RANCHING Business
Five Keys to Breeding Herd Management By Lorie Woodward Cantu
W
HILE EACH COW-CALF OPERATION IS DIFFERENT, PRO- ducers generally share a common goal: producing the most pounds of beef possible
from their ranches. “Undoubtedly, the cattle industry and cattle pro-
ducers are diverse, but there is common ground,” says Dr. Robert Wells, an animal nutritionist and livestock consultant with the Noble Foundation. “Most people want to use the resources of their operations to produce the most pounds of beef possible.” To do that, Wells suggests reviewing 5 key areas
in breeding herd management: breeding season; herd health; nutrition; breeding soundness of bulls and breeding status of cows; and bull selection.
Breeding season Many producers rely on long, loose breeding seasons
ranging from 6 months to year-round. The industry standard breeding season is 90 days, but Wells recom- mended tightening it to less than 75 days to keep the herd on a 1-year calving interval. “It’s simple arithmetic,” Wells says. “A cow’s gesta- tional period is 285 days. If you add a 90-day breeding
period, the total number of days is 375, thus extending the calving interval to over a year.” The benefi ts of a tight calving season are a uniform
calf crop and simplifi ed operations. On average, a calf will gain 2 to 2.25 pounds per day while on the cow. If the breeding season is 75 days, there can be a 150- to 170-pound weight difference between the oldest calf and the youngest. And as the breeding season length- ens, the weight difference increases, he says. Tightening the calving interval also simplifi es ranch
operations. “When operations have a tight calving interval,
producers are able to plan and anticipate ranch work,” Wells says. “If cows are calving year-round, a producer never knows when he is going to encounter a birthing problem or when he is going to have enough calves on the ground to justify working them. The schedule is piecemeal, which can increase labor costs and de- crease effi ciency.” There is no magic timeline for transitioning from a
loose breeding season to a tight breeding season, Wells says. In a few cases, people choose to do it drastically in a single year, but generally it takes 2 to 5 years.
Editor’s Note: This is the sixth installment in a 12-part series on “The Realized Value of Management Decisions” that was developed in conjunction with the advisors in the Producer Relations Program of the Agricultural Divi- sion of the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation. The independent, non-profi t Noble Foundation, headquartered in Ardmore, Okla., assists farmers and ranchers and conducts plant science research and agricultural programs to enhance agricultural productivity regionally, nationally and internationally.
46 The Cattleman June 2015
thecattlemanmagazine.com
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