Started here today. Only brought her in from field yesterday. Heifer calf.
I do the same. Keep calves in a bedded pen and leave into cows morning and evening. You can see that they suck properly etc for around half hour and take them away again. I’d often leave the cows out on a day like today and leave the calves be. Cows dead happy to go out and come back into the calves in the evening. A bit of work in it but keeps things clean.
About 30-40 mins, I let them out l, do the chores and then put back in
~5 days usually for me. Once its a lively calf and they know their comforts then i put the cow to the slats and bring the calf to the creep area off it so they learn to go through the gate to the slats. Then keep and eye on them that they know how to go back and that their feet don't get caught in the slats (hasnt happened yet thankfully but did for a neighbor years ago, calf broke its leg). They'd have free access in and out then.
That strategy should help getting them back in calf quickly too - out of interest how long would you leave them with the cows morning and evening ?
we keep them in the calving pen for 5-7 days then move to slats where calves are in a bedded pen and let in morning and evening.
I know its probably been asked many times but how soon could you or do ye let calves creep in and out of the slats to the cows ?
With no sign of grass growth they could be in for a while yet.
The first questions should be when are they due to calf? How long have they been thin? How long weaned? What age?
I’d give it. Check with your vet if you want.
if they are all eating it then powdered minerals are fine
Do they need a vitamin drench as they have been on pre-calver since housing. Be longer than 3 weeks from calving.
If they’re within 3/4 weeks of calving and thin they could run low on energy after calving. I’d give a good vitamin drench, keep the nuts and add oats and soybean meal. If further out from calving give vitamin drench now, cut out nuts and give oats + soybean and another drench 3 weeks before calving.
I'd usually give rolled oats and middling silage to suckler cows here. They would be out wintered so different to most, so it's not apples with apples we are comparing, The oats to me, gives the cow/calf energy but not weight gain. As funky_farmer said the calf's seem a bit hardier when born, better ability to just get up and suck without intervention and have more energy when fresh out of the oven.
I wouldn't be feeding any nuts what so ever for fear of pushing the calf up into the section/problematic calving category. They will have plenty time to grow once there out on the ground. And you can bull the cow with nuts to get her back in calf again once she has calved.
They have ad lib silage and for the last month or so 4kg/day on the 16%. I was hoping to see a better reaction. They have been dosed since housing, so should be clear. I'll ask vet for an opinion, although I'd say they might be hesitant to recommend another dose a few months out from calving.
I'd usually give the incalf heifers rolled oats and hay for the last 6 weeks of gestation. PB limo for the most part so wouldn't have a problem usually with low BCS, they'd usually be too high if were on adlib silage TBH. Not sure if there is any science behind it but the calf to me is usually a bit livelier and have seen a decrease in hard calvings since I started too. Might be as much to do with the hay as the oats though. Get about 1kg/head/day with adlib hay
Got a few cows that are a bit on the thin side. I've been supplementing them with a 16% blend.
I've read elsewhere that meal can make the calf big and that it is better to give them rolled oats as it doesn't result in large calves.
I've not heard this before. Has anyone here heard about it or read it?
yes we do and always have
take most of our cattle to slaughter so would only be codding ourselves
for the likes of scep where replacement scores are important to hit all the annual targets
there’s no denying that they’re flawed but if people want the recorded data to be used then it needs to to be recorded properly and then if it is the actually better animals should win out. So are you saying you record everything correctly such as calving difficulty, dob etc? And if so why make the comment above that if you record anything negative you could hurt yourself?
Anything under 45kg here I call small, between 45-55 average and above 55 large. vet assistance is fairly straightforward to understand and normal calving is as described I’d often give a bit of a pull if I was heading off to work or something but if there was no big resistance it would be still put down as normal calving. some assistance is when I need the jack and I use a few swear words.
The whole thing is a joke anyway so I don’t know why we are getting worked up over it. I’d a fair few bulls crossed 2kg average per day last year as I dropped in the creep feeders early and I was on top of all the little things throughout the year. I also will admit to holding Christmas calves until the new year to register them .
All these were disallowed because apparently they put on too much weight. I’d had great hopes for the scheme at the start but it’s turned out to be a farce with an agenda conceived by lads straight out of ag college that nod and obey to the Teagasc mantra.
