Bohaty Farm Bulletin

December 2014

Bohaty’s British Whites— Quality You Can Count On Since 1983!

Bohaty’s British Whites

Walter & Nancy Bohaty

1371 42nd Road Bellwood, NE 68624

402-367-4741

Email: nbohaty@gmail.com

www.britishcattle.com

Our 2015

Open House & Sale

Will be April 11, 2015

Catalog will be on our

Web Site in February

Be sure to check it out!

www/britishcattle.com

Visitors Always

Welcome!

Merry

Christmas &

Happy New

Year

From Our

Herd to Yours

Playing King on the Mountain

A Link May Exist Between Dispo-

sition And Reproduction

(Mar 13, 2014)

By: Ryan Sterry

Determining if a link exits between reproductive per-

formance and disposition has been difficult to

prove. Anecdotally, producers and A.I. technicians

have noted that cows with bad temperaments are less

likely to conceive to A.I. However, putting hard num-

bers to this has proven difficult.

In an experiment at Oregon State University by

Reinaldo Cooke, crossbred heifers were divided into

two groups. After weaning one group was trained for

handling by being brought up from pasture to a pen

three times a week, for four weeks, so that they’d be-

come acclimated to people and going through a work-

ing chute. The other group was not handled during

this time and was left on pasture. Both groups were

tested for the hormone Cortisol.

This hormone is associated with stress and is part of

the “fight or flight” response in animals. When Corti-

sol levels are elevated, it is an indicator of

stress. Some research indicates elevated cortisol lev-

els impair the naturally occurring reproductive hor-

mones LH and FSH, and could help explain why

stressed or poorly tempered animals may have poorer

fertility.

Since these were young heifers not ready to breed yet,

you might be asking what could possibly be proven by

this experiment. The results of this study found two

important differences in the trained group that could

impact reproduction down the road. First, the group

that was handled had lower Cortisol levels at the end

of the four week training period than the non-trained

group.

Secondly, the trained group reached puberty at a faster

rate than the non-trained heifers, with nearly a 20%

difference in the number of heifers cycling five, six,

and seven months after the project began. Having

these heifers start cycling sooner can greatly im-

prove reproduction by allowing heifers to be bred

sooner and calve early in the calving season. These

heifers will ultimately have more time to recover

before breeding again as first calf heifers, and have a

greater opportunity to maintain an early caving in-

terval throughout their lives.

A similar study was done at the University of Flor-

ida by Cooke, this time with mature cows. One

group had the same worker walk the pen twice a

week offering the cows a small treat (range cubes),

while the control group was left alone on pasture. In

this case, the group that was worked with showed no

difference in Cortisol levels or pregnancy rate at the

end of the breeding season. However, when disposi-

tion score was looked at alone regardless of treat-

ment, cows with the most agitated and aggressive

scores had lower pregnancy rates at the end of the 90

day breeding season.

Putting a temperament score to your own stock is

rather easy. Use a scale of 1 to 5, with one being

calm, and five being very excited and/or aggressive

towards people. This scoring scale can be used

while animals are in the chute and when they are in

the pen. A chute exit speed score can also be as-

signed as animals leave the chute, with one being the

slowest and five the fastest. These three scores can

be averaged to give an overall score to each animal.

While a definitive link between disposition and re-

production has not been made yet, research is start-

ing to show tendencies that one may exist. A key

point of this early research is temperament and fer-

tility is not just a concern for A.I. breeding. Studies

using natural service bulls have shown the same ten-

dency for poorly tempered cows to have poorer fer-

tility. Bottom line, there are already many good

reasons to cull cattle with bad temperaments, to con-

sider disposition as part of your breeding criteria,

and train your stock to be handled. If you don’t al-

ready do so, improving reproduction is one more

reason to reconsider adding these management prac-

tices to your herd.

