Cattle Reproduction

A heifer calf will take 3 to 4 years to reach full maturity. By then she's called a cow. A Brahman heifer will most likely be ready to be bred by the time she's 15 months of age or older.

That all depends on when they have been bred. A heifer bred at 15 months of age would calve when she's 24 months old. If she's bred later than that, she will always calve 9 months later.

First of all, there is no such thing as an adult calf. A calf is no longer a calf after he/she is weaned. After a calf is weaned, she would be called a heifer. If it's a male, then he would be called a steer (if he's already been castrated) or a bull (if still intact or uncastrated). A heifer becomes a cow after she has had at least two calves. When she has her first calf, she is commonly referred to as a first-calf heifer.

A sexually mature female bovine that has had a calf is called a cow. A sexually mature female bovine that has not had a calf is called a heifer. Heifers are also those that are sexually immature (have not reached puberty), i.e., as newborn female calves.

Around 24 hours.

Selective breeding is a tool that takes particular characteristics of the dam that the producer wishes to expand or increase on, and desired characteristics of the sire that the producer wishes to bring into his herd, and produce daughters that, hopefully, exhibit the desired characteristics later in life.

To make it more clearer, here's a couple examples: one on the beef side, the other on the dairy. A beef cattle producer wishes to produce heifers that have better calving ease, better milking ability, bigger calves, and last longer in his herd in terms of fertility and better forage convertability. Heritability is important in these selections, as some characteristics are more heritable than others, such as bigger calves and milking ability. However, bigger calves are also attributed to what the cow eats in her last trimester. What the producer can do to obtain this goal is do a few or all of a number of options:

1. Cull all undesirable cows in terms of condition and health issues

2. Pay better attention to nutritive needs of his/her pregnant and nursing cows

3. Don't buy bulls simply because they're sold cheap

4. Introduce a cross-breeding program into the herd

5. Select a bull or bulls that have characteristics for producing good daughters (are maternal-type bulls, not terminal-type bulls)

6. Introduce AI into the herd if none of the bulls being looked at meet any of your sepcifications.

7. Introduce body condition scoring to find the cows that keep their condition and fertility better than others.

8. Other things I can't think of off hand.

A herd bull is bought and selected to improve the genetic quality of your herd, not to maintain it nor decrease it. A herd bull with maternal qualities is what the producer needs to produce daughters that meet most if not all of his speficications. Other factors listed above also help in producing desirable calves and also help weed out the cows that are hard-keepers.

The dairy producer wants to produce daughters with higher milking ability and better docility. What this producer has to do to achieve this is similar to above: cull out undesirable cows, and find bulls that meet these specifications. Most dairy producers breed their cows with the use of AI, so selecting bulls for producing these daughters and ordering semen from these bulls' owners is the only way to produce these daughters.

The estrous cycle of cattle is the period from one estrus (heat, phase of sexual receptivity) to the next estrus. For the cow and heifer, this period averages 21 days, with a typical range of 18 to 24 days in length.

That would depend entirely on the length of the mother. Calves are born the length of the mother's head. Sizes vary from 8 feet (under 1000 lbs or 453 kilograms) to 20 feet or more (3000 lbs or more or 1360 killograms or more!)

In the womb, yes, just like all mammal fetuses do. When the calf is born, the umbilical cord breaks and the placenta is expelled.

It is FAR more dangerous to inbreed cattle than to crossbreed them. Inbreeding exposes genetic abnormalities that would only be exposed if a hetero cow was crossed with a hetero bull for a particular genetic abnormality. Inbreeding is only done if you are mating siblings, daughter to sire, son to dam, cousins, son to granddam, daughter to grandsire, etc. It can also kill your herd as far as productivity is concerned because the more you inbreed, the worse-quality your cattles' offspring will be.

Crossbreeding on the other hand, occurs when you breed a different breed a bull to a breed of cow: for instance, breeding a Black Angus bull to a Hereford cow. The offspring that comes with this cross is the exact opposite of inbreeding: you get a very vigorous, high-productive calf that will excel above either of his parent's breeding in the feedlot or in the breeding herd. Generally cross-bred animals live longer and are much better-quality than those breeds that it came from. If you want a herd with great-quality cattle, use cross-breeding.

