“I might not be the best one to ask when to cull,” said Jim O’Neal who owns Turkey Knob Ranch in Branch, Ark., along with his wife, JoAnn. “I probably give ‘em more chances than most. We are emotionally attached to our cows – they all have names.”
O’Neal, who runs about 50 head of Limousins on 200 acres, says he just puts them out in the pasture with a bull and lets nature take its course.
“If I notice a cow is not calving I will call in the vet, first to see if she is pregnant, and then to see if there is something else wrong. I’m probably going to give her 6 to 9 months before I consider culling her.”
But other producers have a different perspective. “There is no three strikes you are out for us,” said David Bonacker, co-owner of Windy Hill Charolais Farms, 30 miles south of St. Louis, Mo.
“It depends on how well I know a cow’s background if she gets a second chance. I try to keep good hay in front of them. BVD (bovine virus diarrhea) is probably the most common reason a cow stays open.”
Bonacker said that even cows he knows well won’t get a third try, and he is not interested in spending additional dollars to test the cow.
“If it costs me $4-500 to care for a cow and she’s not putting a calf on the ground that will bring that back to me, I can’t afford to keep her, period.”
Dollars and sense
A number of experts agree that, though the numbers and ratios vary from producer to producer, the decision to cull a cow should be based largely on a formula designed to optimize profits.
“Open cows are the greatest contributors to low weaning percentages,” says John Massey of Missuri University’s
Department of Animal Sciences. “On the average, a cow that does not breed one time will lose 15 to 20 percent of her lifetime production potential. It will take the net return from two to three productive cows to pay for the maintenance of the open cow.”
Massey said it makes economic sense to sell open cows and buy bred cows or bred heifers that have known genetic and health backgrounds rather than to wait 2 years for these open cows to wean their next calf even if they conceive when next exposed.
Milking the most dollars
Dairy farmers, take a double hit when open cows put fewer calves on the ground and produce less milk poundage.
The more often a cow becomes pregnant during her productive lifetime, the more profitable she is, according to Dairy Herd Management online magazine. If producers are having a difficult time getting cows rebred and cows are freshening with greater than a 16-month calving interval, culling is advantageous compared to the additional costs of housing, care and feed.
Another perspective
Like Bonacker, O’Neal says it could be his fault a cow is not calving, acknowledging the importance of taking care of a cow’s nutritional need.
“Sometimes it’s the bull. Last year my calves were way down. I had this supposedly high-powered bull – good pedigree and all – that turned out to have low fertility.”
He added, “For the most part, you take care of a cow and turn her out with a good bull, and she will put a calf on the ground exactly when she is supposed to.”
