Don't give up on adequate nutrition and pregnancy checking Dr. Colin Palmer | Back to Vet Advice
As both a veterinarian and a cattle producer I certainly understand the current crisis in our industry. There appears to be little most of us can do to affect the border closure and low prices so we have focused on reducing costs.
Few will disagree that the most significant cost to a cattle operation is feed. With such poor prices being received for cull cows, coupled with high feed prices due to drought, many have tried to feed more cows with the same or less feed than in the past.
Unfortunately, some have taken this concept too far and we are seeing a number of cows in poor body condition even after a summer spent on lush pastures. Many of these cows came through the winter in tough shape and with feeding a calf have not been able to regain the weight.
The fact is that reproductive processes rank about eighth on a cow's list of nutritional priorities. Basal metabolism, activity, growth, energy reserves, pregnancy maintenance (if pregnant), lactation and additional energy reserves all outrank the ability to use energy to have normal heat cycles and establish a pregnancy. The bottom line is that we are seeing a lot of skinny open cows at the end of the grazing season, often with beautiful calves at foot.
Body condition scoring is an easy and effective way to evaluate a cow herd's nutritional status. Convenient times to assess body condition are at calving, before spring turnout and when pregnancy checking.
Evaluating body condition during the breeding season enables limited management changes. Making management changes at calving may be too late to help the newborn calf get off to a good start. From a reproductive standpoint, pre-calving nutrition is more important than post-calving nutrition in determining when a cow will start to cycle and ultimately get pregnant.
Poor nutrition has a very long lasting effect on the function of the ovaries. In other words, even if you drastically improve the nutritional situation, it can take several weeks for normal ovarian function to return. We have seen cows in October that have not even started to have normal heat cycles. Furthermore, pregnancy rates are highest when cows are bred after a couple of normal cycles.
Another area to try to reduce expenses is veterinary costs. Many of my cattle producing friends are deciding not to spend the money on pregnancy checking. If open cows are worth so little, why should we ship them for slaughter? If we are not going to ship open cows why should we preg check? It's an unnecessary expense, right? Well, I disagree and I will tell you why.
First of all, keeping an open cow over just makes bad business sense! In the August 2004 issue of Canadian Cattlemen the concept of "retiring" unbred cows was addressed. The idea was to keep cows and not breed them, thereby reducing the number of calves in the marketplace and raising the price. As pointed out by the article's author, Charlie Gracey, the concept of keeping an open cow makes no sense as you must continue to maintain this animal with no income at all. Sure, she may get pregnant next year, but that single calf must cover at least two years' expenses.
Yes, pregnancy checking does cost money, but even at today's prices ($15/cwt x 1,200 lb. = $180) only two open cows in a 100-cow herd will likely more than pay for the cost of pregnancy-checking that herd. Remember, keeping them will only cost money in terms of upkeep.
Fall pregnancy checking offers one excellent opportunity to body condition score the cows. Cows should score at least a 5 using the nine-point scoring system or 3.5 to 4.0 on the five-point system. In other words, there should be some fat on either side of the tailhead and a spongy fat cover over the ribs.
Even though our economic situation has changed for the worse, it probably does not pay to abandon two tried and true herd management tools: properly feeding our cow herd and identifying and culling open cows.
Colin Palmer is an associate professor in the department of large animal clinical sciences at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine.
