any cattle people out there!!!

[Godsgrl]

Many years ago, I went to an animal park thing. It was a drive-through safari type thing. The goats were terrible, butting our car like crazy. But the longhorn cattle were very docile. Even if one had an itch, he was very careful not to bump the car. I appreciated their respect for us.

 

[learycow]

I posted pics of my Normande/ Holstein crosses earlier in the year. Here are the 2 bulls, they are now 5 months old!
I just thought I'd share so you guys can see how much they've grown

I've been working them in the yolk so they can eventually be working steers.

 

[Amy Farah Fowler]

Quote:
I don't think heatseeker or his calves are known to be calving ease. In fact, I think they are known for having rather large calves. I would breed her to a bull with a low birth weight himself as well as proven to throw small calves. You do not want her to have a large calf her first time around. It can ruin her. AI is usually a better option IMO for first calf heifers because you can select a bull with a good track record as well as not have the stress of possibility of a large bull injuring the smaller heifer when he mounts her. I would wait until she is 15 months old to breed her. She will calve around her 2nd birthday which is what you want. If you breed them too young you risk stunting them. Two months can make a huge difference in a heifer's development. You can CIDR her or talk to your vet about getting a lutalyse shot to bring her into heat when you are ready to have her bred. Like I said, I would get with something experienced in AIing and have them help you bring her into heat because they will know how to do it most efficiently and at the right time to make the chances of the heifer getting pregnant the greatest.

If you do decide to breed her naturally (again, making sure the bull is proven calving ease), then no, there is not much chance the bull would not breed her if she is in standing heat. A good healthy bull's mission in life is to get cows and heifers bred. Any cow or heifer.

Thanks. My FFA Adviser went to vet school and know how to do it and has done it several times. i think im gonna bite the bullet and try it. by the looks of her shell be a pretty good sized cow so i will worry but not too much about calving ease. do you thin k darn Proud out of jakes proud jazz would be high enough calving ease? its not negative anyway, other wise gus maybe.

Roo... just found this thread tonight and I've read your posts about your heifer. I've been raising show cattle for LOTS of years and I hope you don't mind me chiming in on this. First off, your heifer is nice, but she looks to me like she's really small. You don't say how old she is, but usually calves that are weaned and ready to show are quite a bit further along than she is. How old is she? Do you know how much she weighs? How much and what do you feed her? Please don't be in a hurry to breed her. You should definately NOT breed her to calve before she's 2 yo. Yes there are alot of show cattle people that will do that so their heifers will have lots of volume at the show, but it's NOT good for your heifer. I would let our heifers calve at 2 IF they were going to be on feed while pg and after they calved. Otherwise I don't calve them out until they're 2 1/2. Gives them a chance to grow and mature. You'll have a better cow in the long run if you wait. Now comes another concern. Genetic defects. You need to do your homework on this one. Shorthorns can carry several genetic defects and they are quite common in club calves as well. Make sure you know your heifers status AND make sure you know what the bull you breed to might be carrying. If you have a heifer that carries a genetic defect and you breed her to a bull that carries the same, you're asking for a trainwreck. Please, do your homework!

Make sure your heifer is ready to be breed (age, size, condition)
Know her genetic status.
Choose a PROVEN LOW BIRTHWEIGHT bull! It's highly unlikely you're going to get a show calf your first calf, so make a live healthy calf and momma your top priority! You'll be glad you did! Make sure you stay away from "carrier" bulls. (bulls that carry genetic defects) No sense in getting them started in your herd. And yes, some of the bulls that you've mentioned and that there's pics of on here ARE carriers. Here's good website for finding out info steerplanet.com Then find out about THA and PHA... look at the pics and read the stories. You don't want to deal with that stuff until you know how to breed around it, IF you decide to use those genetics at all.
And lastly... if you're going to invest your time and money into AI'ing her. Take her to someone that's done LOTS of it. Your chances of getting your heifer settled will increase bunches if you use someone with lots of experience at heat detection and AI'ing. It takes someone that knows what they are doing or they can miss the proper time to breed or even worse, could injure your heifer if they don't really know how to breed her correctly.

