Livestock/General Farming photo thread READ MOD NOTE IN POST #1

redzerologhlen · 15-12-2011 12:54am

Bodacious wrote: »

Lovely heifers Redzer, will you keep them all or see how they go? Does the black cow in with them not hog all the ration?

The more she hogs the better, shes a bit on the poor side at the moment hence why she is with them. Hope to keep them all but Only about 5 of them will be fit for bulling the coming year if the get a good do. Its a bit of a sickner to leave the other 6 idle for a year but I know there is milk in all of them. Pity they were born so late!!

Bodacious · 15-12-2011 2:07am

redzerologhlen wrote: »

The more she hogs the better, shes a bit on the poor side at the moment hence why she is with them. Hope to keep them all but Only about 5 of them will be fit for bulling the coming year if the get a good do. Its a bit of a sickner to leave the other 6 idle for a year but I know there is milk in all of them. Pity they were born so late!!

oh i see i thought you wouldnt be feeding the weanlings with cows in general, ration is dear enough.:)

so if the 5 stronger ones are say march 11, will you be bulling them in june 2012 (15mts) to calve down at 24mts? ive done this only last year but to be honest its a hard push to keep them right and get them back in calf with the others and can only be done with the odd one, ive few heifers kept this year and theyll all be 2 years before i will ai them

redzerologhlen · 15-12-2011 2:18am

Bodacious wrote: »

oh i see i thought you wouldnt be feeding the weanlings with cows in general, ration is dear enough.:)

so if the 5 stronger ones are say march 11, will you be bulling them in june 2012 (15mts) to calve down at 24mts? ive done this only last year but to be honest its a hard push to keep them right and get them back in calf with the others and can only be done with the odd one, ive few heifers kept this year and theyll all be 2 years before i will ai them

Ya june was the plan but sure I'll see how it goes. Its an awful long time to wait for them though. I have 4 that I bought last year. They are all well over 500kg now and I wasnt going to bull them till march. They are going to be whales of cows alright but thats not ideal for us either and I dont know whether they will have milk either after keeping them for 2 years. As a man said to me a few months ago, If they are not big enough to calf a 2 then they arent good enough to breed. They need a lot of minding alright though I would imagine cause they would be sheeding the front teeth around the same time. The auld lad used always do it and he swears by it but id still be a bit worried they would slip back to may the following year or something. That would be a pure disaster!!!

pakalasa · 15-12-2011 9:32am

Redz,
As you probably know, it's much harder with continental breeding to get them to calve at 2 years and keep them early calving. The old traditional types, Shorthorn and Herford were a lot easier.
With replacement heifers, I take the view too, that you'd want to be damn sure of a good cow after keeping them for that long. I AI them as soon as they start bulling, although I usually let the first bulling go and do them on the second. I use the easiest calving Lim bull I can get my hands on.
In the past I have let them grow away only to find out that they wouldn't go in calf. That's a right sickner. Some of the biggest cows I have, calved down at 2 years. I don't think it stunts growth at all.

redzerologhlen · 15-12-2011 4:46pm

pakalasa wrote: »

Redz,
As you probably know, it's much harder with continental breeding to get them to calve at 2 years and keep them early calving. The old traditional types, Shorthorn and Herford were a lot easier.
With replacement heifers, I take the view too, that you'd want to be damn sure of a good cow after keeping them for that long. I AI them as soon as they start bulling, although I usually let the first bulling go and do them on the second. I use the easiest calving Lim bull I can get my hands on.
In the past I have let them grow away only to find out that they wouldn't go in calf. That's a right sickner. Some of the biggest cows I have, calved down at 2 years. I don't think it stunts growth at all.

