I spent a day last week dosing, bolusing, vaccinating, tagging and weighing calves. For the calves’ first worm dose I used an oral benzimidazole or white drench. They also got their second 10-in-1 clostridial shot. Anything that needed to be genomically tested for the BGDP scheme got a tag.

As I had a large percentage of male calves born this year, I didn’t have enough of untested female animals in the herd to cover this year’s quota, so I had to test a proportion of male calves. Probably a bit pointless, but nothing much can be done about it.

I also weighed all cows and calves for the new BEEP scheme. I always weigh my calves at this time of year, when they’ve been settled at grass for a while, but it is nice to be getting a few pound for my trouble this time.

Surprises

As always when weighing, there were good surprises and bad surprises, but in general I was happy enough. One thing that did surprise me was the weight of some of the cows. I am not really in the habit of weighing cows unless I’m about to sell them, and generally in that case they will be culls that will have been fed concentrates for a period.

I am not renowned for my big 800kg or 900kg cows, although I have a few of them. I tend to breed a lighter, easier-kept cow due to the heavy nature of some of my land, but I was still surprised that some of my lightest cows didn’t weigh much more that 500kg.

In fairness, these lighter cows were mostly heifers and second-calvers and tended to be milkier cows, who would have drained themselves a bit feeding their calves in the shed and are only now starting to build condition. But they are all scanned back in calf again and for the most part would not cause any concern condition wise.

Comparison

I went then to check my weaning weights from last year’s calves and do a bit of a comparison.

Cow A, a Simmental x Freisian weighed 545kg on 29 May 2019. Not the most aesthetically pleasing, but a good R grade functional cow. She weaned a Saler heifer calf last year weighing 330kg on 30 August 2018.

Cow B, a nice big Limousin-cross cow, the kind of cow you’d like, as they say, weighed 816kg on 29 May 2019. She weaned a nice Charolais heifer calf weighing 360kg.

Cow A weaned 60% of her own bodyweight. Cow B weaned 45% her own bodyweight.

Cow B will probably need an extra 5kg of dry matter per day to maintain herself and will be harder on the ground in wet weather.

I would definitely rather look at cow B, but which is the best one to have?

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