WyomingRancher said:
This is an udder on an 9 year old purchased cow which definately needs improvement! I've never had to help any of this cow's offspring nurse, and so she still lives here, the minute that changes is the minute she goes on the cull list. I would never consider keeping replacements out of this cow due to her udder structure and frame size (she's the largest cow on the ranch), despite the fact she raises nice calves.
A person never gets too old to learn a valuable lesson. Here is one to ponder.
If a rancher brings to town some very nice market-topping bred heifers, they probably have the potential to turn into some very nice cows. Those bred heifers might be a "bargain" at any price. If that same rancher bring to town on the same day some older broken-mouthed cows, the only reason they are there is because they are old. They might also be a bargain if the buyer has adequate feed and wants some older "experienced" cows. But if the same seller, on the same day, brings to town a handful of solid-mouthed good-aged cows they are probably not a bargain at any price. These cows are there for the good reason that the rancher no longer wants them in his herd. There are bound to be problems with this class of cows; anything from bad bags, to bad dispositions, to a several year history of producing poor calves. Anyway, unless they sell even cheaper than the broken-mouthed cut, forget them.
My lesson was learned just this past winter. Saddletramp needed five cows, and my sister needed four cows. Their upper limit on the money they wanted to invest was a thousand dollars per cow. I went to a sale in December to try to fill their needs. A reputation rancher brought in some high quality bred heifers, as he does at this sale every year. The heifers brought $1360 per head. Later, after all the bred heifers had sold, this rancher sold about forty head of nice older broken-mouthed cows. They brought near the $800 figure as I recall. Then came in a nice ten-head package of his solid-mouthed cows. Nine head were solid black and the other was a black baldy. I only had to bid once to buy them for $975 per head. My mission was accomplished.
These cows were taken home. I offered Saddletramp the opportunity to pick five from the ten. He did, and we put his brand on those cows. My sister's brand was put on the other four black cows, and I put the spearhead brand on the remaining baldy cow. Saddletramp didn't have very good luck. Two of his cows ended up aborting their calves just a week or two before they were supposed to calve in February. Another of his new cows never did calve, and she never showed signs of having aborted. Evidently she just was not pregnant to start with, even though the sale barn vet put a P on her hip back in December. The other two of Saddletramp's cows had fairly decent calves. Since I felt responsible for buying dud cows, I shared half the loss on the deal, and ended up selling Saddletramp some very nice nine-year-old cows with good steer calves at their sides well worth the money.
Out of the four cows that my sister ended up with, two had sorry bags, and they couldn't even raise their calves. The other two had sorry dispositions but they are still in the herd. The baldy cow that I kept for myself has a bag that nearly drags in the dirt. Her calf is pretty common.
I have never said anything to the rancher the cows were purchased from, and I don't plan to. He is a good guy who I consider a friend. He made an honest sale, and I made an honest buy. He sure didn't know that the cows would abort, and they probably would have had some decent calves had things worked out right. The other cow was evidently pregnant when the vet pronounced her so. The other blimps and blemishes come under the title, "let the buyer beware."
Lesson learned. Tuition is sometimes quite high. :roll:
. I'm nowhere near being able to cull based on udder structure... I'm lucky if they don't poison themselves and die on Larkspsur first 
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