Currently, the U.S. cow herd inventory is the lowest it has been in 70 years. Much of this is due to drought conditions, which have continued to decrease the inventory, allowing for market prices to increase to record levels. Any rebuilding the cow herd experiences over the next couple of years may be contingent upon environmental conditions across the United States.

Long-term mindset

Developing a heifer to replace a cull cow is one of the most expensive management decisions for cow-calf producers, leading to major implications on long-term herd profitability. For each ranching operation, selection decisions may be decided by one trait or a combination of factors such as disposition, genetic merit, age of dam, performance of dam, body weight of the heifer, date of birth, etc.

Nevertheless, these selection decisions should be made with long-term profitability in mind.

Personally, I like to look at it as the heifer’s net present value. Just like any capital investment, retained or purchased heifers are only worth the sum of all the income over their lifetime, including salvage value, minus production costs that occurred during development.

Cow longevity or retention is an important economic trait to cow-calf producers; however, longevity has a relatively low heritability. Although there is a lot of opportunity to increase retention rates in cow-calf herds, research showing genetic selection or management strategies making substantial effects on longevity is limited. That said, we do know heifer development and other management strategies such as heifer birth date can affect cow herd retention.

Even so, improving cow longevity is a challenging process, due in part to the multitude of factors involved.

Delays inherent in beef cattle production, such as cows producing their first calf at 2 years of age, result in cows needing to produce between three and 10 calves in order for the producer to recoup heifer development costs. Included is the opportunity cost of selling the animal as a heifer, which depends on cost of production and initial heifer costs.

With high market prices, breakeven (the time to pay off original development costs) will be greater for beef producers. Therefore, we may need to focus on how to increase cow herd longevity and how to decrease developmental costs.

Target weight

When the decision to develop heifers has been made, the question becomes, “What is the proper strategy to develop replacements for the cow herd?”

Traditional recommendations suggest heifers should be managed to reach 65% of their mature body weight at breeding to maximize pregnancy rates. In the last several years, multiple studies across differing environmental conditions have proved heifers can be developed to as low as 48%-50% of mature body weight with no negative effect on pregnancy rates.

Heifers in these systems are developed at a restricted gain [less than 0.75 pound (lb.) per day] while utilizing a compensatory gain or increased gain period around the time of breeding.

Long-term studies from Nebraska and Washington have indicated heifers may need to reach at least 60% of mature body weight prior to the start of breeding. Both of these long-term studies illustrate decreased rebreeding rate in 2-year-old cows for heifers that were less than 60% of mature body weight at the start of breeding.

With that in mind, decision on rate of gain or achieving a certain percentage of mature body weight needs to also consider challenges of rebreeding. There is substantial decrease in feed cost by developing heifers to a lighter percentage of mature body weight. However, there may need to be an increase in supplement costs for 2-year-old, first-calf cows to help achieve greater rebreeding percentages.

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