Weaning is time to focus time and management on ways to eliminate stress, maintain health and maximize the value of weaned calves, but also a critical time to manage the cow herd.
Early fall calving herds face a challenge from the high temperatures of late summer. The primary challenge is the impact those temperatures can have on newborn and young calves.
Regardless of when and how many calves you will wean, methods of reducing stress on fresh weaned calves is of great interest to cattlemen and of benefit to cow-calf operations.
In most spring calving herds, the breeding season begins in the spring or early summer. Maintaining a 60- to 90-day breeding season can be one of the most important management tools for cow-calf producers.
Selection decisions impact how much genetic improvement we can make. With this in mind, using available DNA testing technology can cost effectively accelerate reaching our breeding goals.
This week we discuss the EPDs to consider when selecting bulls that will be used as rotational sires. A rotational sire is a bull from which daughters will be retained to develop as replacements in our cowherd.
After considering traits most economically important to us in our own production and marketing system, bull selection is critical to maximize the genetic potential of future calf crops to perform in those traits.
