Feeding heifers and cows in the same shed

Location
West Wales
Looking for some ideas on how to make feeding work for both dry cows and bulling heifers.
The plan is to use a loose housed shed to calve in before housing bulling heifers in the winter. We need to be able to serve heifers in the shed due to the locality of the handling system so the thought of locking yokes seems attractive. The issue we have is how do we make it work for both heifers and dry cows?
assume the answer is to put cow yokes in and close them down a bit for heifers?
the only downside to this is we’ve 180ft of feed fence that we’d like to accommodate 110 heifers in.
Would we be better off just putting a straight rail in and some penning in the feed passage so we can lock them
Forward and sort them in smaller groups to Ai behind a gate?
 
Location
West Wales
Has anyone else got more yokes than heifers?
Or could we fit yokes around a feed trailer and just yokes the bulk at the feed face and go in with a bag of cake for the trailer and yoke there?
 
Location
West Wales
If you are serving in batches would you consider synching them? Means handling them all on set days then turn beef bull in to sweep the remainder.

we have done just this in the past. Two things that concern me really here. One is using sexed semen and syncs, I’ve been advised it would be safest to serve them 2 days in a row so a considerable cost. Also the public perception of sync programs. Understandable in a cow because it’s better than the alternative but is it really the answer with maiden heifers?
 

Farmer Fin

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Aberdeenshire
we have done just this in the past. Two things that concern me really here. One is using sexed semen and syncs, I’ve been advised it would be safest to serve them 2 days in a row so a considerable cost. Also the public perception of sync programs. Understandable in a cow because it’s better than the alternative but is it really the answer with maiden heifers?
Sexed and synchs are fine. Public perception, I guess that is for your to decide. Personally can’t see a difference between using it in heifers or cows.
If doing natural it sounds like you need to ensure heifers are easy to draw out with minimum people.
 

Jdunn55

Member
we have done just this in the past. Two things that concern me really here. One is using sexed semen and syncs, I’ve been advised it would be safest to serve them 2 days in a row so a considerable cost. Also the public perception of sync programs. Understandable in a cow because it’s better than the alternative but is it really the answer with maiden heifers?
If serving 2 days in a row with sexed, split ther straw between 2 heifers that way your cost is the same, it's what we do with or sucklers and haven't noticed any negative effects on conception. My old boss didn't split for a year and his condition rate was 62% he then split for a year and it was 61%. I agree about syncing and public perception though
 

Rossymons

Member
Location
Cornwall
we have done just this in the past. Two things that concern me really here. One is using sexed semen and syncs, I’ve been advised it would be safest to serve them 2 days in a row so a considerable cost. Also the public perception of sync programs. Understandable in a cow because it’s better than the alternative but is it really the answer with maiden heifers?

I would have no issue with synch programmes and using sexed semen.Making sure the protocols are correct and followed exactly are so important.

I'm not sure I agree with serving them 2 days consecutively as a matter of course. Why should you need to unless they have an absolute barn stormer of a heat the next day?

One of my guys is serving all his heifers to a synch programme in bunches spread out through the year. Heifers come in and have a collar on before going straight on to a synch. All repeats are caught on the collars and served. About 42 days after coming in they're back out again with the bull with all of them having at least one service to sexed. Another batch comes in. Results are encouraging, farmer is turning over a good number of heifers and heifer management is a lot easier than having a big mob that drags on.

It's easy to let heifers slip because of age or size but you've got what you've got. If facilities or management is compromised for whatever reason I would look at synching. YOU WANT THEM IN CALF AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
 

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
might well be the only solution. Trying to move away from the reliance on bulls where possible. Beef ones are too lazy and I’ve had enough of the dairy ones going nasty
we reared 2 jersey bulls from calves, 1 at 14 months served 2 hfrs, and turned, the other 3yr old and very quiet, not sure which was the most dangerous, one you knew, the other, you forget it's there.
sync programs should be all right with the public, they happily accept IVF treatments, so it's the 'same' ish thing.
Don't you have a handling system close at hand, to draft the hfrs off ? esp if a sync programme, easier and safer, both of which lead to better conception rate.
and for the sake of saving £25, i wouldn't entertain splitting straws, as @Rossymons says, the important bit is getting them i/c asp, that saving is easily lost, by losing 3 weeks on hfrs. We do the opposite, and use 2 straws of beef, AA and BB, and have a tight calving pattern. Using 1 straw fr, and 1 AA, in our autumn block, £15, for the 2 straws, seems a bit of a waste of the fr, but conception is the key, if it works, it's cheap.
 
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We have housed our heifers this year for the first time for quite a few years.

Previously we sync'd. We used a PRID sync and put on estrotect stickers. We served anything with rubbed stickers about 50 hours after pulling PRIDs using sexed semen and applied new stickers. On the following day we AI'd the heifers were now rubbed but whose stickers had not gone off the day before with sexed semen and any of the heifers served the day before but rubbed again with beef. in total we served about 85-90% of the heifers and then put bulls in. In the last 2 years doing that we have had 64% and 68% of all the heifers calve to sexed semen. Last year we had almost 100 heifers to make up for TB, unfortunately last year the bulls went off there feet in the wet autumn. Fortunately we realised what was happening so PD'd the whole bunch and kept back the 24 not showing as 28d pregnant and all 24 then came bulling, and I got 22 in calf with 4 weeks of AI.