Its getting them back in calf thats the problem really. Iv no interest in 800kg cows, our land isint good enough to hold them up and they eat to much. The auld lad had 3 different sim bulls for about ten years so there is sim breeding somewhere in almost all our cows. He calved down all the sim heifers at 2 years and he reckons he had no problems with it really. We got a sim bull about 3 years ago then and he wasnt really up to the job of 40 cows and the most of them slipped hence where we are now. Anything he bred was s*it to make it worse. I will give them a good do though. Have loads of feeding and will have grass for them early march. They probably arent all what I really want for breeding but trying to build up numbers. We were keeping 55 cows and 30-40 bullocks to 2 year olds and sometimes to slaughter ten years ago with less land than we have now and now and we only have 38 cows to calf down next year with about 20 followers to be sold throughout the summer. I have discovered one thing though and that is that its not easy to build up numbers once you let them go down. I have a lot of my own money put into it and getting nowhere fast!!

Bizzum · 15-12-2011 10:59pm

redzerologhlen wrote: »

Iv no interest in 800kg cows, our land isint good enough to hold them up and they eat to much

How do get away from 800kg cows?
We bull heifers at 18mths or less sometimes depending on when we want them to calve. We would feed them well when they calve to get them back in calf and rear the calf at foot.
Where I'm going with this is : I think the best way to reduce cow size is genetically, ie. use a bull that will keep size down. Sim cows can be pretty big!

redzerologhlen · 16-12-2011 12:12am

Bizzum wrote: »

How do get away from 800kg cows?
We bull heifers at 18mths or less sometimes depending on when we want them to calve. We would feed them well when they calve to get them back in calf and rear the calf at foot.
Where I'm going with this is : I think the best way to reduce cow size is genetically, ie. use a bull that will keep size down. Sim cows can be pretty big!

True bizzum. Most of our cows would be 700kg max. I would doubt we have any near the 800kg mark but we are probably lacking a bit of growth. If you go down the genitic route to make your cows smaller you will probably sacrificing growth. The lim heifers in the picture are fairly growthy and I would imagine they will grow into bigger cows than most of their mothers. An 800kg cow wouldnt be a deal breaker for me but what I was getting at more is if it stunted the cow a bit to calf her at 2 and she was 100kg lighter than she potentially could have been I would be as well pleased. Theres plenty of people calving down heifers at 2 but its somewhat of a shady area. I remember a few years ago I was at a breeding demo in ennis mart with about 300 other people. Doreen Corridan asked whoever was calving their heifers as 2 year olds to raise their hands and only one lad did. I found that hard to belive because a lot of my neighbours do it!!

Bizzum · 16-12-2011 12:29am

I will say this on the subject: Every month over the 13 that you can hold off the heifer is getting stronger. We are lucky in that some of our cows calve in Autumn and more in Spring, so we can run them ontio 18mths and then bull them. There's a big difference in those few months!

Kovu · 16-12-2011 12:33am

redzerologhlen wrote: »

True bizzum. Most of our cows would be 700kg max. I would doubt we have any near the 800kg mark but we are probably lacking a bit of growth. If you go down the genitic route to make your cows smaller you will probably sacrificing growth. The lim heifers in the picture are fairly growthy and I would imagine they will grow into bigger cows than most of their mothers. An 800kg cow wouldnt be a deal breaker for me but what I was getting at more is if it stunted the cow a bit to calf her at 2 and she was 100kg lighter than she potentially could have been I would be as well pleased. Theres plenty of people calving down heifers at 2 but its somewhat of a shady area. I remember a few years ago I was at a breeding demo in ennis mart with about 300 other people. Doreen Corridan asked whoever was calving their heifers as 2 year olds to raise their hands and only one lad did. I found that hard to belive because a lot of my neighbours do it!!

Would that be because it's a no-no on the AEOS?
We try to select for cows that have good milk, then cross with maternal LM or CH sires when we need a replacement, if a 600kg cow can rear a calf that is 400kg+ at 9/10 months then we aim for two replacements off them.

Bizzum · 16-12-2011 12:36am

Karen112 wrote: »

Would that be because it's a no-no on the AEOS?
We try to select for cows that have good milk, then cross with maternal LM or CH sires

Which Charolais sires worked for you?

Kovu · 16-12-2011 12:42am

Bizzum wrote: »

Which Charolais sires worked for you?

