We have made it to June and for many spring calving herds we have, or soon will, be turning the bulls in to start the breeding season.  Although we are on the early side of summer, many will be asking in a couple of months, “just where did the summer go?”  It happens every year.  So to help make sure we stay on top of our summer cow management tasks I have a few reminders below to keep your herd producing those valuable calves that will reward your efforts.

1. Check your bulls:  Make sure you are observing them interacting with cows, finding cows in heat and that they have no physical injuries or lack of desire preventing them from servicing the herd.  Any sort of deficiency in your bull power will mean fewer and/or later calves next calving season and you can’t fix it then.  You have to be on top of it now.  It is especially critical in small pastures where you may only have one bull for the entire group of cows. 
2. Don’t let the mineral run out:  Whether you are providing loose mineral from a bag, or have moved to supplying vitamins & mineral with low moisture blocks like CRYSTALYX^®, it is critical to make sure there is product available at all times, especially going into the breeding season.  A quick note on using low moisture blocks for summer mineral delivery: our research has shown a substantial improvement in the number of cows actually coming to the mineral supplement when CRYSTALYX^® was used compared to loose minerals under extensive grazing conditions.  We are convinced the palatability of low-moisture blocks helps attract cattle to the supplement and provides a much more uniform consumption across the entire herd.  If you haven’t tried it, I would invite you to consider using it this summer to see how you get along with a low moisture block delivery.
3. Manage your fly control program:  A feed through program using IGR or Rabon_^® can help control flies and provide for greater calf gains during the summer months.  If you have been on a feed through program from the start of the summer you will want to simply make sure the supplement is available at all times.  If you are starting a feed through program after the flies are out, you will want to provide the supplement containing either IGR or Rabon^® and then use a knock-down spray treatment to take care of the adult flies that are already on the cattle.  It will take one or two treatments initially to take care of these existing adult flies as the feed through products then eliminate any future flies from developing in the manure of treated cattle.  Once again, CRYSTALYX^® has several products that can deliver fly control as a protein or as a mineral/vitamin supplement in one convenient, consistently consumed, weather resistant and waste proof product.
4. Monitor your pastures for forage quality and quantity:  Depending upon the types of forages that you are grazing know when to move cattle to a new pasture in order to maintain the productivity of your forage resources from year to year.  Forage types, grazing systems and variability in annual growing conditions make this impossible to provide a “one size fits all” recommendation that has any credibility.  The main thing is to be actively involved in monitoring your pastures and beef cow condition throughout the summer to be proactive with your decisions rather than reactive.  Most cases of “catch-up” in both range and cow condition prove to be costly.
5. Monitor your cow body condition:  While grazing practices and forages vary widely across North America, recommendations on Cow Body Condition are much more consistent when evaluating nutritional effects on Reproduction.  This is an area where we have developed an App for your smart phone that can help easily monitor cows within your herd from season to season.  Simply take photos of some of the cows within your herd and score them using comparative example photos.  You then have a stored photo that you can compare with at any point in time going forward.  Talk about a history of a cow.  It can be documented as many times as you want to take photos.  Evaluating condition scores can be very helpful if your pastures start drying out early or as you enter the fall.  Use it to measure the overall nutrition program that your forages are providing for your herd. 

These are just a few key areas that producers should be closely monitoring during the summer months.  They are areas that can impact your returns not only this year, but next year’s calf crop or future pasture health and productivity as well.  We all know how good the calf prices have been in recent years and the current situation is probably near, if not at the peak.  All of these reminders can help you cash in on the added weight gain with healthy, growthy calves as well as cows that breed on time and go into the fall/winter in great shape.  The key is to be proactive.

 Rabon^® is a registered trademark of Bayer Animal Health.