buying cattle with an environment change

[braunvieh]

We occasionally buy cattle from other regions of the country and many times it is a significant environment change. With bred cows, it seems we have a hard time getting them bred back after calving, at least for a year until they adjust to the climate. We wondered if it would be best to buy open heifers that have a whole year of time in our world before calving in rebreeding. Problem is you have so long to wait for a return on investment. What do you do?

 

[ROAD WARRIOR]

I have also had trouble bringing western mature cows back here. Always have got them bred back but they usually look like hell for that first year. The best luck I have is to buy heifer calves in the fall and winter them here. I think it is less of a shock to their system (nutritionally) and they climatize better. Most of the females I buy come from the west so that is the bulk of my experience. The few I have gotten from the East or south don't usually have much problem adjusting reguardless of their age. RW

 

[sjcattleco]

as a rule you can easily move cows from East to West but not back.  western cows do not have the rumen capacity of eastern cows and are not used to eating as much to stay productive... Bulls on the other hand do better than cows. I too have found that If you winter them and feed them your own hay they do much better the next Spring.  This fescue we have here in Ohio is really hard on western cows that have never seen it.. Sore feet, breeding problems, rough hair coats, High body temps,  its really hard on them.

 

[OH HSC]

I think all of these statements are accurate. I have even had trouble bringing in cows from Indiana and Western Ohio to Southern Ohio. I think the statement on fescue is very accurate. I have had less trouble  in the past few years, but I think that this is due to having added a lot of clover to my pastures. This seems to help. It is more difficult for me to get cows AI'd the first year that we have them. As a suggestion,  make sure they have supplemental feeds and a good mineral program to help them make the adjustment. Where I live, cattle have to have a higher energy intake just to get around the pasture due to all of the hills. Western cattle seem to have a real difficult time with my pasture and hay program. I do agree that heifers are a little easier to make adjustments.

 

[justintime]

I am finding the exact opposite thing here. I purchase a lot of cattle in Ontario and other parts of eastern Canada and eastern  US and I always find that it takes close to two years to get them acclimatized. They usually look like Indian dogs for the first year. I have always got them rebred, but it usually takes some time to  get them looking right. Some just never make the transition.

 

[Show Dad]

R&R - over the years I have seen cattle come to western Kansas from New Mexico and Texas and thrive. While at the same time some from the southeast part of the country, like Georgia, just never cost out.

I know this might seem expensive and time consuming but if you want to go after certain genetics, go get some embryos and raise them in the environment they will live. I know you are already doing some of this now.

BTW - check out the blog update.

Gary

 

[Hilltop]

It may of been strictly because of our winter but we have some cows that came from quite a warmer winter climate than what we have, and some of them have had quite large calves this winter, January and February. We thought we had some bad semen last spring but maybe not! Used last straw we had on that particular bull so cant check semen. When we were talking to a friend about this he said he read a report a few years back that when moving cows from one climate to another it can take up to 3 years to adapt. Has anyone else seen this when moving cows to a colder climate!!! Maybe they thought they better keep eating to stay warm!!!

 

[uluru]

Like JIT in general the cattle I have purchased in Eastern Canada and moved to Saskatchewan have had some difficulty adapting and some didn't make it.
I have moved some heifers from Alberta to Sask and they to have not adapted as well as expected.
Is it climate, water, grass, hay?
I don't know.

They seem to take a long time to recover after calving and some look really bad.
So bad I have culled some after one or two years of the move.

I have moved an AI-ed heifer from Quebec to Ontario and she had difficulty adapting.
The AI did not stick and it took a while to get her in calf with the bull.
She also went downhill and it took quite a while for her to regain some of her condition.
It is my plan to move her to Sask after calving but I am not sure now.

I keep hearing of this issue and no one seems to have put their finger on the real issue.
Have any of the AG Universities done any studies on the effects of relocating cattle to and from various environments?

I have had some heifers moved from one farm in Ontario to another farm in Ontario and they went down hill badly.
The receiving farm has good grass and water and feeds well.
The cattle on this farm that had been there for a few years looked really good last fall.

Input on this matter would be helful.
Maybe there is a case for moving embryos and not the physical move of the live females.
That will be my next experiment from east to west.

 

[cowz]

When you move cattle from the rocky mountain west (MT, WY, CO) to the southwest (Az,NM, TX) it takes a couple of years and you really have to watch where you graze them.  Up north, the good grasses and forbes are green and the bad stuff is brown.  Down in the desert, the poison stuff is green and the high protein stuff is tan and brown. 

 

[braunvieh]

Uluru, you have a great point, have any universities studied this? I am sure we can't be the first to think of it....lol. We have noticed even a move of 200 miles can make a difference. We used to run cattle in NW KS and live in NE KS. We only had 10 acres of fescue in NE KS but would bring our yearling heifers down every year to breed them. They would eat and eat and eat that fescue and never grow!! It seemed they were grazing 24/7. They didn't seem impacted by it long term as it was just a couple months but change in grass was huge. Years ago we had terrible drought and sent some cattle to NE Oklahoma. The grasses were so different that the cattle that came back weren't much better looking than those that stayed in the drought and the herd bull nearly died of impaction.

I can't really seem to find the "perfect time" to purchase cattle that have to make a big change.