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Missouri | Typical and Good replies. Offer that the books say 90% calving percent is pretty good. Figure the manager gets paid to get above that number. This will all be factored by everything from weather to labor availability. This is a numbers game and it actually takes more than one year to make it work, because over time stuff will happen. This has been a hard long winter that has tested everything. Experience here is that mud and wet cold weather really pulls on them, thus aggravating loss and workload of the managers. Most losses discussed are typical junkie stuff, better add in two breach births here, one front with both legs back and one rear breach, tail only in the same weekend, two farms 10 miles apart. That gives one an excuse to drink. Many do not understand we actually make life and death decisions in this business, only to see the results of that decision shortly. Death loss while never get use to it is part of the business. Only person that will not loose any is the person that does not have any. Then if you have not had problems just get more numbers. Found a dead calf in snow storm 30 days ago from unidentified heifer, you would think out of a pen of only 20 we could tell who's it was. Figured it was #46 penned her off but watched her, she calved this weekend,in a barn 30 days latter, calf was weak and stupid. It is possible she still is responsible for both fatalities. She will be hamburger either way. There are times we try to hard and cause our own problems. Remember only one dry year we had over 100 babies and zero death loss, told all that would never happen again. Most years the first calf is a fatality. One thing I regret in ranching is not keeping track of how many calves have been responsible for over the years, wish I had that number. 4-5000 head. We do keep a notebook of the fatalities but do our best to forget them. Standard answer when people ask about how many calves we lost is and has been for years to many. Death loss went down when we could say every cow we calved came from a cow we bred, see the day coming when we can say every cow we calf is one we raised. That all affects death loss over purchased animals. | |
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% OF CALF LOSS EXPECTED
