When we pregnancy checked our cows the day after Christmas we did not get good news. Nearly 90% of our cows were called open. UGH!! This was a huge blow to us. This meant that the calf crop we had counted on being born in May and June was simply not going to happen.
We then had to decide what our next course of action was; were we going to sell them as open cows, put them in a feedlot and feed them out or try to breed them again. We decided to get a different bull and try to breed the cows in hopes that the bull was the problem.
We turned a bull in with the cows for 60 days and then played the waiting game. Thankfully we didn’t have to wait too terribly long as we decided to use Genex Blood Pregnancy Test to determine which cows were bred. Getting the results so quickly enabled us to go ahead and sell the cows that were now bred (90% of those that had previously been open) but had moved from calving in May/June to calving in late fall.
Selling those short bred cows gave us the opportunity to reinvest that money into a few other enterprises. In future posts, I look forward to telling you how we turned those “lemons into lemonade” or in this case open cows into ewes, cows and a hoop house.
At one time or another we will all be handed a bad situation, it is our attitude that determines how we will handle this. Are we willing to turn lemons into lemonade?
Have a blessed day!
Jennifer
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