cows are in great shape this year--good grazing during the breeding season, fully vaccinated, chelated breeder mineral, 8 bulls with 150 cows (three yearlings but still, and no they weren't fighting with each other, all tested before going out), and I even left the bulls in late as I figured I'd sell any late breds. And yet I still came in at 11% open with a 70 day breeding season. The strangest part to me is that the opens weren't the usual suspects of slightly lower condition 2nd calvers or old cows (almost all of my 10+ year old cows bred up) but good condition 4-8 year old cows in their prime. Vet said they were cycling so there shouldn't be any reason for them not to have bred.

Going to get the vet to test for trich (rare in our area) but beyond that I just figure out what's going on. Been trying to build my herd for years now and I'm feeling awfully frustrated as I'm constantly just barely keeping my numbers from dropping by keeping lots of replacements. Plus I'm having a hard time getting rid of these good cows in case there's something happening (like trich) that's out of their control. For reference, decent open rates for a well managed herd in my area is ~5%.