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  To Hooter McCormick

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When raising cattle with profitability as a goal, you need to keep good records on each individual cow (what she produced/weaning weight of her calf, whether she bred back and if she’ll calve early or late) to know whether or not she is pulling her weight in the herd or taking profit from other cows in order to keep her. The bottom line in any livestock operation is not how many pounds of calf a cow raises but what it cost to raise it.

Often an “average” cow that calves each year consistently and raises an average calf every year for 10 to 12 years will make you more money than a high producing cow that requires more feed to produce her larger calf, and comes up open after her first or second calf--or somewhere along the line (after only 4 or 5 calves) because she can’t function on what your farm or ranch can provide in terms of feed. If you purchase extra feed for high producing cows, or run less cattle because they eat more, they probably aren’t making you money. Good records can help you steer your farm management and breeding program toward profitability. If you find you’re having to purchase more and more feed to get through winter, perhaps cow frame size and productivity has increased too much. Putting a pencil to it can let you know whether it pays to buy the extra feed in order to gain extra pounds to sell, or if increased feed costs wipe out the additional money from the bigger calves.

All too often ranch/farm records are incomplete. The stockman may keep good records on one aspect of the operation yet fail to take into consideration other important parts of the picture. This can give a distorted view of the profit/loss balance and things don’t quite come out as planned. For instance, many producers keep accurate records (and have a reasonably good projection for next year’s costs) on what was spent on major items like feed, machinery repair, fuel costs, vaccines, salt and supplements, etc. yet fail to keep track (or have a good estimate) of what family living costs might be. When making a budget or obtaining credit (with realistic plans for pay-back) all aspects of the picture need to be painted in or things don’t work out right.

CATTLE MANAGEMENT RECORDS
Your tax consultant or a financial advisor can help you with financial records, setting up budgets, figuring profit/loss, etc. but you are the one who must supply the accurate cattle management and production records that determine whether the final input is workable. The first step in lowering your costs of production (and hence increasing profitability) is to figure actual costs of production. Part of this involves figuring out how many cattle your farm/ranch will adequately feed, starting with the type of cattle (and their production level) you already have, and determining whether you are getting optimal production. Determine how many acres per cow/heifer your ranch provides in terms of pasture, crop aftermath, and how much raised or purchased feed is required per breeding female. Determine optimum stocking rate that best utilizes what your place can economically raise with least input (without a lot of harvested or purchased feed).

You also need to measure the performance of each cow in your herd, to know whether she’s a keeper or a cull. This means some kind of permanent individual ID for each female (ear tag, brisket tag, freeze brand--whatever works best for you) so you can record information about her and know exactly which animal she is. Total herd records can also be an eye-opener on pregnancy percentage--how many cows actually settled (based on total exposed females)--along with calving rate (how many cows or heifers actually calved), calf death loss/weaning rate (how many cows actually weaned a calf), and culling rate. Good records on pregnancy rates and calving rates can let you know if there’s a herd health problem like IBR/BVD, or a mineral deficiency, or a sneaky robber like vibrio or trich.

You need to know how many cows calved early in the calving season, and how many calved late, and why. In terms of calf health and improving over-all weaning percentages, you need to look at where your greatest areas of calf loss occur--whether at birth or during the first 2 weeks of life, or later--and work on ways to reduce those losses, in a realistic way. If part of the problem with early calf losses is due to weather (newborns dying due to cold stress or heat stress, or young calves developing scours in a wet, contaminated environment) you may want to look at changing your calving season, for instance.

Much of your record keeping will be done during calving season since this is the starting point for a cow’s production record (after you’ve culled the open ones). A good set of calving records can be done in whatever manner works best for you--whether it’s a notebook you carry in the field, or a ledger into which you transfer daily information from a field notebook, or computerized records. As long as it’s kept current and you enter all pertinant information, that’s the only thing that really matters.

Calving records on each individual cow can be very handy for future reference, and this should start with the actual calving scenario. Unless cows are calving at pasture unobserved, it’s easy to keep calving records--noting when a cow starts early labor, how long she takes in early labor, when she starts active labor, whether she calves fast and easy or slow, whether she needed help, and what kind of help. This gives you a reference for future years because you can look up a cow’s calving history. If a cow that ordinarily calves quickly and easily without incident is taking longer in early labor, this is a clue to check her. The calf may be breech (tail/buttocks jamming against the cervix) or have some other problem that makes normal birth impossible, and unless you check that cow in a timely manner you will lose the calf.

Memory from one calving season to the next, or even from spring to fall is not always reliable, even though there will usually be a few problems you won’t forget. If you consistently write down any important details at each calving, this gives you a much better handle on what to expect from each cow next calving season (without unhappy surprises or reminders) or enable you to make the decision to cull her in the fall and not take a chance on having the same problem again.
A cow that prolapses her vagina before calving or has any other problem that may require time and effort (such as fat teats or long ones the calf can’t get onto by himself), a cow that is too wild to get into the barn or bring in from the field if you need to assist her or bring in her new calf for some reason, or a cow that becomes unmanageable and dangerously aggressive when she calves, should be a candidate for culling. A cow may have a poor udder at calving time (maybe her teats balloon so much the calf has trouble getting on them the first time) yet not look so bad the rest of the lactation period after those teats are sucked down--and you might forget how bad they are at calving time. Making notes at calving can greatly aid your culling decisions and help you move toward a more trouble-free, labor-free, safe-to-handle herd of cows.

Also important in your calving season notations are recording birth date, sex of calf, sire of calf, and any other pertinant facts that can help you in future management decisions. You may want to add an udder score (what her teats actually look like at calving and whether the calf can get onto them easily), a calving ease score (unless you prefer to take the time to give a more detailed record you can refer back to in future years if you want to see if there are any abnormalities in her calving history), and any other facts you feel are useful in your record system--such as birth weight of the calf.

In some operations it also helps if you have breeding dates or insemination dates, to know if that cow (or bull she’s bred to) tends to produce calves with short or long gestation; in other words, what was her actual calving date in terms of her breeding date/due date? Later you’ll want to add in weaning date (age of calf at weaning), and weaning weight of the calf. If it’s a heifer you may want to make a note of whether it was a keeper (retained as a replacement female) or sold.

Other records that are vitally important are vaccination dates and list of vaccines used. Also record other management procedures such as implants, application of insecticides, dewormers and so on. This data can come in handy when assessing the over-all picture, to know if your health program is adequate or needs some tune-up.

Knowing how many cows calve in the first 21 days of your calving season, how many calve later, etc. can give you a clue as to herd fertility/nutrition. If less than 2/3 of the herd calve in the first three weeks, or you have a strung out calving season that lasts more than 45 to 60 days, there may be a problem with bull fertility or cow fertility. If bull fertility is adequate, then a closer look at the cow herd is in order.

A strung out calving season can be due to nutrition (perhaps not calving at an optimum time of year for good nutrition and not feeding enough to make up for it) or mineral deficiency, disease, genetics, etc. A calving season too strung out should trigger concerns about herd health and you need to work with your veterinarian and/or nutritionist to figure out the problems. In any system, there will always be a few “late calvers” for one reason or another and it is often wise to cull them, since they often tend to calve late in future, or may have offspring that are also less fertile than average. Good records enable you to see the problems, or identify the cows that are outside the parameter of your various goals, enabling you to do a better job of management, culling, and heifer selection for the future.