Livestock Management RANCHING
End of Breeding Season Brings More Cattle Management Decisions By Gary DiGiuseppe
T
HE END OF ANOTHER BREEDING SEASON, IT IS HOPED, MEANS the start of a new cycle of life on the cattle ranch. It also provides an opportunity for the rancher
to take stock of the herd and make decisions that will keep it productive and profi table. “It gives us an ideal time to go in and evaluate the
cow herd, particularly the ‘keep/cull’ decisions,” says Dr. Mark Spire, D.V.M., a technical services manager for Merck Animal Health. “The quickest and easiest decisions are obtained through visual examination. We can look at the physical conditions of the cows to check for bad eyes, lumps, lameness or bad udders. We also have a chance to look at the calf she’s about to wean off. Is that the type of calf we want; is it one that can make money for the operation? “If we’ve made a good decision on the genetics
contributed by the bulls, then the calf is showing us the female contribution both genetically and from the milking ability and production standpoints. While just about any calf has value, is the value covering cow costs? If not, then decide to cull that cow.”
tscra.org Also important to the decision of which cows stay
and which go to town is the pregnancy check. Spire says the sooner this takes place after the end of the breeding season the more accurate the palpator can be in determining exactly when the cows are in gestation. “Most manual palpators are comfortable with 35
days and later, so you can start planning on pregnancy checking at that point after the bulls are pulled,” he says. “If a rancher uses ultrasound scanning to preg- nancy check, that could start around 21 days after the end of the breeding season, realizing that the earlier you check before 50 days have elapsed, the greater the chance of naturally occurring embryonic death that can throw your fi nal pregnancy rates off. “As the fetus grows, very specifi c structural changes
take place in the uterus and in fetal size, allowing you to evaluate the age of the fetus quite accurately from about 35 days to about 135 days. “By taking the breeding group as a whole, the dis-
tribution in the next calving season pool can be cal- culated based over the entire length of the previous
November 2014 The Cattleman 67
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