? about weaning

this might be a dumb ? but at what age do people wean their calves i have herd 3 months and up i think 4 and 5 but what are the draw backs and plus in this. I'm trying 2 decide when 2 wean mine . thank s4 the info

I think a lot of things factor in to when people wean. For us, it depends on the grass situation, when we put up our silage and our schedule! In a perfect world, we wean at about 6 months. We don't show much and this is when we have the best time of year for weaning. However, in drought years we have weaned at 4-5 months and last year we had a terrible wet fall and couldn't get silage up and didn't wean until 8+ months. I think many of those who are working with show calves wean around 4 months to give the calves a head start.

It really depends on the individual calf, if its got a lot of grow we take it off earlier, and if not we leave it on longer. We will wean our hereford heifer at 5 months and our maine anjou at 6. But there is a world of difference between the twos weights and bdays are within a month.

Usually wean sale steers at 5 months - give or take a couple weeks, depending on age and time.  Then around 6-7 on replacements, they get weaned at the same time as we ship the market calves.  We have weaned replacements earlier in some dry years just to try and make life a little easier on the cows.
That 180 day mark  just seems to be the sweet spot for us,  major fall work is outta the way, usually a little cooler and not as dusty in the pens. 

If you have plenty of grass it all depends on how much you want to spend on feed, the earlier you wean the more you're going to spend.  If you are weaning show calves those usually come off a little earlier and you can justify the cost, people like to see them full and they will need the extra feed. 

yea i have about 30 show calves to wean right now their all 4 to 5 months . i have 1 may but idk what i'm goin 2 do with her yet but i think the rest will cum off with in the next week. thanks 4 the help

I've weaned may calves at that age before.  They seem to take it better than some of the older calves, only thing is if in to big a group they will get pushed around a bit.  Just have to put them in a smaller group and everything seems to work out fine.