sheepwise
Member
- Location
- SW Scotland
Keep your cows a sensible size by breeding them at as young an age as possible. Cows getting fit while rearing calves well is surely a bonus as they can be fed very cheaply once the calves are speaned. Lean cows at speaning are a much bigger problem, as if you feed them too well you risk growing the calf with potential calving problems.That's your choice Alan, you can ignore who you want to, obviously I'd prefer you didn't but that's not up to me.
You said keep them tighter stocked, and that it wasn't rocket science, which of course it isn't, but restricting intakes to keep lactating cows leaner obviously has knock on effects.
I'm not wanting calves to be on restricted grass when with their mothers, I want them to be getting as much they want, I was asking Woolless how this can be achieved, as I haven't found a way to practically do that so far, apart from forward grazing which isn't really an option.
So far I've gotten round this by keeping a cow that matches the land and has more growth and production potential so doesnt get ovefat like most natives have here, but I keep getting told on TFF that little cows are much more efficient, but I've found that grazing these easy keep/hill types in a way that allows calves to grow well means overfat cows, which have naturally smaller calves anyway, so it was loose loose.
So far I've been told there are ways round this, but nobody has explained a yet of them practically.