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Post by fivestarherefords on Aug 18, 2014 19:54:42 GMT -6
Gathered yearling data on our fall calves today including ultrasound. Heifers gained an average of 1.62 pounds per day while the bulls gained an average of 4.28 pounds. Both groups are on pasture and receiving 10 pounds per day of a 13% protein feed. I'm pretty happy but will withhold judgement until the ultrasound data comes back. 5STAR 57U CANNON A07 (P43429607) gained 4.90 pounds per day and weighed 1320 pounds. He'll turn 1 on September 5th. He will adjust to just over 1400 pounds at a year and will easily be the heaviest yearling bull we have raised. What do you guys consider optimal ADG especially on your replacement heifers?
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Post by hoekland on Aug 18, 2014 23:54:06 GMT -6
In my opinion if you get your heifers to 800-850 lbs at the start of the next breeding season you've done well enough.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 19, 2014 9:53:13 GMT -6
In my opinion if you get your heifers to 800-850 lbs at the start of the next breeding season you've done well enough.
That isn't a bad weight range. We like to have ours more in the 900-950 range at yearling as they won't be getting anything but pasture once they are turned out with the bull. Our heifers do get a pretty good diet of a corn/oat ration + protein supplement and free choice hay over the winter so their ADG average is usually somewhere in the high 2's to low 3 lbs a day between weaning and yearling. Again depends on the region and what kind of rations you give your replacement heifers, gains and weights are probably going to vary a little from program to program. Some of the sale cattle you see at some of these consignment sales some of these guys have heifers just shy of a year old weighing over 1000 already because they fed the heck out of them and probably carrying a little too much fat.
Fivestar: That's a pretty good rate of gain on those bulls!
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Post by shumakerherefords on Aug 19, 2014 10:34:34 GMT -6
I shoot for an average adjusted yearling weight of 700 to 750 lbs. which is around 1.4 lb/day from weaning to yearling for the replacement heifers. That doesn't get them overly fat but allows them to express IMF potential. Then they are exposed to the bull at about 15 months of age.
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Post by strojanherefords on Aug 19, 2014 17:43:59 GMT -6
First off I do not consider yearling weight to be as important as a 14 month weight. 14 months is when steers are ready to be slaughtered and heifers are ready to be bred. As an improver of livestock, I want to put selection pressure on my heifers in order to get them bred at as light of weight as possible. My goal this fall is to put a 1 1/2 pounds of gain on the heifers from 12-15 months to get a 14 month weight of just shy of 800 pounds.
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Post by bookcliff on Aug 19, 2014 21:10:03 GMT -6
Gathered yearling data on our fall calves today including ultrasound. Heifers gained an average of 1.62 pounds per day while the bulls gained an average of 4.28 pounds. Both groups are on pasture and receiving 10 pounds per day of a 13% protein feed. I'm pretty happy but will withhold judgement until the ultrasound data comes back. 5STAR 57U CANNON A07 (P43429607) gained 4.90 pounds per day and weighed 1320 pounds. He'll turn 1 on September 5th. He will adjust to just over 1400 pounds at a year and will easily be the heaviest yearling bull we have raised. What do you guys consider optimal ADG especially on your replacement heifers? why 10 lbs on the hfrs. I presume then that they are running on cool sesaon grass like brome,fescue or bermuda during the summer. as far as my hiefers go (and we calve the cowherd the last of Feb thru mid april), I really don't worry so much about average daily gain on em. they are in a survival test around here. we have progressively cut the grain and cake outa them over the last 12 or so years to the point that the max they get these days while being developed is somewhere around 3-4 lbs of rolled grain sorghum and a couple of pounds of 37% cake and like last winter, all the old dry grass they want to graze and baled crp/2-3 year old sudan grass they want to eat. personally I don't caare if she wieghs 650 or 1050 as long as she can breed in a 45 day window starting the last of may. consequently I am looking for the ability to breed while living on little more than a set of rabbits tracks and a north wind their first winter off of momma. yes this is harsh and yes you will run a open rate somewhere around 30 or so the first couple years but it will level off at 5-10% once go down this path for 3-5 years. when we first started diong this we were still using a 60 breeding season on the heifers, but we decided that since we were getting to the point that we wre consistantly running under 5% opens after 5 or 6 years of diong this we went to a 45 day season on em to toughen it up some more on em. simply put if 90% of em can do it on a hellava lot less why do you want to propagate the 10% that you have to feed the whole bunch more to make breed. besides I let their steer mates in the feedyard tell me if they genetically have enough growth and then the feedbill is working for me instead of the other way around. oh and there ain't an EPD or genetically enhanced panel out there yet that will tell you which heifers will work and which ones won't once you start pulling the props out from underneath 'em. some of the gurus like to pontifercate, evangelize & proslytize that there is but............
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Post by fivestarherefords on Aug 19, 2014 21:27:42 GMT -6
We push our fall group a little harder as we like them to be carrying plenty of condition going into next winter when they will be required to raise there first calf and breed back on time while eating only haylage. We also have cut our breeding seasons back to 45 days and have been culling with no mercy.
