Post by westxgrl13 on Dec 23, 2020 21:25:52 GMT -5
OK, ya'll, I'm here to ask for advice on what would be the earliest you would feel safe breeding a mini-Jersey/Hereford cross heifer. I meant to ask this awhile back already, but "life" happened, and several things I meant to do haven't gotten done. I have three heifers, born in March, that came out of first-calf Hereford heifers, bred to one of Katy Kow's bull calves from two years back. We hit the "genetic jackpot" the first try! These three calves are roly-poly and full of sass, and mighty short for their age!
Because they are so closely kin to the three bulls we have from Katy Kow (she is their maternal grandmother), I need to get busy thinking about if I want to do AI. I just want them to be old enough; don't want to get them bred too young and have calving problems, or hurt them because they still need to put their efforts into growing their own bodies. I am keeping one; my cousin is buying one; and I'm debating on what to do with the third one. They have been in the pen since we weaned them, and are gentle. I have haltered all three and led them around, and can rub and scrub all over them and they stand still. They really are so cute! I just can't tell anybody what they will turn out like as far as how much milk they might produce, how long they'll stay in lactation, and other points of interest, since we have never had this combination of genetics before. The Hereford mommas were full-sized; we bred them to the mini-Jersey bull for calving ease their first time around.
I know a couple of KFC members asked about the possibility of buying one or more in late summer/early fall, but I "dropped the ball" on getting them advertised. Apologies to those of you who asked about them. We have had a lot of crises from summer on, and I haven't had time to do anything as far as trying to sell them. An early cold, wet norther blew in in the middle of the night in early September, and we, and other ranchers in our area, had Angora goats drop like flies. Some had a month of hair on them; some were freshly sheared. We lost a minimum of 315, because we counted their dead bodies. One rancher we heard about east of here lost close to 800 goats. We won't know until shearing time how many died that we never found. It was awful. We saved several, but the pile of carcasses was pretty sad. Then my f-i-l and m-i-l tested positive for Covid. F-i-l came within an hour or two of dying, due to pneumonia that overwhelmed his already-compromised lungs from previous bouts of pneumonia. M-i-l never showed a single symptom. After my FIL survived, the hospital said they couldn't do anything more for him, and only one rehab/nursing home in their town would take Covid-positive patients. He was there for a couple of weeks, then we got him moved to the nursing home in our home town. We just got my MIL moved there a couple of days ago, so they got to see each other for the first time in over six weeks! (I say "see", though my FIL is 99% blind. He is also totally wheelchair-bound, and hard of hearing. The hospital doctor called him "one of the lucky ones", but I am not sure whether or not he would agree! Sometimes we think it might have been better for him if he just "slept right out of this life", but the assisted living place HAD to call for an ambulance when they saw how bad off he was with pneumonia) We are hoping they will be content at this nursing home, even if they haven't been "happy" for the past 4 1/2 years in assisted living.
OK, I am hijacking my own thread, rambling! So, what age would you think it would be OK to breed these calves? Thanks for any input!
Because they are so closely kin to the three bulls we have from Katy Kow (she is their maternal grandmother), I need to get busy thinking about if I want to do AI. I just want them to be old enough; don't want to get them bred too young and have calving problems, or hurt them because they still need to put their efforts into growing their own bodies. I am keeping one; my cousin is buying one; and I'm debating on what to do with the third one. They have been in the pen since we weaned them, and are gentle. I have haltered all three and led them around, and can rub and scrub all over them and they stand still. They really are so cute! I just can't tell anybody what they will turn out like as far as how much milk they might produce, how long they'll stay in lactation, and other points of interest, since we have never had this combination of genetics before. The Hereford mommas were full-sized; we bred them to the mini-Jersey bull for calving ease their first time around.
I know a couple of KFC members asked about the possibility of buying one or more in late summer/early fall, but I "dropped the ball" on getting them advertised. Apologies to those of you who asked about them. We have had a lot of crises from summer on, and I haven't had time to do anything as far as trying to sell them. An early cold, wet norther blew in in the middle of the night in early September, and we, and other ranchers in our area, had Angora goats drop like flies. Some had a month of hair on them; some were freshly sheared. We lost a minimum of 315, because we counted their dead bodies. One rancher we heard about east of here lost close to 800 goats. We won't know until shearing time how many died that we never found. It was awful. We saved several, but the pile of carcasses was pretty sad. Then my f-i-l and m-i-l tested positive for Covid. F-i-l came within an hour or two of dying, due to pneumonia that overwhelmed his already-compromised lungs from previous bouts of pneumonia. M-i-l never showed a single symptom. After my FIL survived, the hospital said they couldn't do anything more for him, and only one rehab/nursing home in their town would take Covid-positive patients. He was there for a couple of weeks, then we got him moved to the nursing home in our home town. We just got my MIL moved there a couple of days ago, so they got to see each other for the first time in over six weeks! (I say "see", though my FIL is 99% blind. He is also totally wheelchair-bound, and hard of hearing. The hospital doctor called him "one of the lucky ones", but I am not sure whether or not he would agree! Sometimes we think it might have been better for him if he just "slept right out of this life", but the assisted living place HAD to call for an ambulance when they saw how bad off he was with pneumonia) We are hoping they will be content at this nursing home, even if they haven't been "happy" for the past 4 1/2 years in assisted living.
OK, I am hijacking my own thread, rambling! So, what age would you think it would be OK to breed these calves? Thanks for any input!