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Cattle Reproduction
Knowing reproduction of cattle is important to the herd, no matter how big or small it is. Cattle reproduction involves breeding, genetics pregnancy, calving, care of the young calf and weaning, all of which is involved in the reproduction of cattle. Questions about everything involving in cattle reproduction, including a little on lactation, can be asked and answered here.
1,831 Questions
What is the youngest age a heifer can accidentally be bred?
This depends on the breed and environmental and nutritional factors. Early maturing breeds and/or herds that have highly fertile cattle can have heifers entering puberty at 4 to 8 months, which, if not weaned or separated from bull calves or the older bulls, will result in a "whoopsie heifer". The oldest a heifer be to reach puberty is 12 to 14 months.
This is not a matter of how many it's a matter of chance in terms of percentages. In this example, any bull that is horned is ONLY homozygous, both phenotypically AND genotypically, for horned because the horned gene in cattle is recessive. The polled (non-horned) characteristic in cattle is a dominant trait both phenotypically and genotypically. So that means that any horned parent that breeds a homozygous polled parent will have offspring that are ALL polled. The only way you will get horned offspring is one of two ways: a horned sire mates with a horned dam, or, a hetero polled sire mates with a hetero polled dam (resulting in a much smaller chance than the first way). The question above is answered as followed:
Homozygous Horned (Hereford) bull x Homozygous Polled female = 100% Polled offspring.
I cannot use the Punnett square on this site, but if you use it on a piece of paper you will see that 100% of all offspring are polled. But notice that genotypically they are HETEROZYGOUSLY polled. This means they are polled physically, but in their genes their offspring have a 50% chance, should this offspring be bred to a horned partner, of having either horned offspring or polled offspring. If the offspring of the above cross were bred to a polled partner, the results would be 50% hetero polled and 50% homozygously polled. AND, if the above offspring were bred also to a hetero polled partner, you would get, phenotypically, 75% polled and 25% horned. Genotypically, this is 25% homozygously polled, 50% hetero polled, and 25% homozygously horned.
See, the most a cow can have in her lifetime is 20 calves. There is no way that she can have 100 or so calves in her lifetime to see this example work out. Producers have to go by chances of an event happening when selectively breeding cattle, not how many.
What does a cow vulva look like?
It's just a slit below the anus that has a little hair on the bottom part (called the ventral commissure). It does not have two types of labia (vuval folds) like the human female does, but just a single fold that protects the vagina.
The stage of the estrus cycle in which no active reproduction occurs is called?
Anestrus or Diestrus. Proestrus is when the female is about to go into estrus, and Metestrus is the period before Diestrus and after Estrus which the female goes out of heat and ovulation ends.
What is a young male bull raised for beef called?
A young male bull raised for beef is called a steer. Steers are typically castrated males that are raised for their meat and are known for their high-quality beef.
If a cow gives birth to twin heifers are they sterile?
No, twin heifers born from a cow are not necessarily sterile. Twinning in cattle can sometimes result in one of the twins being sterile due to fertility issues, but it is not a guarantee for all cases. It would depend on various factors such as genetics, health, and individual development.
Will heifer-calf twins be able to get bred?
Yes, heifer-calf twins have the potential to be bred once they reach maturity. However, they may face challenges related to their reproductive development and fertility due to shared intrauterine environment during gestation. It is recommended to monitor their growth and reproductive health closely.
Is a heifer 18 months old to young to breed?
It is generally recommended to wait until a heifer is at least 15 months old and has reached a certain weight before breeding to ensure proper growth and development. Breeding too early can lead to health and reproductive issues. Therefore, 18 months old is an appropriate age for breeding a heifer.
How do you tell the age of your calf?
The most accurate way to tell the age of your calf is by looking at his front teeth. A newborn calf will have no teeth; a week old calf will only have maybe one or two teeth that have popped up already; a 1 month old calf will have all 8 lower incisors already.
What age do you wean highland calves?
Highland calves are typically weaned between 6 to 10 months of age, usually when they are consuming enough solid food to meet their nutritional needs. However, weaning age can vary depending on individual circumstances and management practices.
Why are male cattle castrated?
