Embryos in Virgin Heifer Recips

[creativecattle]

What are everyone's thoughts about putting embryos in virgin heifers. Birthweight shouldn't be an issue, and they are commercial heifers that we raised ourselves, so not like we are picking something up at the sale barn. Curious how many of you have taken the risk?

 

[Freddy]

In our country and my opinion there is better ways ,young females like that just don't quite have the power to give you for what I expect out of a recipient cow .....

 

[b_kackley]

I did it once and won't do it again. I highly recommend using cows. Heifers will be heifers.

 

[justintime]

My ET vets tell me that they get more pregnancies from virgin heifers. But I have never used heifers as I am always thinking that after the expense of getting to the ET calf being born that I want that calf to have as much opportunity to develop and usually that means on a recip mom that has had at least 1 previous calf. In some cases, I think heifers can be a good option, but I would think you would also have to be very careful as to what genetics you implant. Calving issues take all the fun out of them!

 

[drl]

I have used heifers for recips the last two years. I used my own angus cows as donors that have some calving ease to them and used proven calving ease bulls. I had all purebred angus calves the first year and had some dream catchers and I80s the second year. They calved almost easier then when I AI bred the heifers the year before because the cow side was calving ease too. I would not plan on buying embryos to put it for this since they are heifers. I am doing this for calving ease and to make future replacements from the resulting calves. My conception rates were 70% the second year when we kept the heifers home and kept them on same feed and didn't haul them to pasture.