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Cow Size

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From the beef cow/calf weekly...

These Are Not Your Grandfather's Cows


Mature weight and milk production of many commercial beef cows are both greater than they were 30-40 years ago, says Glen Selk, Oklahoma State University Extension beef cow specialist. "Many ranchers haven't recently weighed the adult cows in their herd to know what average mature weight to expect. Therefore, most commercial ranchers would underestimate the mature size of their cows. To expect large, heavy-milking cows to be in moderate body condition at calving and maintain condition through breeding, they must receive more feed than smaller, lighter-milking cows."

A larger, heavier-milking cow requires about 34% more energy on the average for an entire year, he says. Consequently, an operation that was carrying 100 of the smaller cows must carry only 66 of the larger cows in order to utilize the same quantity of forage from that farm or ranch. She also will need 34% more winter hay and supplement to maintain body condition.

"Because we have very high feed and fertilizer prices, this is a time to reconsider herd size to better fit the stocking rates required. Reduced stocking rates will be necessary on improved pastures if lower amounts of fertilizer are applied. The larger mature cow size also impacts the principle of percent body weight needed for heifers to reach puberty. Many ranchers underestimate the target weight for replacement heifers. If the cow eventually will be 1,000 lbs., the target for heifers is 650 lbs.; if she's going to be the 1,250-lb. cow, then she needs to weigh 812 lbs. going into her first breeding season to expect a high cycling and pregnancy rate," Selk says.
-- Ron Hays, Radio Oklahoma Network
Click to expand...
 
I am seriously considering changing some things....

I may buy replacements.....That way my Bull selection is more streamlined and focused to the meat Animal that is the cornerstone of my business...

PPRM
 
PPRM said:
I am seriously considering changing some things....

I may buy replacements.....That way my Bull selection is more streamlined and focused to the meat Animal that is the cornerstone of my business...

PPRM
Click to expand...

You will get there alot quicker that way also.Trying to breed down in size takes a few generation's in my book you can't get there overnight.
 
Oldtimer said:
From the beef cow/calf weekly...

These Are Not Your Grandfather's Cows


Mature weight and milk production of many commercial beef cows are both greater than they were 30-40 years ago, says Glen Selk, Oklahoma State University Extension beef cow specialist. "Many ranchers haven't recently weighed the adult cows in their herd to know what average mature weight to expect. Therefore, most commercial ranchers would underestimate the mature size of their cows. To expect large, heavy-milking cows to be in moderate body condition at calving and maintain condition through breeding, they must receive more feed than smaller, lighter-milking cows."

A larger, heavier-milking cow requires about 34% more energy on the average for an entire year, he says. Consequently, an operation that was carrying 100 of the smaller cows must carry only 66 of the larger cows in order to utilize the same quantity of forage from that farm or ranch. She also will need 34% more winter hay and supplement to maintain body condition.

"Because we have very high feed and fertilizer prices, this is a time to reconsider herd size to better fit the stocking rates required. Reduced stocking rates will be necessary on improved pastures if lower amounts of fertilizer are applied. The larger mature cow size also impacts the principle of percent body weight needed for heifers to reach puberty. Many ranchers underestimate the target weight for replacement heifers. If the cow eventually will be 1,000 lbs., the target for heifers is 650 lbs.; if she's going to be the 1,250-lb. cow, then she needs to weigh 812 lbs. going into her first breeding season to expect a high cycling and pregnancy rate," Selk says.
-- Ron Hays, Radio Oklahoma Network
Click to expand...
Click to expand...


According to this, and going with most ranchers of philosophy of "less work, more returns", what a guy should be doing is having less cows, but bigger. Less headache calving, less everything. How could we go wrong??
 
I had an interesting conversation with a fellow yesterday that had ended up with the same problem of frame creep I did- and he brought up something I had not thought about--he said that some of his came about when he got sold by the vet into the idea of pelvic measuring his heifers, and then kept those with the bigger pelvic measurements for his replacements....Which were usually the bigger sized/framed heifers- and over the years of doing this the size of his cows gradually got bigger....And he didn't sound like he felt the measuring was worth the effort....

About 10 years ago he switched over to using mostly Diamond D/Ohlde bloodlines of lowbirthweight bulls and says he has less calving problems now than when he was screwing around with the pelvic measuring- and is bringing his cow size back to where it was....
 
OT, I had often wondered about the validity of pelvic measurements without taking frame size into account. I'm glad others have also given thought to this .
 
I am a firm believer of moderate sized cows.

But the pelvic deal--some ranchers I know had Simmental-Gelbvieh cross cows. And they were big. And they always had problems calving heifers out of these cows. They finally started pelvic measuring, only to find that over 1/3 of their heifers had small pelvis areas. So, so much for the theory that bigger cows had bigger pelvis'...wasn't true in this case anyway.

We quit pelvic measuring our Angus heifers because we never had to cull one because of a small pelvis.
 
For your info:

http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/news/columns/beeftalk/beeftalk-cow-size-2013-dry-lot-versus-pasture/
 
Good info on forage needed for cow size. But did not see calf weaned per cow size Lbs.per cow size etc. etc. :???: All info needed for the bottom line Loss or Profit. Always going to be million dollar ? whats the right size cow. I've got some small red heifers calving now shooting out tiny calves a good 200 lbs smaller than my bred heifers are usually. We will see if they are really money makers :wink:
 

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