Serving heifers in loose housing

[Headless chicken]

I think I know the answer to this before I even start but here goes.

changing heifer housing around a bit this year. We need to put a feed rail or fence in. Options are straight rail, diagonal barrier or locking yokes.
We wouldn’t have enough head spaces with either the yokes or barrier.

tech is concerned that the rail would be a disaster to try and serve them at ( as am I)

shed will be right next to handling system so we could have the option of booting them all out and pulling them out from the yard.

what’s the collectives thoughts here?
costs ;
Rail £450
Diagonal barrier - £1350
Yokes £3500

 

[Bald Rick]

Stick a bull in

Btw, we collar and serve them in cubicles or sync them and lock them in yokes and if they don’t hold, go in to a straw yard with Billy

 

[More to life]

Your first two options simply won’t work

 

[Sparkymark]

Put a bull in, job done.

 

[som farmer]

we block calve, AI everything seen bulling for 8 days, the jab, and serve to visible heats, using scratchies. We are strip grazing them, and just run them in the yard every morning, for a hay 'top' up, got a sensible handling system, pick out what needs serving, AI chap, serves them in the race, and loves the system. All hfrs served in 28 days, 56 hfrs, bulls are in now, dead simple, very cheap, and very multi purpose, and popular with the vets !

 

[Headless chicken]

we block calve, AI everything seen bulling for 8 days, the jab, and serve to visible heats, using scratchies. We are strip grazing them, and just run them in the yard every morning, for a hay 'top' up, got a sensible handling system, pick out what needs serving, AI chap, serves them in the race, and loves the system. All hfrs served in 28 days, 56 hfrs, bulls are in now, dead simple, very cheap, and very multi purpose, and popular with the vets !

interesting.... how quickly would the remainder come bulling after a jab of est?

 

[Chimera]

We sync our heifers and then turn in the bulls after a few days. Nice and simple as the shed is 10 miles away

 

[jimmer]

I think I know the answer to this before I even start but here goes.

changing heifer housing around a bit this year. We need to put a feed rail or fence in. Options are straight rail, diagonal barrier or locking yokes.
We wouldn’t have enough head spaces with either the yokes or barrier.

tech is concerned that the rail would be a disaster to try and serve them at ( as am I)

shed will be right next to handling system so we could have the option of booting them all out and pulling them out from the yard.

what’s the collectives thoughts here?
costs ;
Rail £450
Diagonal barrier - £1350
Yokes £3500

How many are we talking about?

 

[Headless chicken]

How many are we talking about?

75 currently maybe a few more if prices are favourable

 

[Cowlife]

If its a permanent job and you want to AI everything I d spend the money on yokes especially for that no.
Alternatively a full sync program with fixed time AI and a sweeper bull would let you away with the rail.

 

[Rossymons]

Serving heifers at diagonal or straight rail won't work. They'll turn around, be idiots or whatever else they get up to.

If you can run them into the crush and handling system that would be best.

Is the feed face in the shed or is there a scrape alley where they stand? We have one farm with heifers on collars. We pull the list off the PC and go get them. They have a feed aisle that we shut them in and sort the ones we want and one we dont. We then walk the active/suspect heifers across the yard instead of the 50-60 in the group. It works very well.

 

[dinderleat]

I just pull them out of the shed (Group of 80) into a race, Can do it on my own with some well placed gates. They only get one service of sexed then in with the angus bull. Why are you trying to over complicate the job?

 

[som farmer]

interesting.... how quickly would the remainder come bulling after a jab of est?

2/3 days for the majority.

 

[Headless chicken]

Serving heifers at diagonal or straight rail won't work. They'll turn around, be idiots or whatever else they get up to.

If you can run them into the crush and handling system that would be best.

Is the feed face in the shed or is there a scrape alley where they stand? We have one farm with heifers on collars. We pull the list off the PC and go get them. They have a feed aisle that we shut them in and sort the ones we want and one we dont. We then walk the active/suspect heifers across the yard instead of the 50-60 in the group. It works very well.

aiming for a feed passage to allow some separation going on in the shed. Plan is for chalking them so should be an easy visual aid. Think I agree save the money and just take them to the crush.

QUOTE="dinderleat, post: 6992897, member: 211"]
I just pull them out of the shed (Group of 80) into a race, Can do it on my own with some well placed gates. They only get one service of sexed then in with the angus bull. Why are you trying to over complicate the job?
[/QUOTE]
Not trying to complicate anything just looking at options. Suspect that this would be the best route for us to go down.

