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Tag: Weaning

Weaning. It’s one of the most critical times in an animal’s life. A time when any little thing going wrong (or right) could have a lifelong impact on performance. This week, we’ll share some of our top tips for making the best of the situation in our three-part series covering general management (today), health (tomorrow) and nutrition (Friday).

Life is good, and with good planning it will stay that way through weaning.

 

There comes a time when every calf’s world has to get turned upside down — weaning time. But with the right strategies, stress can be minimized and performance maximized. A few things to keep in mind:

Have a plan.

Put a game plan together ahead of time that includes labor and facilities needs. Fenceline weaning on grass or in a drylot are options. Many operations find success in familiarizing calves with the weaning area and then removing cows to a remote distance.

Exposing calves to their new feedstuffs, water source and environment ahead of time makes the transition easier.

Practice makes perfect.

It’s also important to give calves the opportunity to adjust to the sights and sounds of weaning before the big day arrives. That means if you’re going to use horses or vehicles on weaning day, that shouldn’t be the first time a calf sees and hears them.

Time it right.

Indicators like the cow’s condition, range quality and general calf health can help you decide on the best time to wean. To give calves the greatest chance for success, cows should be healthy and providing adequate milk at weaning. Drought, stocking rates and end-product quality are all reasons to look into early weaning.

Hungry for more? Join us tomorrow for tips on weaning health and Friday when we cover weaning nutrition.

Hey Seekers,

Is it ever the wrong time to think about weaning calves? I don’t think so–it’s always on my mind. Better to have plans for them before they are born than look at their growth-spurt at five months and consider alternatives. The drought may have eased in a few places, but for many thousands of producers, the fact or at least uncertainty remains. All the more reason to figure out weaning now.

These guys will beat average performance and grade, but they were not weaned at home.

We have seen data for decades that says calves weaned “on the highway” have a great disadvantage in performance and grade. MOST of those calves end up costing the next owners thousands of dollars and disappointing consumers. But we recently found an exception: if they are headed for a caretaker that specializes in such truckloads of bawling calves.

When a recent analysis of the Tri-County Steer Carcass Futurity data showed virtually no link between days weaned and subsequent performance, we noted that was because enrollment requirements specify weaning. Turning next to the CAB Feedlot Licensing Program (FLP) database of more than 2 million records, we found something counterintuitive. Of course, most calves in that database were also noted as weaned, but it seemed strange at first to see those “unweaned” had better performance and grade!

Many cow-calf guys worried about not having enough grass to get through the year paid attention to Jill Dunkel’s April story in Angus Journal, When ‘Unweaned’ is OK.  If you are going to wean on the truck, send them to the perfect new home where you made reservations, that has the lights on and a welcome mat out for them.  

That’s not to say this is a better plan than a structured weaning and 45-day preconditioning program at home, but a few producers wean without following all the best management practices and their calves don’t shine at the feedlot or in the packing plant. This is a great time to review your plans and make sure they will help build your reputation for quality. It’s also a time to realize that you can make contact with feedlots about careful coordination to receive your unweaned calves in a partnership pen, thus opening a marketing door you may not have considered.

As we all look forward to weaning, whenever and however, let’s make sure there’s a plan that adds quality and value, that helps us build tomorrow together.

–Steve

Crucible for quality

The Taylors win CAB honors

by Steve Suther

September 22, 2011

In this decade, Jimmy and Tracy Taylor’s data-driven herd south of Cheyenne, Okla., expanded to its practical capacity of 600 Angus cows on 12,000 acres in 38 pastures. Last year, 315 steers and heifers hit the mark with 58.4% Certified Angus Beef ® brand (CAB®) and CAB Prime.

But months went by without rain while the sun baked the withered roots on the plateau bordering Black Kettle National Grasslands west of Elk City, where the Taylors live.

Heavily supplemented and strategically culled, the top 95% of their spring cows weaned creep-fed calves a month early as the smaller fall herd began making the best of a bad situation.

For all the challenges, the Taylors love it. Having to feed cows on summer grass each day? Great opportunity to check on water, health and head counts while calves get used to a grain ration.

Pastures cut up by old gas-well access roads? Great infrastructure for ranch access. Drought of the century? Brings individual cow evaluation to the forefront as the profit makers get even better.

Silver linings abound, even without a cloud in the sky.

Recipients of the 2011 Commercial Commitment to Excellence Award at the CAB Annual Conference in Sunriver, Ore., Sept. 20-22, they make the best of just about anything. Tracy puts her husband in the starring role, but Jimmy says he couldn’t do it without her support.

Dale Moore, Cattleman’s Choice Feedyard, Gage, Okla., nominated his customers for three consecutive years. “They base their program on the CAB and Prime goal, and have made some of the most dramatic and positive changes among all of our customers,” he says.

