Our Freemartin Heifer...

[Buster]

That's great Farmer Kitty! For us it means added expense and an extra mouth to feed, especially because our focus is on selling breeding stock, so after that initial experience with a free martin heifer, we have opted not to keep the ones that followed.

Edited to add: We still raise the calf, but we sell it for beef instead of trying to see if it is a breeder.

 

[beefy]

freemartinism occurs in 90% of the heifers that are twin to a bull.

it is EXTREMELY unlikely that the calf was sired by the black angus bull and came out looking like that. more likely she was bred by one of her simmentalxangus brothers.

 

[thewarriorchild]

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simmentalxangus...man there are big words in this post! What does that mean??

 

[beefy]

simmental and angus are breeds of cattle.
siimmentalxangus means simmental-angus cross. (or SimAng)

 

[greyfields]

Upon furhter discussion with my neighbor, the 'Freemartin' is from a red angus cow mated to a simmental bull. His simentals are red/white with no black in them.

The sire of the calf was indeed a black angus. So, the white must have come through the dame's side.

Regardless, the heifer is made of beef, as will her offspring be. That's the best part of cows, the fact they are made of beef.

 

[Buster]

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And that's why they say: "It's what's for dinner."

 

[Farmer Kitty]

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You can have them vet checked at herd health to see if they are freemartins or not.

 

[Buster]

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You can have them vet checked at herd health to see if they are freemartins or not.

This is true. We did that for the first one. After that we decided that twinning is not a good gene for our herd because of complications we noted after cows had twins. We noticed that at times they cannot count to two and leave one calf alone to fend for itself. We also noticed that the cows that have twins tend to breed back later and later. May not be true for everyone, but at our place now it's a reason to cull.

 

[greyfields]

The vet test, though, is not 100% accurate. The blood test someone referenced, is.

I particularly liked this heifer, so I'm glad it turned out as it did. :0

 

[Farmer Kitty]

If you have them do a rectal exam they can tell you whether or not she has everything she needs internally. A true Freemartin won't have.