When to cull???

locky76

Hey folks,

following on from another thread, what criteria do people use when deciding when to cull cows?
I like to keep a short breeding season, 10 weeks for the mature cows, which means a few don't go in calf and are fattened up and culled after they have reared their calf. To keep numbers up and to compensate for this with my 25 cow herd I would run 6 heifers with the bull and usually bring the 5 that go in calf into the herd annually.
Also I would cull for the following reasons:

• Wild cows
• Cows with bad feet
• Cows with a blind quarter from mastitis
• Cows with consistently poorly performing calves

I'd appreciate your opinions on this rationale and also what you're doing yourselves...

locky76

Bump..

locky76 wrote: »

Hey folks,

following on from another thread, what criteria do people use when deciding when to cull cows?
I like to keep a short breeding season, 10 weeks for the mature cows, which means a few don't go in calf and are fattened up and culled after they have reared their calf. To keep numbers up and to compensate for this with my 25 cow herd I would run 6 heifers with the bull and usually bring the 5 that go in calf into the herd annually.
Also I would cull for the following reasons:

• Wild cows
• Cows with bad feet
• Cows with a blind quarter from mastitis
• Cows with consistently poorly performing calves

I'd appreciate your opinions on this rationale and also what you're doing yourselves...

Bizzum

locky76 wrote: »

Bump..

We would tend to cull for broadly similar reasons.
To the list you could add. Age. Calving difficulty, CS cows usually. Calf quality, if she ain't producing the quality we'd like.
On the issue of a blind quarter, if the right calf us being produced I'd leave her at it.
I would always be looking at the quality of the calves and trying to take out the consistent sub standard breeders.
We wouldn't be ruthless cullers, a bit of wriggle room exists with us.

pakalasa

Much the same here. Sucklers BTW. I think it is agood idea to cull every year, or at least every two years, if you are you have small numbers (like me). You keep a good age profile then in the herd.
Looking back, I culled with a priority as follows;
- severe lack of milk
- docility, getting too old to be jumping gates
- bad feet
- quality of calf
- size of cow, marginal land, so land poached easily.

KatyMac

Age and docility high on my list, followed by quality of calf.
Have a limx to go this year, she's 11 and goes calf mad every year. I have 3 heifer calves from her that I'm keeping as they'd eat the shirt off your back. Have another that's annoying when she calls - the neighbours know her well as she crosses their gates/fences! I'm tempted to get rid, but she is grand for 364 days a year and produces good, polled calves, so the jury is still out for her. She's not dangerous, just annoying.

RaggyDays

When you have too many and feck all grass :P