The ranch was started in 1914 by Jimmy’s great-grandfather, but his father, Jim, was the first to actually manage the place, beginning in 1953. He pioneered intensive rotational grazing with long resting periods for the land.

Hereford cattle were the mainstay, later crossed with Simmentals when Jimmy formed a father-son partnership in 1980. Newlyweds then, the young Taylors learned every rock, ridge and creek before buying sole interest in 1993.

“Our goal was simply to sell the most pounds of beef at weaning,” Jimmy says. “Over time, we began to see there is more security for our ranch and for the whole industry if we reoriented to give the consumer a better eating experience. We changed with the incorporation of registered Angus bulls to a goal of producing the best steak we can possibly make.”

Those first Angus-cross calves arrived in 2006.

As low-stress handling, a rising plane of nutrition through weaning, selection indexes and artificial insemination (AI) became the rule, the www.cabcattle.com website became a favorite.

That’s how they found Moore and began retaining ownership. “I found out real quick that our goals were very similar,” Jimmy says. “We’ve been with him ever since.”

They’ve used the AngusSource® program for genetic and source verification since 2007 and won the regional AngusSource Carcass Challenge with those calves the next year.

Because of the data they have on each animal, purchased females no longer enter the herd.

Information from Cattleman’s Choice and CAB, combined with Jimmy’s observations and ultrasound scans for intramuscular fat (% IMF) are all organized in Tracy’s spreadsheet.

Her report on the 18 herd bulls starts with year purchased, tag number, registered name, maternal and carcass EPDs (expected progeny differences), ultrasound data and $ Values. The cow report/field-data sheet lists cows in ranch-tag order with source, calf tag, Bangs number, sire, progeny carcass history, % IMF since ’08, due date, calved date, location, calf tag, sex, sire, pasture bull and turn-in date, plus a few comments columns.

“Over the years we sit down together and keep adapting the program, tweak it until it gives us exactly what he wants to see,” Tracy says.

Small pastures let Jimmy match certain cows with the bulls that best complete their genetics.

“We look at them one at a time,” Jimmy says. “We’re just now getting to the point where data factors in enough to eliminate those weaker in carcass value.” They can sort by sire groups, too, and consider sire effect on progeny from each cow.

“Jimmy calls off a number and I read out to him what she has done,” Tracy says. “It’s kind of tedious, but he’s building up a good herd this way. Good genetics that we know we want to keep. That’s why he’s supplementing instead of selling.” Winter pasture was secured in Nebraska as well.

Creep feeding was an innovation last year, a necessity in 2011. For weaning, the herds come into corrals adjacent to the trap rotation for what seems like just another supplement session, but the calves get shots to booster the May round of vaccines and cows go back out to the rotation.

“We watch the calves for four or five days and then they are turned out on the traps, too,” Jimmy says. “It has worked well for us.”

Part-time help fills in for big jobs like working calves, weaning and AI, but otherwise, the Taylors run a “ma and pa” ranch, where they’re in it together. Just another way they show that commitment.

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Why weaning matters

June 13, 2011

A couple weeks ago, I shared a parenting challenge hoping it would spur you to think about weaning plans. You might think, “Why does CAB care about weaning?”

Well, the animal scientists on our team say weaning is a pivotal point. They pore over tons of research each year (as a matter fact, I think they like abstracts as much as I like Diet Coke and chocolate, which is A LOT, but I digress…). They have found some distinct evidence that blows this myth right out of the water:

Myth— Weaning is weaning. It doesn’t really matter how it’s done or when.

Fact—It seems just about everything about weaning matters to everything from health to final performance and grade. I really learned that two years ago when I did a series on early weaning.

The general consensus is that practice will improve marbling and cow condition, and then there are the benefits like added forage. Of course there are logistics and costs associated with feeding a calf, too. But experts say if you retain ownership you should at least consider the economics of it.

I chatted with Dan Faulkner from the University of Illinois for that story and he said, “We need to get less locked into 205 days and look at low-cost systems to produce quality beef. Every set of resources is unique; there is no one size fits all.”   Continue reading “Why weaning matters”

fed cattle under shade

It’s your job

May 5, 2011

We spend a lot of time trying to prove the value of ranch practices that add more work. We’ll look for studies that show, in dollar amounts, why a cow-calf producer should precondition or wean cattle (on the truck doesn’t count).

It usually comes back to the best way to recoup that investment in full is to retain ownership. One time I was interviewing a producer and I asked why he added the labor if he was just going to sell at the salebarn. He said, “It’s the job of the cow-calf producer to prepare those animals for the next stage of production. Even if they’re not getting paid for that, they should be looking down the road.”

