Angus Advisor
Our team of Angus advisors offer regional tips for herd management for the month of June.
Midwest Region
Summer is here, and it is important to consider the effects of heat stress on productivity and well-being of beef cattle. Heat stress is a combination of above-average temperature, humidity and below-average wind. Efforts to mitigate heat stress have focused on confined cattle, but considering that heat stress costs U.S. livestock production more than $1 billion annually, we should consider how it might affect cattle on the farm.
Cattle do not have many active sweat glands, and their main method of dissipating heat is through increased breathing rate. Having microbes ferment feed constantly, producing heat, makes the problem worse.
Access to water can be a critical factor in controlling heat stress. It is the quickest method for cattle to reduce core body temperature. Access to water is not going to be the only factor that improves cattle comfort during heat stress events, but other factors (shade, airflow, etc.) receive a majority of the attention from producers. We would not normally consider pasture cattle to have water access limited. However, dairy experts recommend 1 ft. of linear “waterer space” per cow during heat-stress events. For example, a 6-ft.-diameter open-top tank would provide enough “waterer space” for about 19 cows.
This topic is important to me because of a producer I interacted with last fall who lost a number of newly weaned calves during a heat-stress event in late summer. The producer lamented that calves were not able to cool down, despite the presence of shade and efforts to spray the cattle down with water. What I discovered upon becoming involved was inadequate access to water, which led me to conclude that insufficient water access was a contributing factor to the cattle’s demise.
Sometimes the simplest explanation is the correct one. Focus on the fundamentals before you spend lots of brainpower trying to come up with creative solutions to complex problems. More importantly, plan for heat-stress events now before they occur in July-September.
June management calendar
Assumptions: Spring-calving herd begins calving Feb. 1; fall-calving herd begins calving Sept. 1.
Spring-calving herds. Breeding season should be winding down if you are calving January-March. Often producers will leave bulls out longer than normal if weather conditions are poor or feed resources are scarce. All this does is extend breeding/calving seasons in future years. Stick to your intended breeding season, take your losses this year and maintain a 60- to 90-day breeding season.
Culling unproductive females and replacing them with genetically superior heifers could improve productivity in the long run.
Fall-calving herds. Pregnant females are entering the third trimester of gestation. Roughly half of fetal growth occurs during the final trimester. There have been reports of small, weak calves born prematurely during late summer and early fall. While no causative relationship has been established between weak fall calves and nutrition, be aware that starving a profit out of a third-trimester pregnant female is impossible, especially during the summer slump in the fescue belt.
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Southern Great Plains
Spring-calving herds
- Follow through on planned spring “branding time” herd health procedures.
- Consult your veterinarian regarding the need to deworm young cows and calves. This investment will depend a great deal on the location of your operation, forage species, stocking density, previous internal parasite management and other factors.
- June mid-day temperatures can suppress aggressive estrous activity. Visual heat detection should be done early morning and late evening.
- Turn bulls out with cows after the AI program is completed. The bull-to-cow ratio will vary depending on the number of cows or heifers serviced to AI and the age of the bull. A conservative rule of thumb is to expose bulls to about 10 cows per year of age, up to 30 open cows.
- At weaning, vaccinate calves according to your veterinarian’s recommendations, deworm calves, weigh and condition-score cows, and weigh calves.
- Transfer records for your whole herd to the American Angus Association.
- Be sure to discuss with your veterinarian the need to include a coccidiostat in the water source or in the feed during the 28-day weaning period.
General recommendations
Severe drought continues to plague the Southern Great Plains, although recent rains have provided relief from continued spread of wildfires. For some seedstock operations, intensified management systems can provide a means to hold on to cow herds until a grazing alternative develops.
This can be accomplished at home or by working with a commercial facility that already has the necessary feed storage, pens and equipment.
Cows can be maintained with a traditional hay- or silage-plus-supplement program, or they can be maintained using a limit-fed concentrate-based program. The limit-feeding program can stretch hay supply, as only 5 lb.-8 lb. is required compared to 25 lb.-30 lb. with free-choice access.
Currently, feed concentrates (corn, dried distillers’ grains, corn gluten feed, soybean hulls, etc.) are more available and less expensive compared to hay or silage in the drought region.
General guidelines for limit-fed cow rations (expressed as percent of body weight):
- Gestating cows: 0.5% BW hay, 0.75% BW concentrate, 0.17% BW high-protein supplement that includes vitamins and minerals
- Lactating cows, average milk: 0.5% BW hay, 1% BW concentrate, 0.25% BW high-protein supplement
- Lactating cows, high milk: 0.5% BW hay, 1.1% BW concentrate, 0.29% BW high-protein supplement
For pairs, calves can be provided the same diet in a creep area or feeding rate can be increased slightly to allow calves to eat with the cows.
