Cow Weaning Efficiency 2018

View attachment 736154 Some if you may remember me posting about this last year and I have mentioned it to a couple recently so here are this years results. Much the same as last year.
Any questions about it just ask.

Getting back to the original post, @Samcowman, do you measure costs for your cows at all? It would be interesting to know the difference between keeping a 600Kg cow or 800Kg for a year?

It would be hard to measure unless those cows were split during the winter and able to measure inputs I suppose
 

Samcowman

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cornwall
Getting back to the original post, @Samcowman, do you measure costs for your cows at all? It would be interesting to know the difference between keeping a 600Kg cow or 800Kg for a year?

It would be hard to measure unless those cows were split during the winter and able to measure inputs I suppose
Cows are costed but not on an individual basis. That’s a bit more than I can manage here at the moment. I just go off of the fact it is well known that a bigger cow will naturally eat more.
 

Henarar

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
unless you split them up in groups according to there weight how the hell would you cost them ? and then you would have to take in to account return
 

Jonny B88

Member
Location
ballykelly. NI
Interesting to compare top and bottom 5%. However its only a part of the equation. One of the ‘top 5’ cows to wean a heifer calf is only so because she weighs 420kgs herself. Her calf is only over 220 at 200 days so you have to analyse all info you can. Take her out and suddenly theres a 40kgs swing in heavier calf weight at 200 days to the top 5%.View attachment 738282View attachment 738284View attachment 738286View attachment 738288
 
Last edited:

Jonny B88

Member
Location
ballykelly. NI
IMG_4352.JPG
IMG_4351.JPG
 

Jonny B88

Member
Location
ballykelly. NI
Is that the top/bottom 5 on efficency? What is it like for the heaviest/lightest 5 cows and the heaviest/lightest 5 calves? [emoji16]

Yes on efficiency.
IMG_0696.JPG

Thats for top 5 heaviest bull calves

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Thats for top 5 heaviest cows rearing bull calves

Quite interesting! Its probably in these cases where the cows in the middle of the statistics are best as there are cows here weighing 600-650kgs weaning 45-50% which is really what i want.
 
Yes on efficiency.
View attachment 738840
Thats for top 5 heaviest bull calves

View attachment 738848
Thats for top 5 heaviest cows rearing bull calves

Quite interesting! Its probably in these cases where the cows in the middle of the statistics are best as there are cows here weighing 600-650kgs weaning 45-50% which is really what i want.
So cow weight is an indicator of calf weight to cow weight efficiency, smallest cows were more efficient than biggest cows. but calf weight is not an indicator big calves and little calves were similar.
 

top char

Member
When i weaned mine a month ago, cows averaged 761, and calves 339. So i'm a fair bit off the 50% people say we should achieve! Oldest calves March born and youngest end of May, probably a third of them were struggling to be the 200 day old average people work on.
 
Its funny one cow i bought in mart at 650kgs had a calf at sale at 380 kilos. Another cow was 800 kilos calf was 460 kilos yet made less money. The cow with heavier calf was less milky but had a huge growthy calf, the lighter calf was buttier but very muscly and better colour. Its hard to know. More Weight doesnt always = more money
 

beefandsleep

Member
Location
Staffordshire
What age are we going on for this weaning weight efficiency calculation? 50% would be a hell of a job at 200 days for the “ideal” 650kg cow no creep. Anything over 35% would be acceptable I would have thought at 200 days.
 

Samcowman

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cornwall
What age are we going on for this weaning weight efficiency calculation? 50% would be a hell of a job at 200 days for the “ideal” 650kg cow no creep. Anything over 35% would be acceptable I would have thought at 200 days.
200 days. Evens out the different birth dates over the calving period. I think you need to work out where you are and aim for better rather than thinking you have failed to make 50% or whatever someone else is as everyone has different systems and are on different stages of their journey.
Just use other people’s results as a marker of what is achieveable.
 

Jonny B88

Member
Location
ballykelly. NI
What age are we going on for this weaning weight efficiency calculation? 50% would be a hell of a job at 200 days for the “ideal” 650kg cow no creep. Anything over 35% would be acceptable I would have thought at 200 days.

Its very possible for 50% weaning. Best growing calf here this year grew at 1.64kgs/day and had a 720kg mother exactly 50%. Poorest at 0.84kgs/day or something like that with a mother of 800 odd kgs, worked out at 27%. Its all about taking out that bottom 5-10% each year. Hopefully once we have built up numbers sufficiently we can start to do this and i hope the herd average improves. Average this year bull calves at 1.3 kgs/day and heifers at 1.1 kgs/day.
 
Its very possible for 50% weaning. Best growing calf here this year grew at 1.64kgs/day and had a 720kg mother exactly 50%. Poorest at 0.84kgs/day or something like that with a mother of 800 odd kgs, worked out at 27%. Its all about taking out that bottom 5-10% each year. Hopefully once we have built up numbers sufficiently we can start to do this and i hope the herd average improves. Average this year bull calves at 1.3 kgs/day and heifers at 1.1 kgs/day.
Our heaviest cow had our worst calf last year. Was 400kg at sale but struggled to make €1.75/kg. This year she has had an absolute miller of a calf and he looks a proper one.
Will make close on €3/kg all going well. Had a heifer taht lost her calf a good frw years ago. Kept her on as she was a nice one and has averaged €1000 per weanling since.
Doctors differ and patients die.
A fleshy cow that holds her skin and lacks in milk but goes in calf is the cow for us anyway. All these milky cows tend to strip condition off their backs in the first 6 weeks for milk that the calf doesnt need
 

Jonny B88

Member
Location
ballykelly. NI
Our heaviest cow had our worst calf last year. Was 400kg at sale but struggled to make €1.75/kg. This year she has had an absolute miller of a calf and he looks a proper one.
Will make close on €3/kg all going well. Had a heifer taht lost her calf a good frw years ago. Kept her on as she was a nice one and has averaged €1000 per weanling since.
Doctors differ and patients die.
A fleshy cow that holds her skin and lacks in milk but goes in calf is the cow for us anyway. All these milky cows tend to strip condition off their backs in the first 6 weeks for milk that the calf doesnt need

While i agree some cows are too milky, really the only cows to severely loose condition over the summer in my experience are those with dairy genetics.
 

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