That made me think.

So this year the heifers are inside but we do only have 64. We have used cow manager ear tags for spotting bulling but stickers could be an option. We had a pen with a calving gate in it off to one side and pulled out bullers as needed, usually with the help of a second person just to get them in the pen. I then sorted the AI on my own swapping which heifer I needed behind the calving gate. We have not PD'd yet but I served every heifer in 22 days and 45 are currently holding to first service (we have had about 4 long returns) and I have only served 5 heifers in weeks 5-8. So far I have just done 83 services on the 64 heifers in 8 weeks which certainly helps with reducing the work load. The biggest issue is finding the heifers, sometimes they are obvious with sweaty coats, however we are serving twice a day 10-22 hours after start of heat so they are often finished heat so less obvious. Estrotect stickers would help solve that issue of ID in a bigger group but you would probably need to handle them more to replace part worn stickers etc.
 
Location
East Mids
We use a yard for calving heifers Aug/Sept and then bulling heifers in for the winter.

Loose yard with no scrape passage, just a feed barrier at the front (only used for hay/silage). We serve the bulling heifers for about 4 weeks sexed semen and then put the bull in - never ever had a problem with a lazy beef bull, but he only has max 25 heifers to go at and that would be if we had a total failure on the AI! Every heifer served once to natural heat, plus a few repeats, then enough appeared to be holding after about 28 days so in went the bull. Same as last year.

We have a mobile handling system (pen/race/yolk) and pop that in the yard on top of the bedding for bulling heifer vaccination booster/wormer/heat detection collar/rumen magnet in October and then serving in November. Take it down again when the bull goes in and before the straw starts to build up. Then we will pop it back in next month for TB testing, vaccination, PD before we turn them out. Most times, a bulling heifer can be run in by one person in most cases although there are usually 2 of us to do it.

Raised troughs in the yard for cake feeding the bulling heifers.

After turnout the handling system goes down to the field where the 7 month old calves are, for worming, final vaccinations, any extra attention they need, TB testing if we have to, they are used to it then when they are housed later in the autumn.
 
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PREES

Member
Location
SW Wales
Really pleased with it, I don’t think it has missed a heat and I have only had 2 listed as full heats that I think were wrong. So far we have had 5 tags come out out of 316 in 10 weeks and we have found 4 of those.
I am a little concerned about the tag loss as we are on auto scrapers so the chance of finding any would be limited I guess! Any idea why some have come out?
 
3 have come on one cow brush. The 3 wall mounted duo cow brushes no issue but the one clamp mounted to a post has cost 3, but we cannot work out why as yet One was caught in a chain on the foot trimming crush so that has been moved. The last one we don’t know. I agree that auto scrapers may make recovery an issue. They do take about 4-6 hours to flag as ‘dead cow’ on the system. At least the cost is £27 not the £110 when you loose a moo monitor at our other autumn unit.
 

frederick

Member
Location
south west
I am a little concerned about the tag loss as we are on auto scrapers so the chance of finding any would be limited I guess! Any idea why some have come out?
We have 360tags in about a fortnight less than foab. We have only lost one in a heifer. We have probably placed tag a little further in than would seem right because we already had an Eid tag there. I think it important that all the tag has ear behind it and so nothing is outside the ear to get caught.
 
Location
West Wales
With thanks to @Forever Fendt we seem to have some clarification on this. We could install heifer yokes at 8 per bay that could be opened enough for cows but wouldn’t allow cows to feed side by side so likely knocking us down to half the amount of animals feeding. Or we could install cow yokes and have to few yokes for heifers and have to make a trailer or similar that we just use when serving to yoke the extras in.

i must admit I’m really torn here. Putting the heifer yokes in goes against my ethos of it’s easy to make things smaller can’t make them any bigger, but the sheds primary function currently would be heifers.
 

Scholsey

Member
Location
Herefordshire
Has anyone else got more yokes than heifers?
Or could we fit yokes around a feed trailer and just yokes the bulk at the feed face and go in with a bag of cake for the trailer and yoke there?

got 28 yokes and 2 bunches of heifers that use them, just have a few bags of cake handy when wanting to yoke them, loose the next bunch in, cake them and all yoked within 2 mins, got a crush handy for any messing about.
 

Jdunn55

Member
With thanks to @Forever Fendt we seem to have some clarification on this. We could install heifer yokes at 8 per bay that could be opened enough for cows but wouldn’t allow cows to feed side by side so likely knocking us down to half the amount of animals feeding. Or we could install cow yokes and have to few yokes for heifers and have to make a trailer or similar that we just use when serving to yoke the extras in.

i must admit I’m really torn here. Putting the heifer yokes in goes against my ethos of it’s easy to make things smaller can’t make them any bigger, but the sheds primary function currently would be heifers.
Stick the cow yokes in imo, should the shed change use in future you wont have to change them, especially as they're not exactly cheap.
 

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