Well, I don’t know any cattlemen or women who like to be accused of not giving it their all, of doing a bad job.

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I’ll start this post by getting one thing clear: I am NOT a morning person. I never have been. My family knows this better than anyone, which is why it shocked me so much to receive a 6 a.m. phone call from my father the other day.

Some of the first calves on the ground at Nelson Farms — yes, that is a second tail behind the little guy. Calving season kicked off with healthy twins and just got better with some outstanding heifers, thanks to solid handling practices early in their lives.

He called just to chat – it was 4 a.m. back in Nebraska, and he was out checking heifers. He bought this set of first-calf heifers in the fall, and had been pleasantly surprised with them so far. Things were going so well, in fact, that rather than having to assist any of their calving efforts, he had time to call his youngest daughter to chat oh-so-early in the morning.

“They’re calm, gentle, easy to work with – they just handle well. They take good care of their babies and are all nursing just fine. These ol’ girls are going to make some great cows. Someone really did some fine work with them before they arrived at our place,” he told me.

I got to the office later that morning, still pondering that group of heifers. What had gone so right at the ranch before ours to create such a peaceful condition back home? Continue reading “Start early to make calving season a breeze, Part I”

Idaho ranch

Mythbuster Monday: When is marbling made?

January 31, 2011

Welcome to Miranda’s Mythbuster Monday! Today I’m going to tackle a myth that’s steeped in tradition. Usually I’m all about traditions, like playing board games at Christmas and getting to pick my own birthday dessert. But whether it’s tradition or just old data, this myth still persists. Time to toss out traditional thinking and investigate research from the new millennium.

 Myth: All the grade in cattle is made the last 100 days on feed, so nothing I do on the ranch makes a difference.

Don’t tell that to Jim & Maureen Skavdahl, Marsland, Neb., who I visited with a few years ago.

The couple has been ranching in the Nebraska panhandle for decades, but it wasn’t until they started feeding cattle that they placed an emphasis on performance and carcass traits in tandem. Continue reading “Mythbuster Monday: When is marbling made?”

Symposium covers marbling from all angles

 

by Miranda Reiman

Marbling can be fickle. Everything, from genetics to growth technologies and production systems, affects the way and how much intramuscular fat cattle will express.

This summer an American Society of Animal Science (ASAS) symposium focused on getting the most meat quality with maximum efficiency.

Daryl Tatum, Colorado State University (CSU), began by citing advantages and disadvantages of implants and beta-agonists.

“Growth technologies are among the most effective management tools available to beef producers for adding value to cattle,” he said. According to Iowa State University, implanting feedlot cattle can add $71 per head; ionophores, beta-agonists and animal health products can increase that figure another $84.

“That boost in value doesn’t always come without a cost,” Tatum said, noting beef quality often slips with the misuse of many such products.

Tatum shared a meta-analysis of 25 steer implant studies (see Table 1) that showed a single mild dose increased hot carcass weight (HCW) 23.6 pounds (lb.), but dropped marbling score 28 points. Moderate implants added an additional 18.7 lb., while decreasing marbling just another 4 points to a total reduction of 32 points. For another pound of gain, aggressive implants knock marbling scores back 35 points.

“It appears moderate implants are the best choice for balancing growth and carcass quality grade,” he said.

In heifers, giving TBA alone seems to make the most sense. A recent CSU study showed that, compared with estrogen + TBA, use of single-ingredient TBA implants in heifers fed MGA resulted in similar carcass weights, but significantly higher percentages of heifers grading Choice and Prime (62% vs. 50%) and qualifying for the Certified Angus Beef ® (CAB®) brand (29% vs. 13%).

Quality compromises associated with misuse of growth technologies should be of concern to the industry, Tatum explained: “Great taste remains the primary reason consumers often make beef their food of choice for a pleasurable dining experience. The goal is to take advantage of the benefits of growth enhancement without detriment to beef demand.”

The flavor driver, marbling, interacts with growth at the cellular level, according to Bradley Johnson, Texas Tech University.

Implants alter the expression of adipogenic genes, the precursors to marbling. Research looked at the relative abundance of genetic markers when cattle were given estradiol (E2), TBA or TBA-plus-E2 implants.

“A combined TBA/E2 implant significantly reduced expression of key genes important in marbling development the first 28 days following implantation,” Johnson said.

Stepping outside the animal, Ivan Rush, University of Nebraska, discussed a system that could produce higher quality and greater efficiencies without a change in technologies.

“Input costs like corn, time and labor, along with the Choice/Select spread, determine which is the best route,” he said, “but early weaning seems to increase quality, especially in the Premium Choice arena.”

