Question on Ral-Grow

[Wyoming Wind]

Maybe some of you will have some expertise and input on this subject: a friend bought some super nice angus heifer calves last winter/spring with the intent to breed them up this summer to some VERY nice angus bulls with low birthweights. He fertility tested his bulls and they were good to go. Sold the bred heifers on internet auction and then preg checked and found out only 60 percent were bred. Could this be from the previous owners ral growing the heifers before they were sold to my friend? It's the only thing we can think of that would cause such a terrible breed up. Any ideas? He is very dissapointed...as I would be too.

 

[Howdy1]

We Ralgro all our heifers at branding time in the spring. The calves are 1-2 months of age. We have never noticed an effect on their breeding. If the heifers received an implant at a later age then yes it could definitely affect their reproduction.

I know a guy that gives an implant to yearling heifers at breeding time (instead of spaying them) and runs them with his replacement heifers and to my knowledge none of them have ever bred.

If you have a question about their fertility, do a breeding exam on the heifers. Usually if implants affect them negatively they will have no repro organs or they will be shrunk to small to do any good.

 

[rancherfred]

Pretty sure you are barking up the wrong tree. Does your friend vaccinate for lepto? Specifically, do they use a vaccine that contains the Hardjo Bovis strain of lepto? We had a disaster with breeding this past year and it was due to that nasty little bug. Out of 113 heifers, I had 48 open. They didn't even cycle. I fed them every day all winter long and saw one cycle from December through April. In February I had one sling her calf. All total, out of 350 hd, I had 73 opens and most of them were under 4 years of age. In addition to causing cattle to loose their calves, it will also cause mastitis and anestrous. It isn't enough to vaccinate with a regular lepto vaccine, it has to have the Bovis strain in it. There are a couple of new vaccines that contain the HB strain. There is a Bovi-Shield product and another called Spiro-Vac that contains the HB strain.

 

[Faster horses]

In some publication recently I read a vet's comments about
the heifer conception rate being poor this year and the cause.

I've looked for the article and can't find it, but I will keep
searching. His theory was the terrible winter and spring kept the
heifers from gaining weight prior to breeding. Cattle have to
be on the gain to breed.

I know in this area, the heifers that were time bred had similar
conception rates as your friends heifers.

I too, don't think Ralgro had much, if anything, to do with it.
We quit giving our heifers any growth promotant years ago,
but when we did, we never had any breeding problems that
I can recall.

 

[eatbeef]

ralgro can be given as long as the calf is still on the cow. i ralgro implant everything at 1 to 2 months of age. A year ago we were preconditioning a pasture of 100 and for some reason had a brain fart and implanted every calf. this was september 15 and we weaned oct 1 and had no breeding problems with the hiefers. Just pregged a month ago the group them hiefers would of been part of and pasture bull bred 88% in 45 days. I would trich the bulls just to be sure.

 

[Wyoming Wind]

In some publication recently I read a vet's comments about
the heifer conception rate being poor this year and the cause.

I've looked for the article and can't find it, but I will keep
searching. His theory was the terrible winter and spring kept the
heifers from gaining weight prior to breeding. Cattle have to
be on the gain to breed.

I know in this area, the heifers that were time bred had similar
conception rates as your friends heifers.

I too, don't think Ralgro had much, if anything, to do with it.
We quit giving our heifers any growth promotant years ago,
but when we did, we never had any breeding problems that
I can recall.

We wondered about our tough winter and spring affecting everything too...makes sense. It was tough on all our critters (especially us)! It was really rough on our to be first time calving heifers. They didn't grow real well thru out the winter and then prior to calving we brought them in and fed them seperately. Ended up only growing the calf in their belly and had to pull quite a few. We learned the hard way---plans to feed them seperately all winter this year since we have the extra feed and extra room to pasture them. And someone mentioned Trich...couldn't be trich since our friend ran virgin yearling bulls that he raised. Probably won't know for certain what it was that cause the poor breed up---just a big bummer since the bred heifers brought several hundred more dollars than the open girls.