Rearing Angus heifers calves

jimmydkid

I'm sort of at a crossroads and I'm looking for advice, at the moment I've thirty suckler cows that calve in spring, most of them are limos and all are my own rearing, as every one knows ther is a fair amount of work involved in sucklers. The thing is My dad passed away lately and as I work off farm I'm finding the workload pretty tough so I'm trying to think of a way of staying in farming but reducing the workload, my farm is fragmented to make things a bit more difficult. I was thinking of cutting down to ten cows and to buy maybe twenty Angus heifers calves and feed them on milk replacer, does anyone here do something similar? Is it a mad idea that's likely to loose money ? Any imput welcome

6480

jimmydkid wrote: »

I'm sort of at a crossroads and I'm looking for advice, at the moment I've thirty suckler cows that calve in spring, most of them are limos and all are my own rearing, as every one knows ther is a fair amount of work involved in sucklers. The thing is My dad passed away lately and as I work off farm I'm finding the workload pretty tough so I'm trying to think of a way of staying in farming but reducing the workload, my farm is fragmented to make things a bit more difficult. I was thinking of cutting down to ten cows and to buy maybe twenty Angus heifers calves and feed them on milk replacer, does anyone here do something similar? Is it a mad idea that's likely to loose money ? Any imput welcome

sorry to here about your dad passing away , i know how u feel as my own father passed away the second week of january , would you not be better to calve a few cows down in october and november to ease the workload , it takes a few pound to rear calves and to buy them in aswell

Manoffeeling

Sorry to hear about your dad. Don't rush into anything. Look after your cows for the Spring and you will be more focused in the fall. Best of luck

just do it

Sorry to hear that Jimmy. Agree with the others regarding not rushing into anything. Are they all housed together? Tighten up the calving pattern and the worst of the workload will be over you before they hit for grass.

Alternatively if your motivation is to reduce workload look at buying light weanlings in Jan/Feb i.e. before the bulk of buyers hit the marts, and graze them till the fall. Sell before housing. This is low input.

49801

sounds like you need a low time input system and i dont think rearing calves is in that category. Any sickness will be very time demanding. You could get lucky for a few years and then they'll break you heart.

drystock can be an expensive gamble.

we're going to into contract rearing (grazing) for a dairyman.
Do you have any milking neighbors that would be looking to expand their milking platform by contracting out the rearing of their replacements.

The fragmentation sounds like the biggest obstacle.

Farmer Pudsey

Jimmy if you rear AA heifers do you intend to finish or to sell in the fall or forward stores at 18 months. Alot depends on your land type. If you have good land that will allow you to finish cattle then you have the option of reducing/exiting suckling. Not much point in having 10 cows they may well be as much hassle as thirty.

If your land is not suitable for finishing without a large meal bill then I would consider running an AA/HE bull with the cows. On contenintal cows you will bring big framed AA/HE heifers and Bulls. They should calve by themselves and the AA/HE calf is exceptionally hardy so will get up to suck by himself. You however would need to keep untill yearlings to get the price benifit of keeping them or again if land was suitable you could finish heifers and bulls at 20 months and take advantage of the high AA bounus at the end of the year or the normal HE boonus.

However I be slow to rush into anything but would look at different options. At present fresian calves are good value if you can buy the good square BF type. Some AA cattle have a tendancy not to grow fast due to the use of easy calving bulls in the dairy herd so you could get a lot of handy AA heifers. If you have a good herd of cows I be inclined to look at keeping them inplace and using AA or HE bull and target the schemes

Damo810

Can't see calves reducing your workload. Milk feeding twice a day, having to keep an eye out for scour and if it hits you may have to be on hand for a few hours. AA calves @ 300 a piece is 6K too. It's doesn't seem like the low input system you need. Stores would seem better value with less hassle.

KatyMac

Damo810 wrote: »

Can't see calves reducing your workload. Milk feeding twice a day, having to keep an eye out for scour and if it hits you may have to be on hand for a few hours. AA calves @ 300 a piece is 6K too. It's doesn't seem like the low input system you need. Stores would seem better value with less hassle.

I agree with this. Rearing calves is a very time consuming job! For years I used to buy 10/12 heifer calves every year and rear them to year and a half. I stopped only about 3 years ago and am in the process of building up cow numbers. Bucket fed calves have to be fed, looked at, dosed, checked often during the day. Apart from that the milk replacer is expensive. I didn't have the vet on my place except for the herd test for the past 18 months, of course that might be all my good luck used up by now. But he nearly had to take up residence one year with a group of 4 calves that seemed to catch everything going and eventually one of the little buggers died on me. The only thing I like about bucket fed calves is that they are generally very quiet and are great to teach suckler calves about how to come for nuts etc.

delaval

Jimmy, sorry for your loss their passing leaves a big void.

If you want to rear calves I would recommend buying in groups of 10 at 3 wks from a farm and not a mart.

Get them on to once a day milk replacer at a rate of 500=600gms / head / day and meal and straw adlib, once you are up and running herding twice a day is all you need to do

We rear all our heifers this way, they are all home born.

jimmydkid

Thanks so much to every one for the helpfull replies, it really has given me alot to think about, I'm not going to rush into any major changes this year. My biggest problem is the cows are housed in two sheds one of which is three miles away from where I live and also has the most and best of the farmland. i might try to buy five heifer calves this year and see how I get on with them.

did you rear the calves after jimmy? how did you get on?