Good morning everyone,
We hope you have all had a great week!
It has still be quite cold here and wet all week. We would like it warmer, but we don’t mind the rain!
On the farm
The grass is growing – but slowly. It is definitely growing faster across the farm now than the cattle can eat it, and each day, with each break, there is a little more for them. I guess it won’t be too far away before we will be considering cutting some silage. I think that is wishful thinking, though.
In our pie heyday, we wanted to have our cows calve at different times right through the year, and finish at different times also – to keep the pie operation flowing. Now that it is stopped, we desperately want them all to calve at just one time. But with a 9 month gestation, it is not easy to move the goalposts so far. Our ultimate goal is to breed ALL our animals in December (and as early in December as possible). This will give us calving in September – just as spring arrives. So far 70% of our herd have calved (that are fine for December breeding) and we are hopeful that we have more to calve this coming month. Any cows that calve this month should also be OK to breed in early December. There will still be some stragglers, but we hope not too many. Some of these stragglers are our best cows, though.
One of the girls who recently calved (and who is one of our spotlight animals below) is super special, genetically. We are contemplating to do IVF on her, and if successful, implant some of her embryos into other cows. If we do do it, we might do this in mid November, so that any recipient cows who don’t hold the pregnancy will still be ready to rebreed in December.
This years breeding:
We also have some high quality bull semen stored, so come first week of December (or last week of November), we might do one round of AI, before they run with our bulls. If we “program” them to ovulate over a week, we can get most of the girls AI’ed before they run with our bulls. It might get too hard, but we will see.
Our two bulls we want to use:
We do have two super bred bulls, so I sometimes wonder why we want to do the above. I guess is its just self pride.
Mt Vernon: This guy really is a champ – in the top 4% of all active bulls in Australasia. He is also the most super-docile animals on the farm.
I would be quite relaxed to have you approach him and scratch his head. He would lower it to allow you to do it. That is very special. My only criticism is that his marbling genes, whilst very good, are not in the top 1%, which is my goal.
Wallace:
I have the most super lady – Phoebe, who has almost everything, as well as the most amazing docility. We bred her to an incredible American bull, and Wallace is the result. He is a year old – now ready to be used for breeding.
Again, Wallace’s marbling is not quite there (although higher than Mt Vernon). He also has fantastic temperament. Wallace is in the top 5% of all active bulls in Australasia. We will use him over a smaller number of females – in fact over all the new heifers, so long as there is no inbreeding issues.
Spotlight on:
Today we want to spotlight two very special animals!
The first is UNIQUE. She is wonderfully bred, and we were devasted when her first calving last year proved to be a disaster. The calf was too big, and we had to do a C-section to remove the calf. It was just horrible. With C-sections there can be uterus damage – and we were fearful she may never be able to breed again. It took her a while, but her beautiful heifer calf, Unity is the result.
We were worried, as Unique had got quite fat, after a year off. But she calved with no issues, and we were so happy if was a heifer (which we might keep).
We are hoping to do IVF from her this year, to a very high marbling Australian bull. We are just going through the logistics now.
The second spotlight is a wee girl, just 42 days old.
I have written previously about a special black/white face cow, Bryar. Not only does she have amazing docility, ALL her progeny grow like crazy, and all have this amazing temperament.
Bryar had twins a couple of years back. They were both girls, and both these girls have had their first calves. Both of these grand daughters of Bryar have this “super docility”, but wee Bonnie just blew me away, yesterday. She was following me around as I was checking the herd, so I stopped to have a quick conversation. She came up and licked me on the nose! Oh dear! I think we have another keeper!
Sorry this post was a bit long, but I had promised to outline this years breeding program to you.
As always we thrive on feedback – so we would love to hear from you!!
Colin and Keryn