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There were a lot of questions around managing heifers for two-year-old calving at our livestock demos at the Ploughing Championships last week. Heifer calves that will be kept for breeding should be run as a separate group for management. To get heifers calving at 24 months of age, the key period to keep them on track for liveweight gain is in the ?rst winter. Separating this group now allows you to give them priority management.
The ?rst target to hit is to get the heifer to 60% of mature cow weight by 15 months of age. If the average cow weight is 650kg, then heifers should weigh a minimum of 390kg at breeding. Getting heifers to target breeding weight prevents the animal from becoming stunted and increases the chance of getting heifers back in-calf again. Meeting this target weight is a reasonable expectation.
At 15 months, the heifer is 450 days old. Given that the calf starts with a birth weight of around 40kg, the animal needs to gain around 350kg of liveweight in 450 days, which is a daily gain of 0.77kg/day from birth.
Take the example of a March-born heifer calf being weaned and housed now at 260kg liveweight; it needs to gain around 0.55kg/day while housed. Over a 180-day winter and allowing for 30 days with no gain post-weaning, the heifer should weigh 340kg when turned out to grass next spring. This leaves around 50kg of weight gain required from grass before breeding which should be easily achieved.
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