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 Jul 3, 2014 22:20:46 GMT -5
I know this is Japperwoman's thread, and I don't want to hijack it, but I hope y'all's input is as helpful to her as it has been to me. When we went to AI our first heifer someone (the tech? I can't remember) warned us not to wait beyond 15 months old as she would risk getting too fat and it would be too hard to breed her. That was this heifer's dam. I was just looking back at her photos at 15 months (trying to look past her Feb. winter coat), and she was definitely stockier than this heifer. I'm relieved to hear so many of you say you have no problem waiting till a heifer is 2 to breed her. I can throw out the 15-month warning and wait till she looks ready. At this point I don't need to worry about her getting fat--and if it looks like that's happening, well, the bull is ready to go!
Japperwoman, I remember homeschool reports--not something to trifle with!
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Post by japperwoman on Jul 4, 2014 7:40:35 GMT -5
So, She taped at 450lb on the dairy tape and 460lb on beef. So let's say 450. What do you think?
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Post by carragheendexters on Jul 4, 2014 7:43:12 GMT -5
Susan, I think you said what matters when you said that "she looks small and slight". With that in mind, I wouldn't breed her, yet. In watching my heifers get bred over the years, I have noticed that they always seem to look more like a cow, and not like a calf, by the time they get bred. Their ages varied, but the look didn't. Yes this is so very true Genebo. When we breed the heifers they are looking like cows, though a little more lithe and fresh looking than an older cow. No longer looking like calves. Have you noticed though, or at least I should say I have noticed, that our chondro carrier heifers look like small adult cows from a very young age, they lose the baby calf look very early on in life. They seem to mature in looks much earlier than the chondro negative heifers.
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Post by carragheendexters on Jul 4, 2014 7:49:54 GMT -5
Go by the beef tape, for me they seem to work best for Dexters, as long as I pull them pretty tight. They seem to correlate fairly well with scales. 460lb is a reasonable weight for a heifer, she seems as if she normal weight for age. Sounds like she is pretty average to what I am used to in size. If the bull is truly only 800lb, she may be alright. Still, I would pull her out once he had bred her once, personally I don't like a bull to keep mating a heifer over and over. He has no other cows in heat around to distract him so he will hound her.
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Post by carragheendexters on Jul 4, 2014 7:59:25 GMT -5
Hey Susan, don't forget you control what goes in her mouth LOL. Yes, they can get fat, but come winter they will lose it again. Just control what she eats. With ours, I seem to get more fat cows than what I get fat heifers. To be honest, so far since we've had them (touch wood) we haven't had any real problems with fertility, even when they are roly poly fat. Nor calving really. Only once, when one heifer was downright obese, spring had been a phenomenal season, and she was only 2 yr old but she had so much fat around her birth canal, that the calf got stuck, and we had to pull it. The calf was also an extremely fat chondro calf. Not a big calf, just very fat.
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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 Jul 5, 2014 14:41:03 GMT -5
japperwoman, I looked up in my records, and Macree was a year old on June 5 and weighed 437 lbs. and was 39 3/8" tall at the hips. I looked for your thread on KFC because Kim Newswanger shared her heifers' weights at 11-13 months (but I couldn't find it); Macree was right in line with hers.
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Post by japperwoman on Jul 5, 2014 19:20:34 GMT -5
I am pretty sure she said at 11-13 months they were 300-365. Hope that helps :-)
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