many cows you exposed to a bull roughly a year and a half earlier. “If you’re not keeping track with
a good form,” he says, “at the end you don’t know exactly what that number was.” The breeding and calving
spreadsheet allows the producer to keep track of when bulls were turned in, when they were pulled out and how many cows were ex- posed. From there you can enter how many cows were open and whether there were any abortions or calves that died between birth and weaning. The spreadsheet will calculate
the percentage of cows that became pregnant and the important wean- ing percentage. He says, “From year to year you can compare to see if you’re improving. If things slipped this year, you can go back in and start looking at why.”
To know how well your operation performs from a production
standpoint, you need your percentage of weaned calves.
Cow records tab The third tab, cow records, al-
lows the producer to maintain ba- sic information either on the herd collectively or, if an ID system is being used, on individual animals. The sample form demonstrates
how individual ear tags can be matched to brucellosis ID tags. “This is helpful in cases where a cow loses an ear tag,” he says. “The brucellosis ID can be used as a sec- ondary source of identifi cation, al-
lowing the cow to be retagged with the correct number.” The progeny of the cows can
be listed by birth date, sex and weaning performance, which can take the form of adjusted weaning weights or of weight per day of age. If a producer doesn’t have indi-
vidual ID, Banta suggests inputting this data by groups — the 2- and 3-year-old cows, the 4- and 5-year- old cows, and so on. This can pro- vide information on how the off- spring of cows in those age groups are performing on an annual basis.
Expenses and income tab The fourth tab, expenses, lets
the producer follow the various cost categories throughout the year to determine whether they’re meeting their budgets and, if not, where to target cost reduction efforts. If set up appropriately, it can be
Gene Pool • Shelby Horn
tscra.org June 2014 The Cattleman 41
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