Five main reasons why cattle (bull calves, bullocks/young bulls and bulls) are castrated are:
- To control the genetics of your herd by not allowing inferior genetics into the cowherd, as well as preventing inbreeding or linebreeding in your herd.
- To reduce aggressiveness; steers are easier to handle and less dangerous than bulls, and are not as rough on equipment, nor do they fight as often.
- You are apt to get more money when selling good steer calves than bull calves.
- The beef industry and consumers alike favour steer carcasses over bulls because the meat is less lean; bulls are typically leaner than steers even though they have a larger carcass.
- Producers tend to get higher prices for selling steers than selling bull calves for the meat market.
The one thing that people get confused about castrating a bull is that they believe that it is supposed to promote growth and increase marbling. The latter part is correct, but the former is not. Steers are not going to grow more or have a greater rate of gain than a bull will. Testosterone in the bull's system is what promotes growth and muscular development. If you take that away from a bull by castrating him, you decrease this growth, and instead get an animal that will not just be growing muscle, but putting on fat more easily too. A bullock tends to be harder to fatten up than a steer is, resulting in leaner, less marbled beef. Some people prefer to have lean beef, but others do not. As a matter of fact, the North American market will dock if a carcass is too lean, and if a bull is being sold as a slaughter animal, all due to the issues of marbling.
Do male cows hurt baby calves?
I've never heard anything like that happening before. I have heard sometimes of bulls becoming babysitters for calves occaisonally, but I've never heard of bulls being harmful to newborn baby calves. He may butt a calf out of the way if he's in a hurry to get one of the cows bred, or to set it in its place in the pecking order, but never to intentionally hurt it.
How long does it take for a cow's udders to dry up after weaning?
It can take around 1-2 weeks for a cow's udders to dry up after weaning, depending on individual factors such as the cow's age, health, and milk production level. Proper nutrition and management during this period can help facilitate the process.
What is the average birth weight for a calf?
The answer to this question primarily depends on the breed. It's impossible to simply average out any calf's birthweight from any particular breed, because there is a different average for each breed. This goes for crossbreds, as there are thousands of possibilities of creating different crosses, and millions of different birth weight averages, and, to make things even more confuddling, average birth weight depends on a lot of other things besides breeding: the type of feed the cow received in her last trimester of gestation; birth weight average of the sire and the dam; time of year the calf was born; climate the calf was born in; the type of topography the calf was born and the cow is raised in; what kind of stressors the cow was exposed to before the calf was born; the age of the cow (huge differences in birth weight between a heifer's calf and a 9-year old cow's calf); the list goes on.
But you still want an average eh? Okay, the average birthweight for a calf is between 70 and 100 lbs. Some calves may be lighter, like around 40 to 50 lbs, again, as mentioned above, depending on the breed. Small breeds like Jerseys have small calves, and large breeds like Chianinas tend to have large calves. Calves grow relatively quickly, and can gain 100 lbs over one month, again depending on their breeding.
when a calf is born, the average weight is somewhere around 80 lbs, but it depends on the breed. 100 lbs and up is usually considered a big calf, 70 lbs and under is quite small.
Cows are not newborn, calves are. Cows are mature female bovines. The birth weight of a calf depends on breed and the genetics of its dam and sire. See related question below.
What did the cattle do to wake the poor baby?
The cattle lowed to wake the poor baby in the Christmas carol "Away in a Manger."
Because if the selection for increased size in the beef herd. Many producers see that the only way to compete in the market and make a profit is to have large calves to sell at weaning time. The introduction to Continental breeds like Charolais and Maine Anjou have pulled meat packers in their favor because of their sheer size at slaughter. Other breeds that do not have this huge size have to increase the size of their cattle to compete with these new Continentals, and that means selecting for bigger, heavier calves.
How many calves does a cow give birth to per year?
Usually one, but occasionally she will drop twins, and even rarer still, triplets or quadruplets. But the average cow always drops one calf a year.
What is the role of the bull in a herd of cows?
The bull's role in a herd of cows is to mate with the females to impregnate them and help in reproduction. Additionally, the bull serves as a protector of the herd, defending them from potential threats or predators.
Does the bull in the cow family have anything to do with the calves?
50% of the calf traits come from the Bull.
