If you are thinking about marketing bred heifers you need a good set of working pens.
people in the replacement female business are prob- ably going to do an artifi cial insemination program on their females, so that means they are going to have to have facilities that can handle those females safely and effi ciently 3 to 4 times within a very short period of time,” he says. “Then, of course, they’ll have to turn them out to a clean-up bull. “When they start to sell those animals, they also
need to have a place where they can bring them up into a smaller area, rather than having to have the potential buyer look at all the cattle out in a huge pasture. And they need to be able to sort those animals off effi ciently and safely, again, so the buyers will be able to quickly pick out the animals that they want.” It is still a seller’s market and Wells says that un-
fortunately, merchants can sell any bred heifer, regard- less of genetics. “My philosophy, though, is since we’re rebuilding
the herd we have a great opportunity to increase the overall quality of the beef cattle industry in the Texas- Oklahoma area,” he says. “Rather than just choosing any female that has a
functioning uterus, let’s go and fi nd good quality fe- males that are actually going to make good cows, and
tscra.org
are going to give good genetics to that subsequent calf every year.” In addition, while many ranchers will continue to
repopulate their herds by holding back females, Wells says it’s a best management practice to purchase a re- placement from somebody else. “Our industry is really no different than many other industries. Somebody who specializes in a particular segment is more than likely going to have cost effi ciencies, and probably be able to do a better job than somebody who is trying to do it on their own.” Besides, the traits you would fi nd desirable in your calves are not necessarily those you’d want in replacements — for instance, if you were selecting for performance, you’d get heifers that are too big. Meanwhile, the Chandlers are deciding their next
move. After they sell this winter’s set of heifers, Galen said, “We’re going to sit back a little bit and relax, and see what the market’s going to do. We may or may not buy another set of them that are open and then breed them; it all depends on what the market’s going to do. And we may decide to just buy lighter- weight heifers, put a couple hundred pounds on them and then sell them as open heifers, rather than going through the bred heifer thing.”
April 2016 The Cattleman 81
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