Rush evaluated several studies comparing early-weaned to conventional calves and yearling systems. In general, early weaning:

  • Improves reproduction rates
  • Increases profit per calf (more than $100/calf in an Oklahoma study)
  • Consistently improves quality grade
  • Improves feed efficiency when compared to yearling systems
  • Has little effect on carcass weight
  • Improves cow body condition significantly

Mark Enns, CSU, talked about selection for marbling. Since it is highly heritable, at .4, producers can make significant progress.

“How much do you have to change your average marbling score in cattle to go from producing 60% to 80% Choice and higher? he asked.

A 20-point increase in marbling score raised grading percentage by 10% or more. He shared a chart showing the changes from 50% to 90% Choice and higher (see Table 2). The amount of genetic change (measured in genetic standard deviations) required to jump from 50% to 60% is much smaller (.38) than going from 50% to 90% (1.91).  Their model shows a change of 1.91 genetic standard deviations moves the mean marbling score one full USDA quality grade.

Making that improvement means more dollars on the bottom line.

“There is value in increased marbling,” Enns said. “The calculations show that as you turn the herd over, you’re making about $218 more per replacement back into your herd.”

Even though it’s demanding—the right conditions, nutrition and genetics are required to boost marbling—it builds demand for beef. The scientists agreed marbling is worth the focus for individual economics and greater sustainability for the industry.

Weaning with a plan

 

by Miranda Reiman

Children starting school are a lot like calves getting weaned. Each individual is different. For some, the experience is more stressful than for others, but careful preparation by their caretakers can help make the whole experience much more productive.

“Producers need to plan way ahead of the time period when they will start weaning, while also paying attention to their calves throughout the production system,” says Max Irsik, Extension veterinarian at the University of Florida. Watching indicators like the cow condition, range quality and general calf health can help producers decide on the best time to wean.

“At birth it is important that calves have a good mother. The cows need to be healthy, maternal, in good body condition, provide high quality colostrum, and then adequate milk during the suckling period,” he says.

“Prior to separation, calves should be immunized a minimum of one time, preferably two for the clostridial and respiratory diseases, de-horned, de-wormed, castrated and individually identified,” Irsik says. Producers should also get them used to different sights and sounds.

“Being out with the cows, looking at the calves, getting the cows and calves used to being around people, traffic and folks on horseback – all of those things can have an effect later on, helping to reduce stress for both the cow and calf ,” he says.

Once cattlemen have established a target date or time, they need to put a “game plan” in place, says Jeff Heldt, nutritionist for Land O’ Lakes Purina Feed.

“That includes the people – who is going to do what – and the facilities,” he says. Knowing who is going to feed, walk pens and track data is a key.

“Then they need to start thinking about what nutritional package they need to put together,” Heldt says.

Ahead of time, that program should include highly available trace minerals and vitamins, he says. “That gets the immune system primed before the stressful event.”

Getting calves used to eating out of a bunk will increase success, too.

“Depending upon the production system at the ranch, it is helpful to expose calves prior to weaning to automatic watering systems, eating out of a bunk and having access to a highly palatable ration,” Irsik says.

Some producers put out a silage mixture; others offer good-quality, free-choice hay to get them accustomed to a new feed source. Heldt says that probably depends on what the weaning ration will be and the ranch resources.

“It’s got to be highly palatable to drive intake,” he says, “and pretty nutrient dense, because those intakes the first week or 10 days could be very, very low. There also needs to be a balance between highly fermentable energy and roughage, to avoid any digestive upsets or acidosis instances.”

Straight alfalfa, for example, could cause bloat, but mixing that with grass hay might curb the problem.

Heldt says they look for calves to eventually eat 3% to 3.5% of their body weight. Purina sells complete pelleted feeds if roughage is available or texturized feed with roughage built in, to help get calves started and up to that intake target.

“Whatever you use, the main goal is to maintain a performance level of 2.5 pound (lb.) to 3 lb. average daily gain,” he says. “That way the cattle don’t get pushed too hard, but maintain a health and performance status so the feedyard can be successful after that.”

Keeping cattle on the same plane of nutrition between weaning and sending to a feedyard will help preserve beef quality-grade potential later on.

“Looking at it from a feedyard standpoint, that time period is probably as critical as any,” Heldt says, noting that implant strategies are ideally coordinated with the next person down the line.

Irsik points out that a good weaning program probably benefits cow-calf producers more if they’re retaining ownership, but he says it’s the responsible thing to do regardless.

“Even if they feel that they are not getting paid for it, it’s the job of the cow-calf producer to prepare those animals for the next stage of production,” he says.

School teachers appreciate students who come to class with the right supplies and attitude. It makes sense that feeders would want healthy calves that are ready to eat and fit seamlessly into their operations.