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Post by cjsfarm on May 12, 2014 17:50:40 GMT -5
 Well we had our last calf this week. 26 dexter calves, 16 heifers, 10 bulls. All were born within 2 months. 5 red, 5 dun, 16 black. Over 50% polled. Couldn't ask for better year. On a lighter note we had 130 other calves and lost 5. Not bad for that many calves.
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Post by Fran on May 12, 2014 18:03:28 GMT -5
Very good year indeed. Congratulations!
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zephyrhillsusan
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Caught Dexteritis in Dec. 2009. Member of this forum since Oct. 2013.
Posts: 1,502 
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Post by zephyrhillsusan on May 13, 2014 7:00:40 GMT -5
That's a lot of calves! What other breeds do you have? I'm sure you've said before, but I don't remember. If I read your post correctly, you didn't lose any Dexters. How does their calving ease compare to other breeds, in your experience? That's one of the selling points for Dexters, but most of the people on here just have Dexters, so it's interesting to hear from those that can compare to other breeds.
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Post by cjsfarm on May 13, 2014 7:10:06 GMT -5
We run a herd of beef cattle Simmental/Hereford crosses. This herd grazes on the national forest in the summer and winters on our ranch in the western part of CO. We don't see a lot of difference in calving ease between breeds, the deaths of the crosses is about normal for the industry. We didn't loose any dexters this year, but in the past the death averages were the same as other breeds.
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Post by lakeportfarms on May 13, 2014 7:32:55 GMT -5
I've heard from our vet and some others that this year in our area there have been a lot of lost calves and premature births. In the Great Lakes area we had a very wet cool summer last year, and of course our winter was pretty severe cold, at least compared to recent years. In some blood testing that our vet has done, he's found extremely low levels of Selenium in most of the herds and also horse herds of the groups that have had the most difficulty.
You had a pretty good record there, compared to one farm our vet mentioned that has lost (or had premature) 15 calves out of 77 in the past 3 months.
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Post by ladena on May 13, 2014 8:11:21 GMT -5
Congratulations on a great calving season! Depending on how much testing you do that could be a lot of tail hairs to pull,lol.
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Post by cjsfarm on May 13, 2014 18:26:32 GMT -5
We pull hairs on all the calves at 4 months, then test the ones we register. We have genotyped all our calves the last few years and do all the tests on our bulls.
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zephyrhillsusan
member
Caught Dexteritis in Dec. 2009. Member of this forum since Oct. 2013.
Posts: 1,502
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Post by zephyrhillsusan on May 13, 2014 20:37:53 GMT -5
By the way, I love the ad you run in the Bulletin, "New and used Dexters."  |
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Well we had our last calf this week. 26 dexter calves, 16 heifers, 10 bulls. All were born within 2 months. 5 red, 5 dun, 16 black. Over 50% polled. Couldn't ask for better year. On a lighter note we had 130 other calves and lost 5. Not bad for that many calves.