Good luck!

 

[LotsaChicken]

This is my Jersey that I bred in August. I haven't seen any signs of heat since. I plan to palpate next month, but I think I see some changes already. These pics were taken today. Does she looked settled to anyone else?

 

[jbourget]

this was them when i got them, little babies just weaned at 3 months old. now growing fairly well but thier horns are still small. i look forawrd to showing them with my jacob sheep!

 

[Cowgirl71]

Quote:
Much too early to be able to tell just from looking at her body shape.

But if you're pretty familiar with how she acts when she's in heat, and you haven't seen this behavior since you A.I.ed her, then chances are she's pregnant. She's a pretty girl, I love Jerseys!

I did get that bred Jersey heifer I mentioned earlier! I gotta take some pics of her to show y'all, but I haven't yet... But the training has been going well. I gave her a week to settle in with her new herd-mates before messing with her at all. I started breaking her in Sunday morning, and have worked with her every morning since for about 20 minutes each time. She was pretty wild the first couple times, pacing, thinking about jumping the tall wood fence, going on her knees trying to get under the gate, and didn't want anything to do with me, but she's calmed down since. This morning I was able to pet her a lot all over (shoulder, belly, along the spine, and rump), with her only flinching a couple times while she was eating her grain in the milking stanchion (not locked in). Tomorrow I'll try petting her on her udder.

 

[Cowgirl71]

Quote:
Are those Great Pyrenees in your avatar?

Our first milk cow was very wild too. We got her from the sale barn. She was a very cheap awfully skinny crazy old Holstein cross nurse cow that had never been hand-milked, far as we could tell. She would charge people, kick a lot, and by the end of two weeks of milking her twice a day we almost took her back to the sale barn. But luckily we didn't. My Dad was milking her, and he had to milk her standing up with a large plastic coffee mug, because if you sat down she'd kick ya, and if you put a bucket under her she'd kick it too. After a month of doing this twice a day, my Dad was singing hallelujah when she was finally docile enough to let him sit on a bucket while he milked her, cause it was killing his back. Eventually she let him milk directly into a bucket too. A few months later, she was docile enough for my little brother to take over milking her. A couple years later she was the sweetest old cow. Nothing bothered her, you could ride her, put hats on her, and whenever city slickers wanted to milk a cow we'd let them milk dear old Buttercup, since we could trust her better than any of our other milk cows not to do anything stupid.

 

[roocrazy]

Quote:
Thanks. My FFA Adviser went to vet school and know how to do it and has done it several times. i think im gonna bite the bullet and try it. by the looks of her shell be a pretty good sized cow so i will worry but not too much about calving ease. do you thin k darn Proud out of jakes proud jazz would be high enough calving ease? its not negative anyway, other wise gus maybe.

Roo... just found this thread tonight and I've read your posts about your heifer. I've been raising show cattle for LOTS of years and I hope you don't mind me chiming in on this. First off, your heifer is nice, but she looks to me like she's really small. You don't say how old she is, but usually calves that are weaned and ready to show are quite a bit further along than she is. How old is she? Do you know how much she weighs? How much and what do you feed her? Please don't be in a hurry to breed her. You should definately NOT breed her to calve before she's 2 yo. Yes there are alot of show cattle people that will do that so their heifers will have lots of volume at the show, but it's NOT good for your heifer. I would let our heifers calve at 2 IF they were going to be on feed while pg and after they calved. Otherwise I don't calve them out until they're 2 1/2. Gives them a chance to grow and mature. You'll have a better cow in the long run if you wait. Now comes another concern. Genetic defects. You need to do your homework on this one. Shorthorns can carry several genetic defects and they are quite common in club calves as well. Make sure you know your heifers status AND make sure you know what the bull you breed to might be carrying. If you have a heifer that carries a genetic defect and you breed her to a bull that carries the same, you're asking for a trainwreck. Please, do your homework!