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Post by moon on Aug 22, 2014 18:21:32 GMT -6
Gathered yearling data on our fall calves today including ultrasound. Heifers gained an average of 1.62 pounds per day while the bulls gained an average of 4.28 pounds. Both groups are on pasture and receiving 10 pounds per day of a 13% protein feed. I'm pretty happy but will withhold judgement until the ultrasound data comes back. 5STAR 57U CANNON A07 (P43429607) gained 4.90 pounds per day and weighed 1320 pounds. He'll turn 1 on September 5th. He will adjust to just over 1400 pounds at a year and will easily be the heaviest yearling bull we have raised. What do you guys consider optimal ADG especially on your replacement heifers? After reading your post, I am curious, when were your heifers weaned and what was avg. weaning weight??? Do you creep feed your calves while on cow??? Finally, what did the heifers weigh(average) on August 18, 2014??? I understand your reasoning regarding 10lbs. per head/day for heifers. However, in parts of Kansas and Nebraska cow-calf operations can get adequate gains close to what your seeing but on grass alone, possibly more. I do not creep, wean fall born heifers in May irregardless if born in Sept., Oct., or Nov., pre-vac prior to weaning, vac again about 2 weeks post weaning, transition the heifers with a 12% or 14% percent bagged feed, then once adequately weaned they are kicked out on fescue/native grass/bermuda pasture WITHOUT any grain whatsoever. They get free choice an ADM fescue mineral product with IGR as their only added benefit. They will usually weigh from 725 to 800lbs. by Nov. 1 when processing begins for breeding the latter part of November. Like Bookcliff ADG not an emphasis but reproduction/stayability is and that is why the heifers are under pressure to perform on grass alone. Lastly, are the bulls on a different type of grass than the heifers???, and does this explain the disparity in feed conversion between the heifers and the bulls???
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Post by Glenn on Aug 22, 2014 18:42:40 GMT -6
That spread on a similar diet is too wide.
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Post by fivestarherefords on Aug 22, 2014 19:38:27 GMT -6
The heifers were getting 5 pounds per day until late June and them I bumped them to 10. The bulls were on 10 pounds until late May and then I started pushing them to see how much they would eat. They have been around 15 pounds per day since. The heifers were strictly on pasture and the 5-10 pounds per day. The bulls are on limited pasture, grain and first cutting square bales. We creep feed the fall calves when we start feeding hay the last week of November through weaning. We creep the spring calves starting approximately 6 weeks prior to weaning. I'm going to attempt to upload some data so you guys can dive into it and tear them apart. 2013 Fall Ultrasound.pdf (950.84 KB) 2013 Fall Performance Data.pdf (954.15 KB)
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Post by strojanherefords on Aug 22, 2014 22:38:32 GMT -6
Based on the differences in our nutrition programs, the kind of cattle I am trying to breed will not work for you, and the cattle that you are breeding will not be ideal for my situation. But the beef industry needs people who breed both kinds of animals.
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Post by picketwire on Aug 25, 2014 15:20:49 GMT -6
Gathered yearling data on our fall calves today including ultrasound. Heifers gained an average of 1.62 pounds per day while the bulls gained an average of 4.28 pounds. Both groups are on pasture and receiving 10 pounds per day of a 13% protein feed. I'm pretty happy but will withhold judgement until the ultrasound data comes back. 5STAR 57U CANNON A07 (P43429607) gained 4.90 pounds per day and weighed 1320 pounds. He'll turn 1 on September 5th. He will adjust to just over 1400 pounds at a year and will easily be the heaviest yearling bull we have raised. What do you guys consider optimal ADG especially on your replacement heifers? Just a concern and maybe I missed a further explanation on here, but I would be concerned if I had females eating that much and only gaining 1.62 vs the bull counterparts gaining very impressively at 4.28. I most likely missed something somewhere that accounts for the much lower gain on the heifers.
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Post by fivestarherefords on Aug 25, 2014 17:15:12 GMT -6
Gathered yearling data on our fall calves today including ultrasound. Heifers gained an average of 1.62 pounds per day while the bulls gained an average of 4.28 pounds. Both groups are on pasture and receiving 10 pounds per day of a 13% protein feed. I'm pretty happy but will withhold judgement until the ultrasound data comes back. 5STAR 57U CANNON A07 (P43429607) gained 4.90 pounds per day and weighed 1320 pounds. He'll turn 1 on September 5th. He will adjust to just over 1400 pounds at a year and will easily be the heaviest yearling bull we have raised. What do you guys consider optimal ADG especially on your replacement heifers? Just a concern and maybe I missed a further explanation on here, but I would be concerned if I had females eating that much and only gaining 1.62 vs the bull counterparts gaining very impressively at 4.28. I most likely missed something somewhere that accounts for the much lower gain on the heifers. The heifers were getting 5 pounds per day until late June and them I bumped them to 10. The bulls were on 10 pounds until late May and then I started pushing them to see how much they would eat. They have been around 15 pounds per day since. The heifers were strictly on pasture and the 5-10 pounds per day. The bulls are on limited pasture, grain and first cutting square bales
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Post by picketwire on Aug 26, 2014 18:48:32 GMT -6
Thanks for the update and again excellent gain on the bulls. Unless the pasture was very poor where the heifers were I would be concerned they only gained that much. Other than that, that is most likely the optimum amount for them to gain to be in the right shape for breeding season and if you are happy with it, that is what matters most. I prefer to let the replacements here sort themselves by challenging them just enough with developing them similarly to what they will encounter the rest of their productive life around here. So far no excessive opens and no real wrecks breeding back after first calf so the selection protocol appears to be working as intended.
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