You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April, 2008.
There are no quick solutions to this. You need to visit local restaurants, farmers markets etc and talk to people. Let them know you breed Miniature Herefords and ask if they would be interested in you providing an animal for their restaurant. Look into running your own store at a Farmer’s market. Talk to your local butcher, he too may be interested. There is no quick fix! This is a job only you can do. Promote your breed. Talk to people. You may be amazed how many people are interested. Finally…..look at the long term picture! What are you aiming to achieve?
A commercial herd can
- Provide meat for local markets.
-
Provide for local niche markets
-
Provide your own meat
-
Provide more animals for property pasture management
-
Provide a regular yearly income (big or small depending on herd size)
-
Allow for you to be very astute, in deciding which animals are to be considered elite breeding animals.
If you are considering supplying a local niche market with meat, you should consider running a commercial herd and keeping some elite stud animals to provide the breeders for your own herd and for sale to others as stud animals. It is a mistake to consider all animals of any breed, elite stud animals. Even if you are running a commercial beef herd, there are guidelines which are worth following. The following is not an conclusive list of do’s and don’ts!
-
Chose heifers that have no obvious conformation faults, Keep more heifers than you need at weaning so you can select in further depth at 12 months or later.
-
Select heifers that are able to go in calf early in the breeding season.
-
Grow heifers to achieve a condition score 2-3 at joining.
-
Join maiden heifers about a month ahead and longer than the rest of the herd.
-
Cull heifers with the smallest pelvic area. (According to Poll Hereford Notes, this is about 10%)
-
Keep heifers in score 2-3
-
Cull any heifer that required assistance at calving.
-
Weigh all calves at weaning
-
Cull poorest gaining calves and sell both mother and calf.
- Do you breed for stud and the commercial market?
- It is a good idea to keep records of your herd’s basic performance details listing traits your find important such as average weaning weight, average fatness at sale, average calving problems, average fatness at joining.
- Look at each age group of producing females by year. Keep a chart for three year olds, four year olds etc.
- Why do you need to keep an eye on what is happening?
- If you find that your older cows keep steady whilst younger cows are dropping off then your breeding needs to be looked at.
- If you find that you are getting a longer period of time between calving intervals and leaning cows at weaning you need to consider the environment, feed, and breeding direction.
- Remember breeding is a long term affair. Statistics need to be considered against environmental factors all the time.
- Drought may cause and extension in calving intervals in some animals more than others.
- It can also lead to more male calves being born.
- We had an article about Pink eye in the last magazine.
- Just briefly, it is caused by damage to the eye (dust, scratches from long grass)
with infection, (spread by flies, contact with other animals with pink eye…it is
highly contagious - Here are a few more suggestions for treating/preventing Pink Eye.
- Cream from your vet. This needs to be inserted every 2nd day.
- Powder or wash from your Rural Supplier. These needs to be applied three times a day
- Injection of antibiotic available from your vet. This is a once only treatment.
- Any of the above combined with an eye patch.
- The injection may be combined with stitching the eye closed so that the
natural tears bathe the eye continuously and the stitches eventually
dissolve. - Preventative vaccination.
An excellent site for those of you with computers and internet.
http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au If you then go to beef…you will get to http://tinyurl.com/6gpjew
Recent Comments