Haven't the AI records to hand but Prime Roberto had a couple of lovely straight heifers with good milk in them. KFC was also a good one.
These days we tend to use OSI, not the greatest but we manage as most of our xbreed cows have British Fresian breeding in them from grandmothers etc.
(Now I may have to correct this, can't think what we used this year)

*I do know I'm going to get an earful off the auld lad for using Crossmolina Euro though....

Bizzum · 16-12-2011 12:52am

Karen112 wrote: »

Haven't the AI records to hand but Prime Roberto had a couple of lovely straight heifers with good milk in them. KFC was also a good one.
These days we tend to use OSI, not the greatest but we manage as most of our xbreed cows have British Fresian breeding in them from grandmothers etc.
(Now I may have to correct this, can't think what we used this year)

*I do know I'm going to get an earful off the auld lad for using Crossmolina Euro though....

I can tell you without AI records that I've never used any of those bulls!
I see with some of our CH cows, to look at them you'd think they wouldn't colour your tea with milk, but they breed and rear a great calf.

redzerologhlen · 16-12-2011 12:53am

Bizzum wrote: »

I will say this on the subject: Every month over the 13 that you can hold off the heifer is getting stronger. We are lucky in that some of our cows calve in Autumn and more in Spring, so we can run them ontio 18mths and then bull them. There's a big difference in those few months!

There is probably 70kg+ of a difference in bulling weight in those 3 months. Autumn calving is out of the question for us at the moment. We dont have the facility's for them but I would imagine it to be a good system for replacements.

Kovu · 16-12-2011 1:00am

Bizzum wrote: »

I can tell you without AI records that I've never used any of those bulls!
I see with some of our CH cows, to look at them you'd think they wouldn't colour your tea with milk, but they breed and rear a great calf.

We have a man who uses both Bova & Dovea so I get confused between books that he gives us!

I may be totally wrong altogether as I haven't looked at the sire book since last insemination a few months back. I will know by Sat evening once I get back home as to whether senility is setting in or not:rolleyes:

redzerologhlen · 17-12-2011 4:14pm

Right lads, Im off with the camera again:rolleyes:

Heres a few year and a half heifers

Same picture of the heifer above is the middle of the 3 reds

Same heifer as a weanling

An angus out of a black whithead the auld lad wanted to keep

Another heifer I bought off the neighbour last year, Plain enough but very growthy.

Charolais heifer I was going to bull with them but I think shes bulled already.

15 year old sim cow:cool:

Bizzum · 17-12-2011 4:23pm

You're a great man for cattle with long tails:D

That heifer with the two stickers on her back looks a smasher. Getting near time to start bulling!

redzerologhlen · 17-12-2011 4:30pm

Bizzum wrote: »

You're a great man for cattle with long tails:D

That heifer with the two stickers on her back looks a smasher. Getting near time to start bulling!

An old man once told me if the tail went below the hock the would have milk......I dont want to be losing it for the sake of them to be looking pretty;):D

Oh and I bought that heifer for €590 euro in October of last year and she was 290kg and she was dear enough the same day. Just gives you an idea the change in the price of stock since!!

pakalasa · 18-12-2011 1:22pm

Redz,
I like your 15 year old cow. I don't think she'd last that long on slats.;)
Do the cattle not waste meal when you throw it on the ground like that?

redzerologhlen · 18-12-2011 1:38pm

pakalasa wrote: »

Redz,
I like your 15 year old cow. I don't think she'd last that long on slats.;)
Do the cattle not waste meal when you throw it on the ground like that?

I only gave a bit to them so they would stand for the picture. They arent getting anything. As for the weanlings, they decided to demolish their trough so have to get a new one for them, I have 3 up in the winterage for the cows but Im f*cked if im going carrying them down. They probably do waste a bit but if you put it somewhere dry they dont leave much after them. Shes going well for her age now alright!!!

