Dairy embryo's... beef recips?

Question

I have a small herd of 20 crossbred beef heifers dropping their first calf now. I used art. insem. on these cattle to drop an easy calf for their first calving. I have plans to use these cattle as recip's when it is time to breed them back and implant dairy embryo's of which I have in the tank.

Has anyone had experience in using recips for dairy calves? When I was on the dairy we would always take the calf on day 1 and put them in a calf hutch as the cow entered the milking string. I am curious as to how the dairy calves would do nursing the cow or if I need to raise them in a hutch as we have in the past.

With the pedigrees of the embryo's I intend to tame the calves for leading and showing at various dairy shows. Any thoughts or input from those that may have raised cattle for showring purposes?

Answer 1

What breed are your recip cows?

The dairy calves will have no problem nursing on your recip cows. Let your first calf heifers nurse their first calf and you wont have any problems with the next set of calves.

We flush a few donor Angus purebreds and use a mixture of recip cows each year. It works out well when you have a good set of cows to work with.

If you have problems getting your cows to nurse let me know and I can tell you a few tricks to help

Answer 2

frist of all you need big cows that can have a holstien calf these cows are hard to find brangus cows work good for this if they are big cows 12 to 1400lbs. The calves will do what comes natural and nurse there is no problem with that hope this will help

Answer 3

A P gave you great advice.

Have you had your heifers pelvis measured?  Hopefully they will do ok next year delivering a bigger calf.  

If one of our stock cows lost her calf, we'd stick a dairy calf on her and they did great.  Your calves will do fine on the cow.

As far as taming them, you could try putting their creep feeder in a seperate pen so you can lock them in if you have problems catching them.  I suggest teaching them to lead while you are still stronger than they are!