December 2014 Page 2

“It doesn’t matter if you have a large group of cows and don’t score them all,” Johnson said. “If you score 20 to 30 percent, you’re probably going to have a sense of the herd average body condition score.” How often should you score? Johnson recommends body condition scor-ing at several key times in the production year: weaning, 90 days prior to calving, calv-ing and the start of the breeding season. These key times are when the cows’ nutri-tional changes occur. Scoring every month or two during the grazing season also is useful. As an example, 90 days prior to calving is usually when a cow needs more energy to meet the increased demands for her unborn calf, she said. At calving, lactation will re-quire an additional increase in energy. Pro-ducers should score their herd at weaning so there is ample time to change cow condition prior to calving, if needed. Scoring at these various points throughout the year can help producers evaluate the ef-fectiveness of their pre-breeding and pre-calving nutrition programs. (Continued on Page 5)

December 2014 Page 3

Make time to body con-dition score cows Katie Allen,

Kansas State University Extension | Updated:

10/14/2014

The old tractor still runs, but because the fuel gauge is busted, you have to keep checking to make sure it has enough fuel to continue working. And whether you realize it or not, your cows function similarly to that old tractor. “Body condition scoring is looking into a cow’s gas tank to see how much energy reserve she has,” said Sandy Johnson, beef cattle specialist for K-State Re-search and Extension. “We need an idea of where she’s at as we manage her condition in relation to the quality of our forages.” A body condition score, or BCS, in cattle is a reflec-tion of how well a cow is, or has been, meeting her nutritional requirements. Producers must provide that adequate nutrition to their cow herd. If a cow is not getting her required nutrients, the producer can’t expect her to do her job well, Johnson said. Producers should score individual cows from 1 to 9, with 1 being thin and 9 being over-conditioned. A score of 5 or 6 at the time of calving is recom-mended to achieve timely rebreeding. Johnson said beef producers should regularly deter-mine the average BCS of their herd. Now is a good time in the production season, when cows are either bred for spring calving or have fall calves by side, to score the herd and prepare for management through the remainder of fall and into the winter. “Intentionally writing down and tracking (body condition) will help you know what’s going on in your herd and help you plan for known changes in your cows’ nutritional requirements,” she said. Sometimes it’s difficult for producers to see body condition changes occurring in the herd, especially if they see the cows every day, she added. Producers should simply take a few moments to score the cows while they’re checking them. An easy way is to write down the numbers 1 through 9 and place a tally mark by the corresponding score for each cow. Writing down the scores is important, along with the date, as it helps keep track of any changes over time.

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Whether you are backgrounding your calves after weaning or a feedlot bringing in new calves, accli-mating those calves into the feedlot can be beneficial. Accli-mating cattle into a confined feeding en-

vironment can decrease stress because calves adapt to the new environment faster. Whether the calf is newly weaned, coming off pas-ture or in a group of put-together calves, there is an adjustment phase when they arrive at a feedlot. Newly weaned calves have lost the social structure of the cow herd and put-together calves may be in utter chaos. Over time these calves will develop a pecking order and/or social structures, but for a social herd animal the intervening time can be stressful. Acclimating does two things for these calves. First, as the calves are introduced to feedlot, they will be walked around the pen systematically so they visit all four corners, the feedbunk and water trough. Typically they will be walked through the process-ing facility without being restrained and processed and then returned to the home pen where there is fresh feed for them. The second benefit of this acclimation process is that the cattle caregiver takes over the director role in the social hierarchy. Although calves may still need to determine their place in the pecking order, the director role has been established by the care-giver in walking the calves around the pen and to the processing facility, and finally by having them walk slowly in single file past the caregiver. This process will develop trust between the caregiver and calf and will make future handling of calves easier. There is beginning to be evidence that accli-mated calves perform better and have less disease than un-acclimated calves.

Acclimating calves is im-

portant first step Grant Dewell, Iowa State University Exten-sion | Updated: 10/13/2014

December 2014 Page 4

Results of adjusting feed levels for cows during cold weather

By Glenn Selk, Oklahoma State University Exten-

sion November 19, 2014

Beef cow nutritionists have known that cow energy requirements increase in cold weather. There is not much we can do about the weather, however adjust-ments in the diet of the range beef cows can mitigate the effects of the winter weather.

Many years ago, a northern Oklahoma rancher told about his method of maintaining body condition on fall-calving cows during the course of the winter. He watched the weather forecasts closely and increased the amount of supplement that he fed to the cows for about one day before a winter weather event and dur-ing the winter storm. Then he would return the sup-plement pattern back to pre-storm levels when the weather returned more to normal. For example, if he was feeding 5 pounds of a 20% range cube, he would increase that to 7 pounds per head during the wet, cold spell. Then he would return the level to 5 pounds when the weather returns to normal. Of course, his cattle had free-choice access to adequate standing native for-age or grass hay. Note that cow size may require that supplement levels need to be adjusted accord-ingly. (This rancher had moderate sized 1100 pound cows in the 1970’s when this was his “rule of thumb”.)