1chippy · 18-12-2011 8:53pm

pakalasa wrote: »

Redz,
I like your 15 year old cow. I don't think she'd last that long on slats.;)
QUOTE]

we have an eighteen year old on the slats, absolutaly no probs with her. sentimentality is wearing off though and shes getting a hook at the end of the year. we also have a 6 yr old big frame but desperate feet joining her

J DEERE · 18-12-2011 8:55pm

Bizzum wrote: »

A Slyvain cow, not extra special to look at but a good breeder. Heifer calf at foot by Roundhill Doc (RHD), Real nice calf in the flesh!
The cow is carrying her 3rd calf to RHD again. RHD indeed........I mean RHI, the Charolais, not RHD the Angus!

How do you find RHI Bizzum? Bulled a second calver today with him, well shaped Limousin. Used him on the advice of a neighbour who swears by him. Is he hard calved? Using OSI as well on some

Bizzum · 18-12-2011 10:40pm

J DEERE wrote: »

How do you find RHI Bizzum? Bulled a second calver today with him, well shaped Limousin. Used him on the advice of a neighbour who swears by him. Is he hard calved? Using OSI as well on some

I think he will breed decent stock for you. We didn't use a whole lot of him but I was happy with what I saw! He seems to bring a bit of style too.
I wouldn't put him down as a hard calver, run of the mill Charolais I suppose. A good cow should have no problem.

Bizzum · 21-12-2011 10:29pm

Sim bull calf by Kilbride Farm Newry (KFY), a few days old, out of a small Lim/Sh cow. Lovely thick calf. Was hoping for a heifer calf but them's the breaks!

Kovu · 21-12-2011 10:52pm

Bizzum wrote: »

Sim bull calf by Kilbride Farm Newry (KFY), a few days old, out of a small Lim/Sh cow. Lovely thick calf. Was hoping for a heifer calf but them's the breaks!

Ooooh don't say that, I have my cow crossed with Kylemore Bruce to breed a good cow this year, she's had four heifers in a row (or five, I forget) with Ulysses on dam side and Navarin her sire. Great milky cow & very docile, actually let me walk her up the field haltered to be AI'd at the gate.

redzerologhlen · 21-12-2011 11:08pm

Karen112 wrote: »

Ooooh don't say that, I have my cow crossed with Kylemore Bruce to breed a good cow this year, she's had four heifers in a row (or five, I forget) with Ulysses on dam side and Navarin her sire. Great milky cow & very docile, actually let me walk her up the field haltered to be AI'd at the gate.

Jaysus, I wish we had even one that quite Karen!!

Kovu · 21-12-2011 11:32pm

redzerologhlen wrote: »

Jaysus, I wish we had even one that quite Karen!!

Most of them are all pets at home, must try to get a video to put up of the cow that puts her foot out the barrier to be fed first:o or the one that sniffs our pockets for a few nuts!!

Best stop chatting in the photo thread before I'm reprimanded

Bizzum · 22-12-2011 12:32am

Karen112 wrote: »

Ooooh don't say that, I have my cow crossed with Kylemore Bruce to breed a good cow this year, she's had four heifers in a row (or five, I forget) with Ulysses on dam side and Navarin her sire. Great milky cow & very docile, actually let me walk her up the field haltered to be AI'd at the gate.

Quite cow alright. I assume you mean Kilmoney Bruce (KCE) the BA bull?
Did you see the Vid clip posted here lately with him in it? Very impressive looking bull.
We have a very good cow carrying to Delfur T Bone too. Another bull calf no doubt:)
Can't complain thought after the twin heifers lately!

Kovu · 22-12-2011 12:44pm

Bizzum wrote: »

Quite cow alright. I assume you mean Kilmoney Bruce (KCE) the BA bull?
Did you see the Vid clip posted here lately with him in it? Very impressive looking bull.
We have a very good cow carrying to Delfur T Bone too. Another bull calf no doubt:)
Can't complain thought after the twin heifers lately!

Thats the chap, dunno where I got Kylemore

stanflt · 23-12-2011 2:12pm

ex91 vixan cow had twin bull this morning

PNH x CEZ x SRH

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

whelan1 · 23-12-2011 2:18pm

lovely , what lactation is she?

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Livestock/General Farming photo thread READ MOD NOTE IN POST #1