These rations can be fed as a total-mixed ration (TMR), or the components can be fed individually as long as feeding management and timing is consistent. These higher-concentrate diets need to be introduced gradually. See http://pods.dasnr.okstate.edu/
docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-2017/ANSI-3028web.pdf for specific details on feeding management and ration examples.
Another option is to limit-graze cows or limit access to hay for about three hours per day to provide cows with the roughage portion of the ration. The concentrate portion (see above) can then be provided in a drylot or sacrifice pasture.
In any case, work closely with your local Extension educator and/or an experienced nutritionist to ensure a well-balanced program.
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Western Region
Fall-calving herds
Main focus: Keep weaned calves healthy. Cows are on cruise control.
Reproductive management
- Pregnancy check. Cows should be pregnancy-checked. Open or problem cows should be culled. Avoid holding over open cows — even if they have been excellent producers — as typically the problem will reoccur.
Nutritional management
- Body condition. Monitor body condition of cows. The target level of body condition at calving is 5.0 for mature cows and 5.5-6.0 for 2-year-old heifers (scale = 1 to 9).
- Heifer and bull development. The developmental period from weaning until yearling time and beyond to the start of the breeding period is critical in terms of influencing the future productivity of both bulls and heifers. Both sexes need to be developed at adequate rates so that differences in terms of genetic potential for growth can be exhibited.
However, neither sex should be developed at extremely high rates as excessive fat deposition can hinder future reproductive performance and detrimentally affect feet and leg soundness. Our target levels of performance from weaning to the time that yearling measurements are collected are 3.0 lb.-3.5 lb. per head per day for bulls and 1.5 lb. per head per day for heifers.
- Weaned calves. Weaned calves should be treated to control internal and external parasites. We prefer to use a pour-on deworming product during this time as it will knock down the fly populations that start to become a problem at this time of year. Heifer calves should be Bang’s vaccinated if not already, and both bulls and heifers should be PI-BVD tested if that is part of your health management program.
- Pregnant cows. If late-term abortions have been a problem in the past, consider booster vaccinations for leptospirosis and possibly vibriosis at preg-check.
Main focus: Breeding season and suckling calf health.
Reproductive management
- Breeding season. Depending on desired calving dates, the AI breeding period should be close to being concluded. Monitor return heats for any patterns that may arise in terms of low conception rates with specific sires. Also consider using GnRH injections with repeat inseminations. In addition, be sure that cleanup bulls have been semen- and trichomoniasis-tested and are ready for use in terms of vaccinations and health, body condition, and feet and leg soundness.
- Mineral supplementation. Be sure that cows are receiving adequate levels of calcium, phosphorus and trace minerals that are deficient in your area. Minerals should be supplemented on a year-round basis and the period from calving until conception is the most critical in terms of influencing reproductive performance.
Many companies offer mineral mixes with a higher percentage of chelated minerals. These products are more expensive, but we have had very good results feeding them during the breeding season. Many breeders also have experienced good results using injectable products such as Multimin prior to the breeding season.
- Energy balance. Energy balance has a major impact on fertility. Thus it is critical that cows be in a state of positive energy balance, or gaining weight, during the breeding season. June is normally a month when cows will be grazing pastures that are of sufficient quality to maintain cows in positive energy balance without any need for supplementation.
Health management
- Treatment protocol. Treatment protocols and products should be on hand for scours and pneumonia in suckling calves. It is well-advised to have first and second treatment options for both conditions. Early summer is typically the time of the year many producers experience the most problems with pneumonia in young calves. Monitor calves closely and be quick and aggressive with treatment as young calves will go downhill quickly.
General management
- Castrate bottom-end bull calves. Producers should consider castrating the bottom end of their bull calves at 2 to 3 months of age when they receive their first round of vaccinations. Some producers are reluctant to do this because of the impact that it has on contemporary groups and performance records. However, there is typically more profit in selling a weaned steer calf vs. a cull yearling bull that has accumulated a significant amount of developmental costs.
- Pinkeye prevention. The incidence of pinkeye can be reduced by clipping tall, mature grasses; controlling flies with dust bags, pour-ons, and/or fly tags; and treating problems quickly and aggressively. Our preferred treatment is an injection of approximately 2 cc (mixture of 90% penicillin and 10% dexamethasone) under the membrane that covers the upper portion of the eye and to cover the eye with an eye patch.
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