SE Manitoba | Doug61 - 10/15/2025 16:51
The following stuff is related to heifer choices, young heifer development or just couple of questions from the shared example.
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My neighbor kept his spring born heifers, 53 head. Exposed them to two bulls for 30 days to calves at 2 yo. Preg check showed 39 bred. Months later he sold these 39. Sale barn vet found 38 bred. The remaining one sold as a feeder.
The 14 heifers found open at the farm were exposed to bulls for 65 days for fall calves. Twelve were found bred. Although the 2 opens were coming 2 years olds, they failed to conceive.
Are Freemartins that common? All heifers were singles at birth.
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This pregnancy history is not very surprising but I like the 30 day exposure to identify the early fertile gals and let nature sort them from the others. With just 30 days exposure for round one, I think it is not surprising that so many bred up 4-5 months later in round 2. However if I was the buyer, I'm not sure this whole story was reported when selling round 2. They will be 2.5 years old, big beautiful and will calves Feb-March.
Does early fertility suggest better chance rebreeding with 1st calf at side? My experience is mixed when breeding 1st calf mothers. It seems I always lose 1 or 2 out of my small 10-18 groups.
Well - - - - when your busting your butt trying to get the area bragging rights for the biggest calves you are really selecting anit-maternal (you're working for feedlot traits NOT maternal traits(!!!)).
Now if you get to where you don't need to have the world's biggest calvest at weaning an focus your cow herd on maternal traits - - - - well you'll get a lot less opens in time.
(There is a balance here - - - I no longer like a 1000# cow that raises a huge calf - - - prefer that to be a 1150 to 1250# cow raising a 650# steer in 200 days (and her heifers breed up at over 95% in 30 days too).)
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Expanding the herd
