Northern Rancher said:
Not sure if I want to push the calving ease issue just to make sure i don't get rusty with a puller-5% assists aren't a big deal with a 100 cows-it is a bit of an issue with several hundred. The beef business our way is seeing less people taking care of more cattle-the switch to a kinder season and easier cattle to deal with is because of this. There are easy and hard calving lines in every breed-you can pretty much run what suits your comfort level and curse everybody who does different.
5%? That's an interesting number----in a good yr, that's about what we figger we save by bringing them home to calve---backwards, big calf, leg back, head down, occasional set of twins, mothering issues.
And would probably have fewer 'mothering issues' if we left them out.
But we prefer to try not to lose any, and they ain't all good yrs. Probably one of the best we ever did was to have 50 live calves outa 50 heifers we'd A.I.'d, with no twins. Calves were about a mo old, we had them in a really neat 80 acre field with creek, springs, shelter, lotsa old grass. And a damn mtn lion killed one. Always something. fwiw, lions kinda skin them like you do a muskrat, hide was turned inside out plum up to the ears.
Two cats had been seen together, neighbors got 2 kill permits. One morning I'm settin' on the steps and hear hounds across the crick---then shots, 3 or 'em. Bonus rules, I expect.