How long to establish your herd number?

[herofan]

For those of you who started at some point or decided to increase the family herd, how quickly did you reach the number of cows you wanted? If your goal was 50, did you just go out and buy 50, or was it a gradual process over the years?

 

[bigbull338]

that depends on what your willibng todo to increse your herd.by that i mean keeping all your top heifers.choosing to buy cows insted of waiting on heifers.for our comm herd i think we kept 32 heifers last year.i think i kept 2 reg heifers last year and bought 2 cows last year.but i beleive in culling.so i culled 2 old cows last year.still have 1 old cow to cull this year.may cull 2 comm 2nd cows as well.

 

[Aaron]

40 is the magical number where it is either possible, or nearly impossible to increase a cowherd. Most who get around the 30 cow mark (or less) have a hard time increasing their cowherd at any real rate. Whereas those around 60-70 cows can increase their herd at a fairly rapid pace. I have been both ways and can vouch it to be true. Can take several years to get a cowherd from 30 to 50, but once you get past that point, it can almost climb faster than the operation can adjust.

If I had to do it again, I should have bought the needed replacements to get myself from 35 to 50 cows, ten years ago. Had I done that, I would have a herd of 100-120 cows by now.

 

[bigbull338]

aaron i kinda disagree we usually run 40 or 50 cows.and right now we are at 90 cows and heifers.we only have 7 more calves to sell this year.unless we do some heavy culling we will be well over 100hd next year.

 

[Aaron]

aaron i kinda disagree we usually run 40 or 50 cows.and right now we are at 90 cows and heifers.we only have 7 more calves to sell this year.unless we do some heavy culling we will be well over 100hd next year.

How long did it take to get from 40 cows to 90 cows by retaining your own heifers?

 

[Bigfoot]

For those of you who started at some point or decided to increase the family herd, how quickly did you reach the number of cows you wanted? If your goal was 50, did you just go out and buy 50, or was it a gradual process over the years?

As always, you've asked a good question:
On the one hand, no matter how many cows someone has, 50% of their calves are heifers. What percent of the 50% bring something to party that you are looking for? That number will be very different for everybody. Considerably less than half of my heifers are deemed by me to be "keepers".
Born late, is a sticking spot as well. If it's not ready to breed by May 15th, I do t want to keep it.

On the other hand, easily 10-20% of my cows will age them selves out, breed back slow, wean a small calf etc.

Those two factors, make growth from within hard to accomplish. That leaves buying cows, or buying heifers. I've give up on buying cows. Buying heifers is a crap shoot to, but it's what I do to expand. I've asked the question on here before, for every 10 heifers you keep, how many make it to their 3rd calf? Some of these guys have some stellar luck. I don't, I conservatively say 5 of my 10 make it into true long term production.

To answer your original question, Ive been at it a long long time, and expansion ain't easy. I'm keeping 30 heifers this year, and the loss of revenue, and feed bill is staggering. Keeping double my normal amount, will end up not growing my herd very much.

I'm sure I do everything wrong, but I do the best I can.

 

[denvermartinfarms]

I'm not where I want to be, not even sure how many I would have before I felt like I had all I wanted. I think 300 to 500 momma cows.

I started with 4 heifers 12 years ago, bought another 5 heifers 8 months later and put all 9 with a bull, about the time they started calving I bought another 10 bred heifers that calved along with the ones I already had. Then I started saving a few heifers most every year and buying cows when I could.

 

[Nesikep]

6 years ago we had 18 cows, we have 27 now. a bunch have been on the cull list for some time, and are terminal cows because of it, The smaller the herd, the harder it is to grow it. Part of that is usually when you start out with a small herd, you don't have the experience, so you have crappy cows which give you crappy calves to choose from, Once you've been at it a while, your cows improve, and a greater percentage of the heifers are of reasonable quality, and do better, so I'll say after 2-3 generations (of cows) you have made enough progress and learned enough to know what to look for, and look out for.
Of my 27 cows, I think about 10-12 of them are pretty reliable cows I'd keep heifers from, except for years like last year where I had twice as many steers as heifers, that means I can keep about 6 heifers a year of decent quality, which would grow my herd pretty well, I could be at 35 cows in very short time, and 50 (double) in probably 5 years.. Don't have the feed for them though

 

[regolith]

132 to 187 in three years - I kept every heifer, overstocked my place and had to lease some out for another farmer to milk in the final year.
Might not do it that way again but I'd keep my poorest heifers before buying someone else's commercial cows, every time. I was moving to a larger farm the fourth year and still had to buy over 100 cows to take the herd to nearly 300.
Realistically, I can increase by about twenty a year on a 130 cow herd by retaining the top 70% of the heifers born and culling no more than 15% of the herd in a year.

