Breeding replacement heifers in CAFRE Premium Quality Beef Herd

It is essential that every suckler cow makes a positive contribution to overall farm profitability.  A rigorous culling policy is essential to weed out the under-performers and an equally rigorous policy is essential to ensure that the replacement heifer coming in is an improvement on the cull cow going out!  A key area of work within the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE) is the development of strategies for breeding and rearing replacement heifers.  Representatives from the NI Simmental Cattle Breeders’ Club recently visited CAFRE Enniskillen to discuss the on-going work in this area.

One of the simplest ways to improve herd fertility (assuming management and nutrition is adequate) is to utilise heterosis or hybrid vigour.  The Premium Quality Beef Herd is based on a criss-cross breeding programme between Simmental and Limousin.  Maintaining this crossbreeding method allows the herd to be self-contained and but only retains about 67 percent of the hybrid vigour observed when mating a first cross cow with a third breed terminal sire.  Therefore selecting the correct stock bull is critical.

Appropriate sire selection within each breed is very important as the effects of the selection will be observed in the herd for the next 10 years!  A Simmental bull, Kilbride Farm Taylor, which has BQI superior status EBVs for calving ease (direct and maternal), carcase and maternal traits is the most recent selection for the herd.  This type of animal should produce calves which are born easily with the steer calves growing quickly into market weight and specification while the heifer calves should develop into hard working mothers.

It is also vital that replacement heifers calve down for the first time at two years of age.  Heifers need to achieve 65 percent of their mature weight at bulling at 15 months (typically 420 KG for continental heifers) without becoming overfat.  This requires careful management, particularly during the first winter from weaning until turnout.  Ideally AI sires proven for calving ease and low birth weight should be used.  Heifers should be given one or two opportunities to conceive to AI.  This ensures that heifers calve down early in the breeding season to give them sufficient opportunity to calve down again as three year olds with the rest of the herd.  Breeding heifers at 15 months also gives ample time to pregnancy diagnose and finish the non-pregnant animals through to beef at a much younger age.

Further work in these areas continues at CAFRE in conjunction with early adopter farms, the NI Simmental Cattle Breeders’ Club and Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI).

Cull non-productive cows at the earliest opportunity.

Devise a programme to either breed or purchase superior replacement heifers.

Use EBVs to select easy calving sires to mate with 15 month old heifers.

Only retain heifers that conceive to the first or second AI – pick winners not losers!

Dr Norman Weatherup, Beef Technologist, Greenmount Campus, CAFRE, discusses breeding heifer replacements with representatives of the Northern Ireland Simmental Cattle Breeders’ Club and partnership farmers.