South Central Kansas, Harper County | Noticed this year, seems like we have had a higher number of open cows in our herd. We have spring and fall calvers. Approximately 100 cows total, had the bulls semen tested last year, and all came out in good shape. Seems like we always have a few open cows, and it used to be mainly the older, poorer doing cows in the herd. The past couple of years, I have noticed a few of the younger cows coming up open.
Last winter, there was a higher amount of the fall calvers that were open, and they were some younger cows. They were kind of short on good forage last year, and in poor condition coming out of winter, so this year I thought I would make very sure the problem was not nutrition related. I planted a cover crop late last summer, with a mixture of oats, sudan, radishes, and some other brassicas. Cattle had very good forage off of this field until about late January, then I moved them over to some wheat pasture. Two bulls ran with about 25 head since December. Cows come off the wheat pasture in excellent condition and their fall calves were equally in good shape.
Moved them to some summer pastures last week, after running them through the chute at the Vets. Had 5 open cows out of 25, and two of the open cows were in the 6-7 year old range. Cows and bulls had vibrio/lepto shot last spring, as well as worming, and like I mentioned before, bulls were semen tested last spring, and were fine.
I asked the vet about the open cows(I had noticed more open cows than I like in our spring calving herd, also). (Lady Vet), She said it sure wasnt the condition, as the fall calvers were in very good condition. She mentioned the possibility of "Trich", was all she could come up with. It has been 3 years since we have brought any new cows into the herd, so guess that could be a possibility, don't know.
What is a normal % of open cows to be expected? She mentioned the excessive heat we had last summer for about 3 weeks, she mentioned some other farmer/ranchers had more open cows than normal. Any ideas?
thanks,
Jim |
higher number of open cows, than I think feasible...
