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Need Info Calving Loss

V

varmint

Member
Joined
Dec 7, 2006
Messages
12
Location
Greenville, TX
What is your calving death loss?
Heard loss for pasture cows?
We have lost several calves recently, more than usual for us, including twins yesterday.
Any comments will be welcome.
Thanks,
Larry
 
Black Angus Cattle
Just losses from calves born too big, breach birth, mother would not not accept it etc. We have not had any disease or coyote problems.
Thanks,
Larry
 
So you are talking just birth losses and not disease say 4 weeks later or something like that.. With the things like breach, tangled up twins or calves being too big sometimes it just will run in cycles for people. Won't have any of these troubles for 3-4 years and than booom.. It just blwos up.

On Sunday my neighbor had to pull 5 calves in a row, all backwords with the first one being a breach and than its twin being backwords with it. Fun eh?
 
We lost a bull calf several weeks ago at birth, it was way too big and the mother rejected it, that was the 1st. Then just 2 more born dead the next week. Last Saturday the biggest calf that I have ever seen had to be pulled and was born dead, lost the mother also later that day. Yesterday has twins born, the 1st breach and followed later by another, both born dead, the mother is doing ok. She finally got up last night.
Just bad luck.
Larry
 
If you haven't had this problem in the past.....I'd look at the bull....is he new.....or did you A-I to somethin you've never used before?

Sorry to hear about all the bad luck yer havin.

Welcome to Ranchers by the way. :D
 
Look at your nutrition too of course and perhaps even think of what your winter was like leading up to this.. So many variables.....

We found a set of dead twins yesterday in the field... But these were way premi.. Seems to happen every other year and it is a real pain in the arse. Nothing wrong with the cows, just one of those things.
 
No they were bred to different bulls, no problems there, all checked out fine. We have had a semi mild winter and fed as usual with plenty of hay, all are fat. It just happened. I thought that the birth loss was suppose to be about 4% or so. I was just wondering what was average. We have just under 200 head.
 
This is just me thinkin....but if you had a mild winter...wouldn't the "usual feed" be utilized at a greater rate than say if you had a hard winter where they had to USE the feed to keep warmer? Therefore maybe the Usual feed ended up bein a lil too much and the calves grew bigger than normal.

??? :???:
 
Thats a thought that I have not thought of. The one born last Sat was about 140# !!. We lost the mother that afternoon also. All the mothers have had several calves before with no problems and were
"normal size" cows.
 
Always told that cold winters equats to bigger calves due to blood flow.. True? I don't know, sometimes the nutriotionists make me scratch my head a bit but the studies I have seen tend to support what he said.

that is one eck of a swing in birth weights though. Sometimes hard calving can be equated to an over weight cow but that wouldn't equal 140 lbs calf.
 
If you are getting 140 lb. calves or anything close to it out of Angus cows, it would seem to me it's genetic. Feeding too much especially during the last trimester can add weight to a calf, but 10 lbs would be about as much as you could expect from nutrition. I have had a 98 and a 96 lb calf this winter out of angus and that's the heaviest I have ever had. But they are out of a different bull than I have used before. Are your bulls pure bred Angus ? Were these cows A.I.'d. Maybe the semen was mislabeled. As far as per cent live births, that will vary with every herd. Out of the last 100 I have weaned 99, but, we have a small herd, we are 100% AI so I know the genetics and every due date, and my wife would say I spend too much time with them.
 
I did'nt know they had winter in Texas what you guys call winter we call summer.

I would just say it's your turn for bad luck.Everyone who owns cattle will take their turn from time to time.
 
EFB is correct on how nutrition adds to bw. 10 lbs would be the outside
of increased BW.

If you have 140 lb. calf, you have a genetic BW explosion going on.
There is some BW in your genetics somewhere, or you had a
neighbors bull get in.

Also, research is showing that backwards calves tend to be
a genetic problem coming from the bull.

My advice is to check out the BW and bloodlines of your cows.
Usually hard to do,
unless you raised them yourself.)

At any rate, good luck from here on out. Hopefully your
troubles will change for the better.
 

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