Unless ICBF have changed it when the BDGP training was done it was to compare all calves within your herd, it can’t be left to your own interpretation of what size an animal of a certain breed is because your opinion of sizes could be very different to my opinion. As you say above you don’t class a calf as big and a hard calving unless it takes 2 lads on a jack to pull him out of a cow where as I work full time off farm and would call any need for use of the jack as too big and a hard calving, I’m looking for all normal calving as in no assistance at all so straight away there we would be contradicting each other.
Not sure on how you describe the size is correct. It's based on your own herd of course but you wouldn't be comparing an Angus to a CH so 1 to a 5. That'd completely skew the data. It's based on your own interpretation of what you'd class as a big calf. So comparing within the breed & from experience of the breeds. An example for me, I'd weigh all mine within 24hrs of birth. I'd a big Saler calf this year that's 45kg. He's smaller than my LM calves but from experience of that bull (always <40kg previously), I've classed him as large.
People seem to forget that any false data submitted by farmers to ICBF, late recording of birth dates, calving difficulty etc etc would tend to be spread equally across all bulls. This in effect cancels all this 'Bad data' out. The star indexes are derived from all relations to the animal, and not just it's mother and sire.
you have totally missed the point but sure youre happy to lecture
the indexes are flawed and promote the bad behavior you are describing by rewarding it
when did i say anything about what we do here? wind your neck in
I have thought it plenty but it's looking like you havent. Seems to me like all you're doing is chasing stars and not actual improvements and only want an animal to have the stars for the sake of it. If your animal is small at birth and achieves good growth rates then they, the bull and cow deserve to have high stars, the only way this will be achieved is if these things are recorded properly. If you have a monster calf that burst the cow to calve it, maybe pay for a vet to do a section and for drugs after, cows calving interval maybe increase then and not calve for 13 or 14 months meaning the calf has to cover an additional couple of months where the cow has produced nothing then the bull and or cow should have lower stars. Similar to a lad only registering a calf when its a couple of months old to cover up bad growth rates rather than have stock that are actually performing then the only one your fooling by recording these things wrong is yourself and screwing other farmers who are trying to do things properly because figures will be skewed by this information.
have a think about it
how are the replacement and terminal scores calculated
Sorry I took you to be talking about dairy when you said EBI. I dont see how recording negative traits would hurt anyone if farmers record information correctly and the records are actually used to create ratings for animals, can you explain where you would see the problem with this? If a bull is genetically supposed to be easy calved but ends up throwing monsters and every farmer that used him recorded normal calving and normal size calf naturally his calving figures wont go up but his reliability % will and so the next unfortunate that goes to look for an easy calving bull sees his figures and reliability % and ends bursting his cows with monster calves. Now on the other hand if farmers with the monster calves record hard calving and bigger than normal calves his calving difficulty will go up along with his reliability and the next lad coming will know what he's getting himself into.
eurostar is an economic breeding index
its a system with potential but the replacement and terminal indexes ruin it
you are potentially hurting yourself by recording negative traits due to their design
I'm not a dairy farmer so I know very little about EBI so my comments are based on Euro star index and recordings required for BDGP and SCEP schemes, recordings, how to record information and the purpose for them which was thought to farmers in the training programmes for these schemes. You then had farmers shouting about how the training was pointless but now cant fill in a simple form properly. Also I dont see what records other countries have has got to do with anything, we are where we are, we have farmer groups complaining that ICBF need to be using the records submitted by farmers but then we have farmers here saying they dont know how to record things so we could be better off not using these wrong records.
No its not the most accurate going by how farmers were instructed to fill out the information. If you do that then what you're telling ICBF is that you had the same size of calf from a 550kg cow as you had from a 900kg cow, obviously the 550kg cow is going to be easier kept than the 900kg cow so therefore she is deemed to be a better cow and gets a higher star rating. I'm not saying I agree with ICBF or anything but how can they be expected to use information imputed by farmers when the last few comments here show that farmers either dont know how to imput the information correctly or are imputing the information completely wrong because they think thats the way it should be done.
Its very hard to size a calf. 2 cows one 900kgs, one cow 550kgs, you will have two very different sizes calf's but in comparison to there dams they both could be said to be an average size, if there born unassisted etc. I'll put them down as average size as I fell that's prob the most accurate unless they are unusually small. Then if it's a big pull I'll put them down as big as generally they will be.
you get accurate records in other countries where they dont have one size fits all EBI scores
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