Life Sciences Commons^™

Raising Dairy Herd Replacements From Weaning To Calving, R Bettenay

Bulletins 4000 -

The way heifer replacements are reared from weaning to calving can affect their ability to get in calf and to grow to a reasonable size. Under extreme conditions it can impair their lifetime yield. Because the culling rate of cows from dairy herds is usually about 25 per cent, the farmer needs to keep up to 70 per cent of heifer calves born just to maintain herd size. As the herdsize is usually increasing, even more of the heifer calves must be kept and there is little scope for culling heifer calves from poorer cows.