Flying H Genetics “Heifer Challenge”
Our theme, Money Makin Mamas, was chosen for a reason: we expect our cows to work for a living. Sure, they need to be managed and taken care of, but the more they work, the less I have to.
And it starts at weaning. How you develop your heifers can affect how they perform as a cow. For instance, standing in the pen and eating from a feeder verses grazing corn stalks or winter graze can influence their grazing behavior.
Several years ago, based on some initial research from the University of Nebraska, we changed our breeding weight targets and made our heifers rustle for their grub as much as Mother Nature allowed. We found that supplementing protein and energy for only 1 pound of gain per day and forcing the heifers to forage for the rest, even with snow on the ground, helped train them to graze and assured they were structurally sound, athletic and “easy fleshing” or adapted to their environment.
Now, when we do our prebreeding exams, take yearling weights, body condition scores, ultrasound and DNA test, we make another cull based on how they have performed under this challenging environment. The thin, rough haired, poor doing heifers are culled while the ones that did well are kept for breeding.
This heifer challenge has done three things: decreased our cost of production, identified and removed the heifers and their genetics that can’t handle our environment, and it improved the rebreeding of our first calf cows by eliminating the poor doers before breeding the first time.
After the prebreeding exam, we do increase the heifer’s level of nutrition for a 2-3 pound gain through AI—approximately 60 days—and then turn out to pasture.
This process has lowered our heifer pregnancy rate by an average of 4% but has increased the pregnancy rate of our first calf heifers by 5% or more—a profitable trade-off. We also save over $50 per head in feed costs, more than offsetting the lower pregnancy rate, and the cull heifers sell great and go to the feedlot where they belong.
We have learned that keeping more heifers as replacements, challenging them to fit the environment, and culling the ones that don’t has improved the genetics and profitability of our cowherd.