A beef cow is ready to be slaughtered at around the age of 1-1.5 years.

· An egg is taken from the 1st cow

· The egg cell nucleus is removed

· A body cell is taken from a second cow

· The body cell's nucleus is put into the egg cell

· The egg cell divides

· The embryo is then put into a third cow (usually the mother who has been chosen to carry the child.)

Yes, you just look for a big long string hanging from the cow's vulva with a reddish ball at the end. This is the placenta that is on its way out. She may also be hanging around a certain area too, and this will be where her calf is. You may be lucky enough to see a new baby calf at her side too, if you are patient enough.

Visit your local county extension agent for information. A local agricultural college or college that has an agricultural program involving dairy and/or beef cattle is also a good place to visit to get breeding info on cattle. The internet is also a good place to go with, but be sure to make sure you are visiting good sites and not ones where you can't find where they got their info from.

Here's some good sites I found for you:

http://www.thebeefsite.com/articles/cat17/breeding-and-genetics

http://www.agric.gov.ab.ca/app21/infopage?cat1=Livestock&cat2=Beef

http://www1.foragebeef.ca/$foragebeef/frgebeef.nsf/all/ccf1007

That's just a start, as there is plenty of info at your disposal if you know what to look for.

A newborn calf, a baby calf or just a calf.

Well, most vets would probably say 1-2 weeks after the due date, but it really boils down to what the cow looks like at the time. There are many factors that play into a late birth, sometimes the calf is backwards or upside down - it might take longer to ease itself into the birth canal. If this is the case, usually the pregnant cow is not affected. But if the cow is not eating, or if it walks slowly, or shows unusual behavior, then something might be preventing the calf coming out. If that is the case, I'd call your vet to see if what they say about it.

People in Germany farm potatoes, wheat, barley, rye, sugar beet, fruit, and vegetables. They also raise a wide variety of meat.

What part of "unmated" cattle are you referring to? Are you referring to females, or males or both? It's hard to tell what you're asking, but I'll do my best.

An "unmated" young female, or a young female bovine that has not been bred yet is a heifer. A bull that has never bred a cow or heifer before is often referred to as a virgin bull. A cow that has calved but hasn't been bred yet is referred to as an open or barren cow.

None. Calves don't suckle on any breast, they suckle on the udder (NOT "utter") of their mothers, being cows. Breasts are for baby humans, apes and bear cubs and possibly even elephants. But not calves.

Rarely. Most heats occur only once (even rarely twice) then not happen again until some time after she has given birth.

A calf that has just been weaned from its mother. It's a calf that no longer relies on its mothers milk for food and growth, but is now dependent on hay, silage, grain, water and mineral for its source of food.

Most Angus calves are born at around 50 to 80 lbs at birth, which is about the size of a medium-sized to medium-to-large sized dog.

This question has already been answered in two separate questions. Please see those questions in the Related Questions section below.

A cow SHOULD be producing milk after calving, since this is the kind of liquid that calves have to live off of for the next few months of their lives, or until they are weaned. All cows HAVE to produce milk after they've calved, no exceptions, no matter if they're a beef cow or a dairy cow.

However, a cow that is not producing milk after calving is a cow that could be malnourished (being too thin) and doesn't have the reserves to produce enough milk for her calf, or she's too fat, with too much fat deposits in the udder that are hindering milk production. Or, that cow is not being fed proper nutrition, and this is also causing her to not be lactating properly after birth. You will have to bottle-feed the calf until either the cow has been fed adequate nutrition enough to help her with proper milk production, or until he's old enough to be weaned while you put the cow on the cull list and give her a one-way ticket to the salebarn.

It's often called "first milk" or, more technically, colostrum. It contains important antibiodies and immunoglobins that are critical for the calf's health. If the calf does not get colostrum within 3 days after birth there is a very high chance that he will not survive.