Keep the Best Genetics in Your Herd with Heifer Development with Joe Gillespie

Heifers are a big investment, so you want to set them up for success. With such a low cow herd number, heifer development is going to be a big player for your herd profitability. Miranda Reiman chatted with Joe Gillespie about sound heifer development to keep the best genetics in your herd for a long time.

In this episode, learn about:

• The three buckets of heifer development
• The best timing of vaccines for heifers
• When do heifers usually fall out of the herd
• How to avoid that loss
• and more!

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Transcript

Hello, and welcome to the Angus at Work Podcast. I'm your host, Miranda Reiman, and today we have a special guest from Boehringer Ingelheim, Joe Gillespie, who is a senior professional services veterinarian. Thanks for joining us today, Joe.

Joe Gillespie:

Yes, that was a mouthful, but you did a really good job.

Miranda Reiman:

Yeah, thanks. I had to practice it a few times.

Joe Gillespie:

Yes.

Miranda Reiman:

Joe, why don't you give me just a little bit of background about yourself and what you do in that position?

Joe Gillespie:

Absolutely, so I practiced for 25 years in western Nebraska as a beef veterinarian, and then about four years ago, I joined Boehringer Ingelheim as a professional services veterinarian. What that entails is my role is to support our sales force across the high Plains and northwest United States and work with veterinarians and producers to offer the products that we have available to make better opportunities for production and animal health. At Boehringer Ingelheim, it's very important for them to put cattle first, and we as beef producers across the U.S. do a fine job of that, and my role is to help promote that.

Miranda Reiman:

Excellent. Did you come from a farm background or what got you interested in that?
Joe Gillespie:

Yes, I started with a small rural cow-calf operation in South Texas, south of San Antonio, and moved to cow country after I graduated from veterinary school and have been there for 28 years.

Miranda Reiman:

Excellent. You know, earlier today we heard from CattleFax and they talked about the cow herd numbers and they talked about how we've lost a million head and they've talked about the weather that's maybe going to be an impetus that will help us rebuild those numbers, so we're really primed for a good discussion here today on things that you can do in your herd as you're rebuilding.

Joe Gillespie:

Yeah, absolutely, and I think that's real important to consider when we think about rebuilding the herd is that we lost a million from January 1 of 2022, to January 1 of 2023, but we also lost a million the year before. We have the lowest mature cow herd in the US since the '60s. When you think about that and you think about the value that may be created by that demand of having a tighter supply, there could be a tremendous amount of value in keeping that replacement heifer, developing her, and getting her into my herd and growing my herd back to whatever size it should be and keeping her in the herd. That's what we think is really important to talk about, the health and the outcomes that we can create by doing those things.

Miranda Reiman:

Why is it so important to put so much focus on how they're developed and those heifers kind of in that first year until they're a productive cow?

Joe Gillespie:

The key is the longevity that we can create by her getting pregnant early in the breeding season, that gives her a greater chance to maintain. If we look at that heifer as a general rule, we are asking her to do a lot at the beginning, but we are also asking her to do a tremendous amount of work when she reaches a first calf and has that first calf next year, and we want her to continue to grow to mature weight, and we want her to get pregnant again, and we want her to raise a healthy calf that's going to weigh a lot of pounds. If you think about what risk that brings, what if we did a better job of developing her at the front end and getting her pregnant earlier? What are her chances of making it through that next cycle? They improve. That's why we want to, as a company, want to promote and focus on how we can and what tools we can use to make that work more effectively.

Miranda Reiman:

Absolutely. It's an investment. When you are developing those heifers, you want to make sure that you get a good return on that investment.

Joe Gillespie:

Absolutely. If you look at fallout rates and when heifers that you developed leave, a higher percentage than we like leave after the first lactation or that first calf or the next as a three year old get lost. Really for us to capture value of developing her fully, we need five to seven years of longevity. We know from data that if a heifer will calve in early and get pregnant a second and a third time, she has a very, very high likelihood of remaining in the herd for a long time, and so what can we do to help get that jumpstarted at the very beginning?

Miranda Reiman:

That is a great question prompt, because I'm going to ask you, what can we do to make sure that they're staying in the herd?

Joe Gillespie:

What we think as a company is there's three buckets, if you will. One is management, managing that heifer, managing how we get her ready nutritionally and managing the stress in her environment, those things first. Second bucket is vaccination. We don't talk enough about the unborn calf. We've vaccinated her as a heifer when she went to grass with her cow outside. We vaccinated her again when we weaned her. We did all those things for her health, but now we're asking her to carry a calf nine months and bring us that live calf next year, and so how can we use tools to the best of our advantage, if you will, I guess, to utilize that to immunize her and protect her so that she has calf born next year.