Make sure your heifer is ready to be breed (age, size, condition)
Know her genetic status.
Choose a PROVEN LOW BIRTHWEIGHT bull! It's highly unlikely you're going to get a show calf your first calf, so make a live healthy calf and momma your top priority! You'll be glad you did! Make sure you stay away from "carrier" bulls. (bulls that carry genetic defects) No sense in getting them started in your herd. And yes, some of the bulls that you've mentioned and that there's pics of on here ARE carriers. Here's good website for finding out info steerplanet.com Then find out about THA and PHA... look at the pics and read the stories. You don't want to deal with that stuff until you know how to breed around it, IF you decide to use those genetics at all.
And lastly... if you're going to invest your time and money into AI'ing her. Take her to someone that's done LOTS of it. Your chances of getting your heifer settled will increase bunches if you use someone with lots of experience at heat detection and AI'ing. It takes someone that knows what they are doing or they can miss the proper time to breed or even worse, could injure your heifer if they don't really know how to breed her correctly.

Good luck!

thank you for this!!im not sure when but i do know she was weaned a little early she was born in march the 23 to be exact. i believe shes around 5-600 lbs right now. so she is 7 months. what i feed her? right now she is with a steer stuffer full of concentrate. i hope this was good info.

 

[LotsaChicken]

Quote:
Much too early to be able to tell just from looking at her body shape.

But if you're pretty familiar with how she acts when she's in heat, and you haven't seen this behavior since you A.I.ed her, then chances are she's pregnant. She's a pretty girl, I love Jerseys!

I did get that bred Jersey heifer I mentioned earlier! I gotta take some pics of her to show y'all, but I haven't yet... But the training has been going well. I gave her a week to settle in with her new herd-mates before messing with her at all. I started breaking her in Sunday morning, and have worked with her every morning since for about 20 minutes each time. She was pretty wild the first couple times, pacing, thinking about jumping the tall wood fence, going on her knees trying to get under the gate, and didn't want anything to do with me, but she's calmed down since. This morning I was able to pet her a lot all over (shoulder, belly, along the spine, and rump), with her only flinching a couple times while she was eating her grain in the milking stanchion (not locked in). Tomorrow I'll try petting her on her udder.

Oh, I know it really is too early to tell by looking, but she does look a little unevenly shaped. We just noticed this the past week, or so. We're preg checking her in the next couple of weeks. I feel sure she is bred. We didn't AI, we put a bull with her and they bred right away and several more times throughout the day and into the night. The bull stayed with us for the whole week. She always had definite heat signs and we haven't seen any since. It's still nerve wracking until you know for sure though!

 

[LotsaChicken]

Quote:
Are those Great Pyrenees in your avatar?

Our first milk cow was very wild too. We got her from the sale barn. She was a very cheap awfully skinny crazy old Holstein cross nurse cow that had never been hand-milked, far as we could tell. She would charge people, kick a lot, and by the end of two weeks of milking her twice a day we almost took her back to the sale barn. But luckily we didn't. My Dad was milking her, and he had to milk her standing up with a large plastic coffee mug, because if you sat down she'd kick ya, and if you put a bucket under her she'd kick it too. After a month of doing this twice a day, my Dad was singing hallelujah when she was finally docile enough to let him sit on a bucket while he milked her, cause it was killing his back. Eventually she let him milk directly into a bucket too. A few months later, she was docile enough for my little brother to take over milking her. A couple years later she was the sweetest old cow. Nothing bothered her, you could ride her, put hats on her, and whenever city slickers wanted to milk a cow we'd let them milk dear old Buttercup, since we could trust her better than any of our other milk cows not to do anything stupid.

Yep, those are my Pyrs, Duke and Daisy. I rescued them from a shelter as adults and we just love them. They do a great job around here and are really good company for all of us, animal and human alike!