Dear All I have just set up a batch of heifers with cidrs (the coil for cattle) Average age of the group is about 13 months. Some as young as 11.5 months. They are well grown and will be given a bit of supplementary feeding, to keep them growing while pregnant. They will be served with an easy calving lim bull by AI. So with a bit of luck they will calve next april and may. Why you may ask? We are committed to spring calving due to labour pressures. Also I could not bear keeping them another whole year (calving at 3 years old) as they would probably have cost to keep what they would leave in profit, for the following 3 years. Thus they would be 6 years old before they left me anything. Is this foolhardy or just another symptom of farming post sfp. eg no cow sub on heifers. I would like to get them back in calf with the main batch next year, so they will have to calve 11 months after their first calving. As ever your thoughts please. Richard

Hi Richard Its not foolhardy you have no alternative, we used to calve a lot at 2 years when milking , calve some at 2 years now dont have any problems,use a hereford bull,but a lim would probably be better ,feed them well in summer with good grass ,but watch you dont over feed the last 2 months before calving . An advantage is if any dont calve or lose calf you have plenty of time to sell fat

Hi All Nice to see somone does not seem to think I am going bananas. Will probably feed a kilo of barley till "housing time" and then will have to work on a bit of a diet with the forage rape (see suckler cows post sfp thread) It looks like these girls will have to stay out as well as the mature cows. What do people think my chances of bringing them back into line with the main feb to april bunch. It does seem to be asking a lot of them to calve at 21.5 to 23 months and then take the bull within 6 weeks of calving. This will provide a technical challenge for the coming months. What r other people doing re calving patterns and replacement policy, regards Richard

I would say "challenging - but feasible" Richard. Main risk I see is using a limousin bull for first calving, if you want a quick second pregnancy. Smaller calf and easier calving means quicker return to heat and better fertility for heifers. Why not use a smaller bull? I don't think you can have the best of all worlds in this situation. Mike

Hi all. I would not think Richard would get any problems with Lim bull, especially as he is using AI .ie tested for ease of calving , we have used lim on hiefers, they pop out like peas ,had problems with Hereford, you can never tell. The main thing is ,not too fat and watch last to months calf ,will grow a lot if you over feed. With batch calving what do you do with cows that are empty? keep for another year, move to autumn or sell ,we tried autumn calving did not suit our system, what will we get for culls in future ? if enough ,I will sell as soon as fat , and keep more replacements.

Hi all. I would not think Richard would get any problems with Lim bull, especially as he is using AI .ie tested for ease of calving , we have used lim on hiefers, they pop out like peas ,had problems with Hereford, you can never tell. The main thing is ,not too fat and watch last to months calf ,will grow a lot if you over feed. With batch calving what do you do with cows that are empty? keep for another year, move to autumn or sell ,we tried autumn calving did not suit our system, what will we get for culls in future ? if enough ,I will sell as soon as fat , and keep more replacements.

Hi All Thanks for your thoughts. With batch calving it could be expensive eg with running cows round to next years batch empty, basically we run a two strikes and your out system. One miss as a young cow is acceptable. Also these get turned to the bull early the next season. eg to give them as long as possible with the bull. Also this gets them them calving earlier. The other way we tend to achieve pregnancies is by planning for an 11 month calving interval, eg cows calved 10 weeks into the batch are put straight to the bull, no waiting till they are 60 days calved etc. Its not perfect, but I am convinced that suckler cow economics are driven by pregnancies, no calf = no money!!! No doubt we are asking a lot of this young batch, but we have to keep driving output if we are going to bother at all. Just accepting a loss is not acceptable. Look forward to replies Richard