Animal care and husbandry is at the top of every producer’s list of priorities. Even with the highest level of care, there inevitably are animals that succumb to illness or disease, cows that abort pregnancies, and those that leave the herd either by management decisions or natural death. These events are an important piece of the puzzle for productivity of the entire herd. 

With spring calving upon us, knowing ahead of time what pieces of information are needed to report death loss or young calves leaving the herd can help to provide more details for the calving season. 

How to report

While there are numerous ways to report data to the Association from using Login, AIMS (Angus Information Management Software), spreadsheets, paper submission or entering calving data on the mobile app, the same information is needed. 

For calves that are born, whether stillborn, dying shortly after birth or leaving the herd sometime before weaning, these calves should be recorded as a calving event for the dam. This means the calf should be recorded via the calving book and the appropriate disposal code should be added to the birth record. 

These calves require a dam, sire or sire group, tag, sex and birth date. If you have a birth weight, it can also be reported. In the calving book, you can add the birth disposal code at the time of calf reporting. 

If you have already recorded the calving event and the calf dies prior to weaning, you can go back to the birth record on the calf and submit a birth disposal code. You can also contact the office to have this information added. 

Reporting the calf as a calving event will provide the dam with a record of the calf on her production records vs. having an unaccounted year in production. By adding the disposal code to the calf, the dam will show the calving event on her production record, but the calf will not remain active in your herd list. 

For calves that leave the herd around the time of weaning, the best practice is to record a weaning weight, weaning date, and then the appropriate disposal code for why the calf left the herd. 

If the dam aborts the calf early or the calf is premature and dies, this information can also be recorded using a reason code for no calf reported for the dam. A reason code provides information for why a female did not report a calf but allows the dam to remain active in the herd. Reason codes can be entered through a mature cow data record or on the inventory list for members enrolled in Inventory Reporting.

Disposal codes

The reason an animal leaves the herd can vary greatly. The Association has a robust list of disposal codes for you to keep track of why animals are leaving your herd, and each life stage has a tailored list of codes. Within the list, you can either select the general category or select a more detailed reason within that category.

For example, if a calf is born alive but dies before weaning because of illness, you can provide the reason of “live, died before weaning — disease” or if you know more details, you could select “live, died before weaning — disease: bovine viral diarrhea complex.” 

If a calf is sold prior to weaning, usually in the case of a twin or issues with the dam, you can report “calf sold” on the birth record to record the calf was sold from the herd. 

The same format is available for weaning, yearling, cows, and bulls in your herd. 

Summary reports

For herds participating in Inventory Reporting and earning the MaternalPlus® designation, there are two summary reports for why animals left the herd. There is a report for each calves that are disposed as well as dams to provide insight year to year. The reports not only summarize the reasons why, it also breaks the reasons down by dam age to help you with management decisions in the herd.

For more information on why females leave herds for members enrolled in Inventory Reporting, read the February 2024 “Data Dive” where we looked at the aggregate of disposal data during the last five years.

Looking to the future

Complete data reporting, including the events for when a female doesn’t maintain a pregnancy and calves that don’t live, provides important information for your herd as well as provides opportunity for future research. As we progress the research on haplotypes related to fertility, records like this help to provide insight into this area. 

Recording calves that don’t survive as well as taking DNA samples on those calves is a key piece of information that contributes to the research.