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"Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."

~Hebrews 12: 1-2

Friday, October 18, 2013

Looking Back - A Summary of Percent of the Herd Bred

Wow!  It has been a month since I posted anything.  Time seems to have sped up as of late.  We had our final pregnancy checks on the heifers in mid-September and on the cows at the beginning of October.  I have a lot of information that I am hoping to share so long as I am able to find time to sit down long enough to share it!

Overall:  Our cows bred much better this year than last.  Actually, to look at the numbers, this was our best year since we started dairying at this farm, which is a hopeful sign.

Here is a table which summarizes our information.


The cows that freshen in February (with the exception of 2010) are actually cows that are bred for March, but calve a little early.

Our May calvers are an unpredictable group as in one year we kept all of the May calvers, another year we kept the ones that were due in the first two weeks of May, and so on... This year we only kept the cows that are due in the first week of May in 2014.

-The low percentage of cows that bred back in 2012 is discussed here.

As for the calves-

-in 2011 we had one calf that I did not remove from the pen that she was born in right away and I let her drink off of her mother.  She was in the pen for about 24 hours when I removed her.  She died two days later.  The vet said it was likely from poor colostrum quality and an overload of environmental toxins.

-in 2012 we took our heifers to my husband's father's farm due to a virus that the calves were contracting from the cows.  I was not the one raising them this year, much to my dismay.  One died from scours at about a week old and one died from bloat at two months old.

-In 2011, we raised 41 heifers and only had 34 calve in this year.  1 died (as discussed above) as a calf.  2 of our heifers left right before they calved (one involved laying on a hill with her back pointed down in trying to calve--that was discouraging, and the second tried to calve, but whether it was due to a twisted uterus or just her inability to deliver the calf, her body mummified it so we sold her instead of trying to milk her.  We had poor breeding all around in 2012.  We are not sure if it was due mainly to the weather or the bulls (we personally prefer to blame the bulls :) ) but we sold four heifers due to the fact that they were open after breeding season.

-We raised 43 heifers in 2012 and we only have 36 first lactation animals entering the herd next year.  Two died as calves, two were open at the vet check and were sold for beef and three were killed in a freak accident at the farm where we take our heifers to be custom raised.

I am heartened by the percent of cows that bred back.  We would definitely love to see that number improve, but I am encouraged that this is the highest percent since we began farming on our own.  Bit by bit we will try to improve.  This year we added a product called Thermal Care by ADM to the cows' ration.  We do not know if that helped improve breeding or not.  We didn't really see a drastic difference in the cows like we were hoping, but we did notice a reduced amount of visual heat stress on the cows (the number of cows panting, and the number of cows with tongues hanging out).  I am not sure if that is enough for us to justify the cost, however.

These numbers only reflect my husband's and my herd.  They are not the whole--as we also milk my father-in-law's cows at our farm as well.

Ok, I am off to bed, but I have LOADS more to share!  I still need to post our cows that are for sale.

I would encourage you all to pray for our nation's leaders.  There is much corruption in the government and I am disheartened by it, but God is still in control.  Not only that, He commanded us to pray for our leaders.  Blessings to each of you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

3 comments:

  1. I didn't realize you had a blog until my cursor happened over your name, and a link showed up. Boy, am I glad I clicked on it! There is something very interesting about the name of your dairy, and I really don't want to post it online because, who knows, someone might use the name (I didn't come up with it, my aunt did, and she isn't even a farmer (never has been).

    Anyhow, I hope that you read these comments. I had replied to your question on the crossbred blog, but I don't know if you saw it. I'm going to have to check back here on occasion. I also want to comment that my herd had problems with breeding last year as well--mostly heifers, with hardly any two-year-olds calving this year. There were a couple of cows that got bred a little late, but I was thinking that it was my bull having issues (yes, he did have a problem, but managed to work around it).

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    1. I think I saw your reply on the xbred blog. I will have to go back and check. We fertility tested our bulls this year after our horrible breeding debacle last year. I am glad we did. We actually ended up getting rid of one of the bulls do to mediocre fertility prior to breeding season.

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    2. I didn't have my bull fertility tested (thought about it), but that wasn't the problem with him. His had to do with his equipment. I told my vet what I was observing, and he told me what it was. After a while, the bull didn't seem to care, and I don't know if he was in pain or not because he didn't act like he was.

      I think a lot of breeding problems around here had to do with the heat, and drought we had last year. I notice trends with heifers especially. There will be years that all will calve as two-year-olds, and sometimes the majority of them won't calve until they are three.

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