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East River SoDak | We've had the vets ultrasound our bred heifers for about the last 5 years now. We sort ours into 3 two week calving groups. We notch the eartags (side, corner, or bottom) and when it comes time for calving just get in the first group and leave the others outside. We don't have room in our barn for all our heifers so it's nice to know which ones are going to calve first. It's been surprisingly accurate. All we search for is bred or not and twins. Knowing which heifers are going to have twins is a huge plus also. Once the machine gets set for measurements I would say it is almost as fast as arming them. We don't check sex. My vet told me it takes a lot longer to do that and you have a smaller time window (not exactly sure of the days) of when you can do it. The problem with ultrasounding is they need to be bred from about 30 to about 90 days when you check them. Over about 90 days and the fetus is too big and you are unable to measure it. That is why nobody around here (including us) is ultrasounding cows. Most people around us have multiple smaller pastures so we just wait until they are gathered up in the late fall or winter to arm them. We're actually arming ours Wednesday. We also calve our cows out on grass so i don't really need to know when they are going to calve...just that they are going to calve.
Edited by Traveler 11/19/2011 06:14
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Anybody use a Ultrasound for preg. checking?