One of the things that we have found is vaccinating, and we have some research with one of our own products, it's called Express FP, that if we can immunize her and get the highest percentage of animals in a group immunized, because we know no vaccine works 100%-

Miranda Reiman:

Sure.

Joe Gillespie:

We give boosters for a reason.

Miranda Reiman:

Mm-hmm.

Joe Gillespie:

If we have a product that will give a higher percentage of animals to have a protective amount of immunity to help maintain that unborn fetus, we're going to get more calves born next year. That's bucket number two.

Then finally bucket number three is that final touches of developing her, so there is great research to show if an animal is higher in body condition score, she's going to have a higher rate of cyclicity. She's going to cycle more effectively at the beginning of your breeding season. Or if she is at a higher percentage of her mature weight, so if we go from 55% of mature weight to 65% of mature weight at breeding, we're going to have a significant improvement in fertility. As you think about that, there's only a couple ways to do that. One is to just feed more.

Miranda Reiman:

Mm-hmm.

Joe Gillespie:

I don't know about you, but hay right now, it's expensive.

Miranda Reiman:

They said it's going to be coming down though.

Joe Gillespie:

Oh, I hope so but it has not been good. With high feed costs, high input costs, feeding more to get 65% is not what we need. What we need is the ability for that heifer to utilize whatever forages we're providing her more effectively. What's the most economical way to get gain and build that and develop that heifer? That's through conversion of grass, two pounds. If we can use tools to improve conversion, I just step over to the feed yard world for a second, that's what they're most worried about, how we convert pounds.

In the case of a heifer, we're looking for that same thing. We don't want to get her fat, but we want her to grow so that she has the ability to cycle more effectively. At Boehringer Ingelheim, we have a tool that we can utilize in parasite control, long range, which is a long-acting eprinomectin, it lasts the entire summer grazing period. What you're getting there is elimination of internal parasites over a long period of time, reducing inflammation and stress in the digestive tract, and when she does consume the forage that we're giving her, she is converting that more effectively into growth and pounds. Again, three buckets, management first, vaccination, immunology second, and then third, how do we get them growth to the point where they're going to be higher level of cyclicity and utilizing tools like a parasite control program to make that happen?

Miranda Reiman:

When you talk about those three buckets, is it a three step process where one is more important than the next? Or what should a producer be like doing first or just heck no, do it all at once?

Joe Gillespie:

I think you need to do all equally and why I say that is if you look at, you spoke earlier about CattleFax and the cow numbers that they reported. If you look at CattleFax's data, looking at commercial cow-calf operators across the US, the ones that have the most success are the ones that invest in nutrition, genetics, and animal health. We have a management with nutrition, and we have two buckets with animal health. We can't forget about genetics because that's an important piece of what we're doing, and frankly, our virgin heifer is our best genetics. I know producers that are out there thinking right now, "Well, my best cow is number 1320, who's 10 years old." Well, she's a great cow, but she's got 10 year old genetics. I want the newest genetics in my herd, so if I can use those buckets, get that heifer pregnant, get her into production over the long haul, I'm going to get better value from those genetics and better economic return.

Miranda Reiman:

That's a great point, that it's not just having a live calf, it's having a better live calf on the ground.

Joe Gillespie:

Absolutely.

Miranda Reiman:

Yeah. You've made improvements. Wonderful. Well, is there anything that I haven't asked you about this topic that you want to add?

Joe Gillespie:

No, I think that's it. I just appreciate the opportunity to visit with you today and I just think as we look at the cow herd and we look at the opportunity for regrowth or ramp up in numbers, again, it might be in the best interest of the cow-calf producer out there to think about, "Okay, if I'm going to keep my own replacements, how can I do the best job with the best resources to make that the most successful for my personal operation?"

Miranda Reiman:

Excellent. Well, as you know, the cattle business is really a people business, and we always like to end on the question of tell me something good that's happened recently, whether it's in your personal life or professional life.

Joe Gillespie:

Absolutely. My two youngest boys and I are going the week after next to Fort Worth, Texas to the Celebration of Champions Cow Horse Show, and I'm proud of my boys. I am the groom and the truck driver and the paycheck but it's a great opportunity for us as a family to engage and do something that we all love, riding horses.

Miranda Reiman:

Oh, that sounds like a lot of fun. Well, thank you so much-

Joe Gillespie:

Yes, thank you.

Miranda Reiman:

... for joining us today.

Joe Gillespie:

Thank you for having me.

Kasey Brown:

Listeners, to get more information to help make Angus work for you, check out the Angus Beef Bulletin and the Angus Beef Bulletin Extra Publications. You'll find links to subscribe to both of those in our show notes. If you have questions or comments, please let us know at abbeditorial@angus.org and we'd sure appreciate it if you would rate this podcast or leave a review to tell us what you learned or what was helpful, and share this episode with any other profit-minded cattleman. Thanks for listening. This has been Angus at Work.