 

[highgrit]

Everyone does things a little bit different. I like to keep my best heifers and see how they do. But at the same time I buy cows from the sale barn and individuals, and cull as I see fit. My biggest problem is that every cow I have is for sale. I have folks coming by next week to look at cows to buy. And I told them that I really didn't have any cows that I wanted to sell. I'm never going to have as many cows as I want. Between selling them off for more than their worth, and having to sell them because of the drought. I'll be needing cows till I die.

 

[HDRider]

You hit a subject very much on my mind. Tell me what is wrong with this picture? My goal is to get to 125 mamma cows in five years.

 

[kjonesel]

I got back into cattle in 2007 with 4 heifers, bred AI had two heifers which I retained averaged purchasing 3 heifers per year the last 4 years, will begin culling the first cows this year (one died and will sell the second one). I have retained all of the heifers and we are at 48 females. Part of the reason for slow growth is average days open. When you are 100% AI it is hard to detect heat throughout the year as I work off the farm as an electrical contractor. This year I have a young fullblood bull to use as a cleanup bull so it is a goal to reduce the days open. All of my heifers have been worthy of keeping as they are genetically superior to my cows having them. One of the reasons why is that I have always used proven sires and reduce the risk of having a bull that doesn't pass on good genetics. I will run that risk with the cleanup bull but with my goal of 60 - 70 cows I could profit from the reduced days open and will soon need to be selling some of my heifers anyway. I will second the comment that retaining heifers is expensive. When you don't have the positive and increase your negative you end up supplementing the upkeep of the herd from outside sources. That is one of the reason that my operation is changing this fall I will have two going to college.
In closing if you could find the way to use embryos that would be the best way to achieve herd expansion. I don't have an embryologist close and haven't had that much money available to invest.

 

[Lucky_P]

Re-started this round, with 7 cows, in 1995; halfblood SM cows we'd retained when I went back to grad school. Currently at 75 females, all home-raised. Kept almost every heifer for many years - unless they were REALLY crappy or a PITA, they stayed; were they all worthy of staying? NO!, but they did...
Now we're working our way through the cow herd, culling on disposition cleaned out a bunch, but productivity/fertility are now the focus. Sometimes it's a hard call - do I sell this 10yr old who calves on schedule and raises a good calf every year...or do i roll the dice on this unproven heifer...

 

[highgrit]

If you have the land and the money expansion is easy. A farmer that I buy whole corn from decided to rest some watermelon fields. He's bought 90 bred cows in the last week, and has 4 calves on the ground already.

 

[bigbull338]

aaron i just checked this years calving so far.in 50 days weve calved 35 cows.about 15 heifers calves so far this year.so im pretty sure when we start the 2nd half of calving we will calve close to 25hd more or less.but its taken 3yrs to get the numbers to over 90hd.

 

[Aaron]

aaron i just checked this years calving so far.in 50 days weve calved 35 cows.about 15 heifers calves so far this year.so im pretty sure when we start the 2nd half of calving we will calve close to 25hd more or less.but its taken 3yrs to get the numbers to over 90hd.

So I assume that you retain about 100% of your heifers and have a very low cull rate?

 

[bigbull338]

yes but with a 0 cull rate and a 0 death rate it does catch up with you.all though we did lose a cow to snake bite.prolly have cows that need tobe culled based on age now.

 

[Craig Miller]

I have a goal to have a bunch of em. Short term though i had a goal of 10 by the end of this year. I have 2 mommas a hefer calf and a bred hefer. I think I better get to buying.

 

[Nesikep]

If you keep half your heifers, and cull 10%, you will double the herd every 7 years, if you cull 15% it doubles every 10.. I just figured it out on a spreadsheet.. It's kinda interesting to see.

If you start out with really good stock, you can keep a greater percentage of the heifers, which would speed it up a bit.

 

[Caustic Burno]

For those of you who started at some point or decided to increase the family herd, how quickly did you reach the number of cows you wanted? If your goal was 50, did you just go out and buy 50, or was it a gradual process over the years?

I started with one heavy when I was 14.
I never got to fifty momma cows most I ever ran was 37.
Being pretty particular I would say the numbers bounced mostly upward
for 15 years before I settled on a number. Probably would have gotten more but hay
became my enemy working a job and trying to bale hay. Could have leased long term
an additional 200 acres years ago. It still gets offered to me from time to time.
Seemed like that was the number I could work and maintain all at the same time.
Every man has a different pace and goal just have to decide yours and work towards it.
This is a journey not a race. When you die you have a 99% probability your cows will be going through
the salebarn before they throw the last shovel of dirt on you.