Research about this subject bears out this rancher’s observations. (See Table 1 below.) Results from an ex-periment at Kansas State University suggests several advantages for adjusting energy levels for cold weather. This information was gathered during the 1979 - 1980 winter. The K-State researchers used 60 commercial cows fed in dry lot and fed one-half of the cows a steady diet based upon the thermal neutral re-quirements for body weight maintenance; the other 30 cows were fed a ration adjusted for 1% more feed for each degree of coldness. Thermal neutral is generally considered to have its lower limits at 32 degrees wind chill index on cows with dry hair coats. For each 1 de-gree decrease in wind chill index, the feed would be increased 1%. Beef cows exposed to cold require more energy for maintenance therefore the results below indicate the effectiveness of making those adjustments. (continued on page 5)

Cowboy Logic:

“Silence is often misinterpreted, but

never misquoted.”

December 2014 Page 5

Body Condition Scores (Continued from Page 3) “As our summers have gone here, with lots of rain to no rain to somewhere in between, monitoring (body condition) would certainly give you a good sense of what’s going on with your grass, what the quality and quantity is as we go later into the grazing season,” she said. “This could be helpful so we don’t take too much condition off of that cow.” “So that cows can rebreed in a timely fashion, don’t take more condition off the cow than you have the time and feed resources to put back on by calving time,” she continued. “A cow needs to gain more than 100 pounds dur-ing the last trimester to account for fetal growth. If she doesn’t, she in effect loses body condition.” What does an optimum condition cow look like? This time of year a cow will still have a slick hair coat, Johnson said, which makes it an easy time to score her. “As we look at her topline, it would appear smooth,” she described. “We wouldn’t see any of her spinous processes. When she’s not loaded up on water or feed, seeing her last two ribs is still acceptable in a BCS 5 cow. She will not have any build up of fat around her hooks and pins, or no fat around tail head. Essentially, her brisket is going to be tight with no evidence of excess fat. She would have no muscle atrophy, which we would see on a BCS 3 or lower cow that’s beginning to use muscle for energy. So, whatever muscle she has, a BCS 5 cow is showing her full amount.” If cows are lower than a target score of 5 at calving, they will generally have a longer than normal post-partum interval, meaning they will take more time to rebreed, and the next calf will be younger and lighter when it is weaned, Johnson said. Managing body condi-tion is one of the things producers can use to maintain or even shorten that post-partum interval.

“As we look at a 2-year-old, we might want to have her in a little better body condition,” she said. “She’s lactating, she’s growing and still trying to maintain her body, and so our typical feed re-sources might come a little shy of what she needs. She’s typically going to lose a little condition as she’s lactating. That BCS 6 gives us cushion to get her rebred in a timely fashion.” Where can I learn more? Johnson said there are numerous reliable re-sources online with images and charts to help pro-ducers properly BCS their cows. An example of how to figure BCS herd averages is available in the latest K-State Beef Tips newsletter. Web site can be found at http://www.asi.k-state.edu/about/newsletters/beef-tips.html

Contact your local extension agent for a variety of

resources for body condition scoring and for help

in properly scoring your herd. Johnson said you

also can practice scoring cows at your local sale

barn, where more variety and differences in cows is

likely available.

Adjusting feed levels for cows in cold weather (Continued from page 4)

There are several key implications from the results of this ex-periment. Cows that gained 115 pounds in the last 4.5 months of gestation should be in one full body condition score better at calving. This explains the increased cycling rate by 60 days after calving. In addition the 103 pound weight difference in the following fall indicates that the cows will go into the next winter in better body condition. The amount of additional feed (in the Kansas State study) to account for the cold weather events that winter would be equivalent to 125 pounds of corn per cow. The current prices of winter supplements must be considered when adjusting the ration to match the weather. HOWEVER, the expected continued high prices of calves in 2015 – 2016, means that every advantage to improve calf crop percentage or weaning weight should be utilized.