I was recently at a Business Development Group (BDG) meeting and we were talking about whether it was possible to calve cows at two years of age.

I can’t see why anyone would consider anything else, but there were a lot of dissenting voices in the room.

One farmer said he had tried it last year but he could not get them back in calf.

I can understand this can be difficult, and if you’re not getting the second calf at three years, then two-year-old calving isn’t working.

It didn’t always work for me either, and I have culled lots of cows because I couldn’t get them back in calf after calving at two years. Having said that, maybe they were better gone. If they were not capable of rearing a calf and going in-calf again, then they were no use to me.

It’s not always the cow’s fault. It could be that she had a hard calving or not received adequate nutrition post-calving. Or it could be down to some underlying health issues. But, if all these things are taken care of, and the cow still didn’t go back in-calf, the animal is not the right cow for your system.

Bigger vs. smaller

There were other farmers at the meeting who said you would have a bigger cow if you calved at two and a half or three years of age. Yes, you will have bigger cows, but do we really want cows significantly over 700kg?

Here in Fermanagh we need smaller cows and not bigger ones. I cannot understand why farmers on the wettest land are so hung up on having big cows, and sometimes it seems farmers here have a higher proportion of Charolais types in their herds than anywhere else. It’s nice to look at these big cows, but not so nice to see the damage they do. Also, these big cows take a lot of feeding to get them back in-calf – no wonder cow fertility is such an issue.

Autumn herd

In my autumn-calving herd, I have one particular cow which calved for the first time (at two years of age) on 8 August four years ago. She has calved every year around that date and again last year on 7 August.

As the picture shows, she is nothing fancy to look at, and the most she has ever weighed is 620kg. Every year she weans one of the heaviest calves, and always holds to AI the first time. She calves every year without any help.

I know it’s no good picking out one cow, but she is the worst-looking cow I have. If you were to offer anyone a choice of my cows, no one would choose her. If I was to take her to the mart there wouldn’t be much interest, and the price wouldn’t be very exciting.

Having said all that, if I had 100 cows like this one, my farming would be very simple and rewarding. The trouble is that us farmers, myself included, always tend to choose our cows mostly on looks.

Colour

Rightly or wrongly, I’m very fond of red cows even though the colour has nothing to do with the productivity of the cow. I have had some really lovely big cows which were just costing me money. Some of the most unproductive cows I ever had were super to look at, and were kept longer than they should have been.

I think it’s time us farmers worried less about having cows that look great, and worried more about the productivity of the cow.

If we want to make money at suckler cows then we must be calving at two years of age, and if we can’t do that, we must seriously look at the type of cow we are breeding.