What type of cow is the best for breeding?
The best type of cow for breeding depends on the specific breeding goals an individual or farm has. Some popular beef cattle breeds for breeding include Angus, Hereford, and Simmental, while some popular dairy cattle breeds include Holstein, Jersey, and Guernsey. It is important to consider factors such as genetics, temperament, and desired traits when selecting a breed for breeding purposes.
How much does bull sperm cost?
You get the sperm by the straw. And the amount per straw depends on the quality of the bull, how large the demand is for that bull as well as the breed of such a bull. Prices for semen straws can sky rocket if the bull dies and there is only a limited quantity of semen left. You will have to check your local bull semen distributor or any other cattle ranches that sell bull semen for their prices.
Well, for one thing there will be a lot of inbreeding and line-breeding going on to produce a herd; that is never a good thing. But really, you already have a herd with just two animals. In order to build up to a bigger herd, without any outside influences and in an ideal world with no illnesses, genetic defects, or environmental hazards, you'd have to be mating the sire to daughters and granddaughters, not to mention the dam herself, to build up your herd. The dam, if she lives to a ripe old age of 20+ years, will be able to produce maybe 18 calves in her lifetime. Of those 18 calves, maybe 50% are female. Half of those females could be mating with their brothers to get 18 more calves each. And so on and so forth.
But in reality, it will never work that way. A cow almost always lasts longer than a bull does in a breeding herd, and inbreeding and line-breeding is taboo unless you are working to purify your purebred herd. And many cows don't live as long as 20+ years. Many heifers aren't even kept because they haven't met the standards that the farmer or rancher had established for keeping replacement females; only 20% of all heifers born are kept back as replacements. And these heifers that are kept back cannot be bred to their sire[s] which would be the herdbulls for the main cowherd; they have to be bred to younger, smaller, and unrelated bulls. As for the bulls themselves, many a cow-calf operation steer ALL of their bull calves, and keep zero back as herd bulls. If there are any bull calves that are kept intact, they are all sold to other farms and ranches that need them more than the seller does. And, if one or two bulls are kept back, they cannot be exposed to any kin of their own: mother, sisters, aunties, cousins, grandmothers, 2nd or 3rd cousins, great aunties, etc. They have to breed those females that are unrelated to them. And bulls that are kept back are the best growing, the best conformational bulls that have great parents. In short, they have to be superior to the other bull calves that are born that year or to even his own sire to be kept intact and used for breeding. Lastly, many bulls only last 4 or 5 years as herd bulls before they have to be shipped off to the slaughter plant, because they tend to get a little too smart as how to intimidate and threat their human owner with their greater size and strength.
How are cows selectively bred?
A cow is analyzed by her conformation, her milking ability, mothering ability, calving ease, and her ability to wean a good-sized calf. The history of the calves she raised or that have grown into cows are also analyzed. Then the producer makes a decision of what kind of bull to use on her to improve her progeny that may replace her in the future. Bulls are selected based on their EPDs and their conformational qualities that should be better than hers. The calf that she produces should be one that has superior characteristics to her own, making it one that will be better for producing future generations.
What is the definition for cows testicles?
First of all, let's get something straight here: Cows do NOT have testicles. Cows, by definition (not colloquially speaking either!) are mature FEMALE bovines that have had at least one or two calves. Therefore, they are incapable of having male sex organs being a penis and a pair of testicles: cows only have a vagina, a uterus and ovaries to conceive, grow/produce and give birth to a calf.
It is the BULL that has testicles. Bulls are the male counterpart of a cow of the domesticated bovine species. Therefore, the definition of a bull's testicles is that it is a sex organ that produces the hormone testosterone that gives bulls their masculine appearance and behaviour, and are where sperm are produced and stored until being released through ejaculation. Sperm contain the other half of the DNA chromosome needed to produce a calf. The sex chromosome of a sperm cell can either be X or Y, and the chromosome from the egg or ovum of a cow is only X. XY = male and XX = female upon copulation and fusion/fertilization of sperm cell to ovum.
How do you get a cow pregnant?
Cows can get pregnant through the process of mating with a bull, where the bull inseminates the cow. This can happen naturally through natural mating or artificially through artificial insemination by a qualified professional.
