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Red cows and green grass

R

rancherfred

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 3, 2007
Messages
444
Location
Western Nebraska
I took my camera with me today when I checked. The cows in the pictures have all calved within the last two weeks.

Two Glacier Chateau daughters
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A three year old with a Make Mimi grandson at side.
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This old girl is 10 this spring, she seems to be holding up pretty good.
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A five year old cow in pretty good shape.
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The best part of the day was my three year old daughter that keeps up a running commentary the whole time we are checking. She told me this morning that she was a farm girl. When I asked her what farm girls do she replied that they go with their daddies.
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Nice cattle and great pictures. That little gal of yours is wise beyond her years! :D And i'll bet taking your daughter with ya is the best perk of being a rancher. :D
 
I've been thinking about you rancherfred. Perfect calving weather except for a couple hot days there a while back. Now if we could just get a rain. I'll bet you have been getting some haven't you. I remember you saying once that if you ever had to go back to winter calving you would get out of the cattle business. I couldn't agree more. Hope you have a great summer. :D
 
We have had pretty good weather for calving. It has been pretty cool, but slightly below average on rain. Other than a handful of days in the 80s we haven't gotten much out of the 70s for the whole month of May. After the last several years that feels downright cold for May.

After the rotten weather that so many had to calve in I was a little concerned that posting these pictures might seem like I was rubbing it in. We fed very little hay to our cows this year, about 20 round bales, and the grass has kept up with the cattle. So far the only sickness I have had was in an adoption that I had in the corral, otherwise our luck has been pretty good.

I am curious what others are seeing for ratio of bulls to heifers this year. We are running a strong 60% bulls. I don't know how to explain that. It seems to me that there ought to be some environmental factor in play when you get that large of a difference between sexes.

The other interesting thing that I have noted this year is the vast difference in quality of semen from bull studs. We used two different sires last summer and they were from two different studs. The first sire we used 30 units of and we have 25 calves out of him. The second sire we used about 50 units and I don't think we have 25 calves of that sire. Our AI protocol was CIDRs, GNRH, and prostaglandin. We started with the cows that were cycling and then we did a mass breeding of everything remaining the following day. All of the semen was used in the two sessions, and the conception rate was vastly different. We had two different guys AIing and the matings were random. Looking at all of that I have a hard time explaining why we had the difference in conception unless it was in semen quality.
 
My aunt just made the comment the other day when we took calves down to summer near their home about how this year they had way more bulls then heifers. Steers now. :wink:
 
We didn't notice our ratio until branding, but we had close to 65% steers at the end of the day. Not much rest for the cutter. We're going to need another trailer on sale day, but we'll save some time when sorting replacements.
 
We also had about 65% male calves. The good part was a lot of the top cows gave us heifers so the replacements should be plentiful.

Nice set of good-doin' cattle Rancherfred. Kids are funny, enjoy your times with them.
 

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