Post by amysflock on Jan 14, 2012 12:09:14 GMT -5
Hi all,
We're having trouble with our lead beef cow (Scottish Highland). She's now missed three consecutive breedings. The vet has palpated after each and has felt a growing follicle (he thought), healthy insides, no reason for missed breedings. She'll be 8 in May. In the 3.5 years we've had her, she's only produced two calves...and had 3 in her reproductive lifetime. Not good.
We're planning to beef her this fall, along with our two steers. She's costing us too much money for being so unproductive. But the last few months, she's added a new strike to her card: she's been acting weird, and very bullish.
We currently have a 2-year old bull here servicing our heifer and another cow. The cow settled; the heifer should be in standing heat today or tomorrow. We had the bull and heifer sequestered off together, but the bull, possibly feeling challenged by our older cow, went through the fence and we had to let the heifer out, too. We'll fix the fence later today and put them back in.
Meanwhile, the older cow is not letting the bull near the heifer. She keep standing perpendicular to the heifer's backside, so the bull can't hardly get in there to sniff. She's acting exactly the way a dominant bull should. (She had some other behaviors in the past month, too, including bellowing loudly/aggressively, pawing the ground when the bull arrived, throwing dirt everywhere with her horns, fighting mightily with him, etc.)
Someone suggested she might have a retained corpus luteum that's messing with her hormones. We don't want to breed her, and it's not the right time to beef her (I don't have customers lined up and we don't have freezer room - too much wild game)...but it's been suggested that maybe we should give her a shot or two of Lutalyse to make her cycle again.
Any other suggestions/experiences with this? If she were to cycle and be bred, not only would it be a miracle (!), but it would also mean another beef calf for 2014. (There's no way we'd keep or sell one of her calves for breeding stock at this point. No way.)
Thank you!!
We're having trouble with our lead beef cow (Scottish Highland). She's now missed three consecutive breedings. The vet has palpated after each and has felt a growing follicle (he thought), healthy insides, no reason for missed breedings. She'll be 8 in May. In the 3.5 years we've had her, she's only produced two calves...and had 3 in her reproductive lifetime. Not good.
We're planning to beef her this fall, along with our two steers. She's costing us too much money for being so unproductive. But the last few months, she's added a new strike to her card: she's been acting weird, and very bullish.
We currently have a 2-year old bull here servicing our heifer and another cow. The cow settled; the heifer should be in standing heat today or tomorrow. We had the bull and heifer sequestered off together, but the bull, possibly feeling challenged by our older cow, went through the fence and we had to let the heifer out, too. We'll fix the fence later today and put them back in.
Meanwhile, the older cow is not letting the bull near the heifer. She keep standing perpendicular to the heifer's backside, so the bull can't hardly get in there to sniff. She's acting exactly the way a dominant bull should. (She had some other behaviors in the past month, too, including bellowing loudly/aggressively, pawing the ground when the bull arrived, throwing dirt everywhere with her horns, fighting mightily with him, etc.)
Someone suggested she might have a retained corpus luteum that's messing with her hormones. We don't want to breed her, and it's not the right time to beef her (I don't have customers lined up and we don't have freezer room - too much wild game)...but it's been suggested that maybe we should give her a shot or two of Lutalyse to make her cycle again.
Any other suggestions/experiences with this? If she were to cycle and be bred, not only would it be a miracle (!), but it would also mean another beef calf for 2014. (There's no way we'd keep or sell one of her calves for breeding stock at this point. No way.)
Thank you!!