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BW Corelation to WW

Northern Rancher said:
Don't try and B.S me or anybody else that big performance doesn't come at a cost-some are willing to pay the price in time and money others aren't. In a few generations when those big BW heifers start coming into production you'll see where I'm coming from or maybe not.
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I never said there wasn't a cost. I've culled alot of real nice heifers and cows out of my herd because they couldn't handle my breeding program. Sometimes I've gotten lucky and other guys have bought them for breeding stock in their own lower BW programs, but most of the time I've sent them to market as culls where I didn't receive near the value I should have.

Maybe I'll have trouble someday, but I've got 11 generations of my own breed stock running in my pastures right now, and haven't had issues.

Rod
 
Rod,

I'm thinking that you have your experience and no one can deny that, but that you will find it hard to convince most folks that it will happen the same way for them.

Most won't have the same experience as you did. That is the nature of exceptions to the rule. They do exist, but they are rare, and rarely repeatable. Otherwise, they wouldn't be the "exception". We can't all have a herd of "outliers".

I think it is a question of degrees. How can you say you have "no issues" but earlier in the post you say you "culled a lot"? Is she really a "real nice heifer" if she "couldn't handle my breeding program"? Not calling you out, but pointing out that we all have our different thesholds of the things I put in quotes from your last post.

Badlands
 
Badlands, the thing is that I'm not the exception in my neck of the woods, but rather the rule. Most of us up here like Feb/Mar calving, and most of us realize that the survivability of larger calves is better than that of small calves in the cold. Quite frankly, I'm not sure why people have all of sudden decided that 80lb calves HAVE to be the norm to allow for easy calving. It never used to be that way, and according to my vet, there are far more calving difficulties (national average) now than there were 20 years ago. Besides, as I've mentioned a couple times in this post, I'm only arguing against those who say its impossible to have big calves or make blanket indictments against large calves. Myself, Randi, and Mike are all proof that a program can be built that makes use of those large calves and all the advantages they bring.

As far as culling heavy, that was very early on in my program. I bought a bunch of cows whose background I didn't know. After a couple years, those that were left formed the foundation of my herd. Since that time, I rarely pull a calf, except in the cases I noted where I'd bought bad bulls. Anyone who can honestly say they haven't culled heavily at least in the beginning of their programs, I can honestly say that I would never buy livestock from them.

As far as the "nice heifer", I spose you're right. Better put would have been "nice looking heifer", although in a different program with lower BWs, they would have performed very well and could have been called a "nice heifer". So I guess it would depend on your point of view, right?

Rod
 
Diamond S, I am jumping into this late and may have missed where you said your weaning weights are. Also, do you take in consideration the weights of your replacements when selecting them or how do you select your replacements?
 
Nature tends to get cows to have calves near 7% of their body weight.

1500 pound cows are going to drift to 105 pound calves and 1200 pound cows are going to be around 84.

You can bump them a bit each way, bigger cows having smaller calves and smaller cows having bigger, but push too far and troubles will occur.

Most people have no idea how heavy most of their calves are. I remember a PB breeder who swore he never had a 90 pound calf. I challenged him to weigh some calves, he came back the next day with 98, 94 and 99 pounds as the 3 that were born overnight.
 
Horseless said:
Diamond S, I am jumping into this late and may have missed where you said your weaning weights are. Also, do you take in consideration the weights of your replacements when selecting them or how do you select your replacements?
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I haven't done any 205 day adjusting, but I expect to see 50 - 55% of cow weight by the end of 5 months. I haven't done alot of culling on weaning weights in the past, but rather watched my yearling weights more closely instead. In my steers, based on a BW weight spread between 80 lbs and 100 lbs, I'll see on average 100 lbs difference in weight by 365 days old.

As far as replacements go, I won't select anything past 102-3 lbs BW. If an animal appears to have the potential to be exceptional in some way, shape or form, I'll select up to 105-6 lbs of BW. But absolutely no more than that. I will also not select anything under 90 lbs of BW, unless its exceptional in some way. Also, if a cow has demonstrated to me that she throws considerably higher than the average birthweight calves, I won't use any of her offspring for breeding purposes. However, if she's not having problems giving birth, she'll stay in the herd and continue to pound out calves. I also won't select any calves from animals who have shown themselves to throw lower than average birthweight calves, although most of these have been culled due to poor performance.

Of course I have additional traits that I cull on, but thats not germane to this topic.

Jason, as far as your 7% number goes, most of the texts I've read say 7% - 8%. At the 8% end on a 1200 lb cow, we're talking 96 lbs. So when I say I shoot for 100 lb calves, quite frankly I believe that I'm gunning for the calf size that the animal SHOULD be having. I don't believe these low birthweights are natural or native to the species. I also believe that those shooting for those ultra-low BWs in the 50 and 60 lbs ranges are setting themselves up for a hell of a train wreck in the future.

Rod
 
My cows have had some big calves and I have seen alot of big calves get up and going without any problem. But I have seen the ones that don't. They usually are the ones that had a difficult birth, and usually they were at it much longer than you think. My target on most cows any more is to have an 85 - 90 bw. Haven't had any calving problems with this target. They are capable of have bigger calves. It was a big shocker when I got a scale. My 1200 lb cows are no longer 1200lb. They are much bigger. My weaning weights have not increased much and my cow weights have. There are other reasons for the lack of weaning wieght, one is later calving dates. I usually find picking a heifer over 600 lb ww, will be a larger than 1200 lbs cow.
 
I think both Rod and Horseless have a handle on this.

There aren't many real 1200 pound cows left, there are some underfed cows that weigh that.

Ultrasmall bw calves are not normal.

The other thing that will determine ww is environment. Those that have enough grass for the cattle to express their full potential will outwean those that are on limited resources.

With full nutrition nearly every heavier bw calf will outwean a smaller bw one.
 

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