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Management Strategies

We will look at a few weaning strategies. Traditionally, throughout the west, we have late winter calving or actually calving in the early spring and this is to take advantage of better pastures or range during the spring. We get better forage availability for the cows, they give more milk and we wean heavier calves. Also during this period of this lush growth during the spring, will also provide some forage or high quality forage for the calves to graze. Some nontraditional calving systems would be fall calving, late spring or early summer calving or year-round calving. And the least optimal method would actually be year-round calving.

We look at fall calving. There are some benefits. Flexibility of marketing calves. You would actually market these calves in the spring when markets are higher or we can actually graze weaned animals and graze through the spring-summer and then sell in the fall. However, there is an expense associated with wintering these animals or wintering the cows because the cows are lactating, it is the highest plane of nutrition compared to all other cycles. Also, we may have some additional facility expense because we are housing twice as many animals through the winter. For late spring and early summer calving, the benefits are we usually calve in warmer weather, the cows will actually get the best feed available during peak milk and cows will also be on an increasing plane of nutrition for breeding. We can see that even cows from the previous table, cows that are less than a five but are gaining the weight or on an increased plane of nutrition, actually have higher pregnancy rates. The negatives are we have smaller calves in the fall and we may need to keep these through the winter and we may need facilities to calve the cows out since generally they would be on range when calving occurs. There are some weaning considerations or when to wean. There are some market fluctuations that some people take into account and it may be more profitable to sell after four months versus some time later.

The next scenario would be most common versus market fluctuations and this would be cow body condition store. During drought, calves may be weaned earlier to allow the cows to gain weight for the winter and the calves can be marketed or fed, at this point, for a bigger body weight. Weaning calves early or trying to minimize body condition loss of cows, some people will consider creep feeding or supplementing the calves. It does increase the average daily gain of calves. It will also reduce the body condition loss of the cows because calves are getting more nutrients from some other source and generally rely upon the dams less. It can also decrease calf stresses at weaning because calves are already acclimated to bunks and therefore have increased dry matter intake when weaned. It also has been shown to decrease calf mortality and morbidity after weaning. This picture shows a creep feeder, actually on range.

This feeder is on wheels and can be moved around, it is mobile. And it allows access of smaller animals or the calves and prevents access of the cows, so calves only have access to the creep feed, not the cows.

There was a study some years ago by Oregon State that looked at the effects of early weaning instead of creep feeding. And this was conducted at the Oregon State Union Station, which is in northeast Oregon.

Turner & DelCurto (1991)

Half of their calves were weaned at 150 days or 150 days of age versus the other half of the calves which were weaned at 205 days. The weaned calves or the early weaned calves, received three pounds of rolled grain and barley and grazed hay meadow regrowth. The cow-calf pairs and the dry cows, so the calves that were not weaned at 205 days, were returned to graze native range for the remainder of the experiment which contained about 7.2% crude protein. The results were, if you look at 205-day calf weight, the early weaned calves weighed 631 pounds, the late weaned calves weighed 563 pounds. So there was some advantage over early weaning and providing these calves with grain and meadow hay or meadow pasture. There was also a difference in calf body condition score. Those dams from which the calves were weaned earlier had a higher condition score of 6.2 versus dams of calves that were weaned at 205 days which had a condition score of 5.6. Condition score was greater. And cow weight was also greater, 1,147 pounds versus 1,092 pounds.

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