 

[farmerste]

we run all ours in a cubicle shed and just run them through handling system in shed adjacent for ai. works well and they soon get used to coming out of cubicle shed and down race

 

[Rossymons]

aiming for a feed passage to allow some separation going on in the shed. Plan is for chalking them so should be an easy visual aid. Think I agree save the money and just take them to the crush.

If you're using chalk don't push the stocking rate. Could end up with lots of partial rubs which aren't bulling and miss out on heifers that are. Plus they keep licking the stuff off. That's the main reason we use collars on heifers because the shed tends to be tightly stocked and we have a visual representation of what shes been doing.

Either way, if your AI guy is worth their salt they'll be checking anything they think is bulling.

 

[som farmer]

it wouldn't be that many years ago, hfrs were usually put to AA or HFD bulls, and the best cows bred the replacements, serving hfrs to dairy is relatively new, mainly due to the holstien having a much higher replacement rate, and then the biggest mistake, serving hfrs to easy calving hol bulls, which led to the ever increasing cycle of thinner taller fine framed hols. We are told, the heifer is the 'best' animal, genetic wise, to keep improving our herds. If that was the case, having used the 'best' AI bulls, for 50 years, or longer, our herds should be fantastic, the fact they are not yielding 15,000 liter average, proves that point, as with the bulls used, they should be ! At the same time, we have moved more beef sided on the cows, but many of those cows are seriously good animals, doing exactly what we want, with no problems, and we put a beef bull on them, focus being on the 'better' genomic hfr, which most definitely has not proved her worth !
The AI companies, are telling us, genomic bulls, are the way forward, and in the next breath, telling us it is better, to use a selection of genomic bulls, why? The fact that so many genetic bulls, quietly disappear, and we have no proven figures, to 'prove' the genomic value, does concern me. But that is up to individual farmers choice. Block calving, and only serving the front of the block, to dairy, rapidly improves fertility, but also gets hfrs from the no problem cows. Yield is down to feeding, we used to buy, out of sync cows from a herd, averaging 4500 liters, most of them would do at least 7,000, some doing 9,000, so most cows out there, should be capable of respectable yields. A long essay, from a som peasant, who spent most of the night, with raging toothache, and I enjoy talking breeding, and it distracted me, from that f####### tooth, that was due to be extracted the week lock down commenced !!!

 

[vantage]

it wouldn't be that many years ago, hfrs were usually put to AA or HFD bulls, and the best cows bred the replacements, serving hfrs to dairy is relatively new, mainly due to the holstien having a much higher replacement rate, and then the biggest mistake, serving hfrs to easy calving hol bulls, which led to the ever increasing cycle of thinner taller fine framed hols. We are told, the heifer is the 'best' animal, genetic wise, to keep improving our herds. If that was the case, having used the 'best' AI bulls, for 50 years, or longer, our herds should be fantastic, the fact they are not yielding 15,000 liter average, proves that point, as with the bulls used, they should be ! At the same time, we have moved more beef sided on the cows, but many of those cows are seriously good animals, doing exactly what we want, with no problems, and we put a beef bull on them, focus being on the 'better' genomic hfr, which most definitely has not proved her worth !
The AI companies, are telling us, genomic bulls, are the way forward, and in the next breath, telling us it is better, to use a selection of genomic bulls, why? The fact that so many genetic bulls, quietly disappear, and we have no proven figures, to 'prove' the genomic value, does concern me. But that is up to individual farmers choice. Block calving, and only serving the front of the block, to dairy, rapidly improves fertility, but also gets hfrs from the no problem cows. Yield is down to feeding, we used to buy, out of sync cows from a herd, averaging 4500 liters, most of them would do at least 7,000, some doing 9,000, so most cows out there, should be capable of respectable yields. A long essay, from a som peasant, who spent most of the night, with raging toothache, and I enjoy talking breeding, and it distracted me, from that f####### tooth, that was due to be extracted the week lock down commenced !!!

You missed the biggy, TB in herds. 25% a year going here, 6 first calvers this morning.

 

[som farmer]

You missed the biggy, TB in herds. 25% a year going here, 6 first calvers this morning.

that's the shite side, we got shut down last year, nothing returned positive, that was a waste of time, but I do sympathise with you.

 

[Dead Rabbits]

All heifers here are AI bred for 3 weeks then bulls. Everything is bred and preg checked through a “herringbone race” as y’all say. Think ours holds 15?

Don’t let anyone tell you it won’t work, it will. It works better than rotary cows put in one. But you need to train your heifers to it. The first time they see it can’t be when they get bred. It will be a 2 person job to load it.