Considerations for Successful Heifer Development with Lee Jones

Did you know that developing replacement females to be long-lasting contributors to your herd begins well before weaning? 
 
Today’s host Shauna Hermel visited with Lee Jones of Boehringer Ingelheim to discuss successful heifer development strategies and why considering protocols well in advance of weaning is advantageous for cattlemen, whether purchasing or developing their own replacements.

They discuss: 

• The building blocks of heifer development 
• What is fetal programming
• How careful development of heifers can have far-reaching results
• And more! 

If you'd like to contact Lee Jones directly with a question, you can contact him at lee.jones@boehringer-ingelheim.com.

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Transcript

General:
Angus at Work, a podcast for the profit minded cattleman, brought to you by the Angus Beef Bulletin. We have news and information on health, nutrition, marketing, genetics, and management. So let's get to work, shall we?

Shauna Hermel:
Hello, this is Shauna Hermel, editor of the Angus Beef Bulletin, and welcome you today to this edition of Angus at Work. We're talking this morning with Dr. Lee Jones with Boehringer Ingelheim, and we visited this morning a little bit about healthy heifers and how we can develop heifers to keep them in the herd longer. Dr. Jones, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you have come to the position you are in at BI today?

Lee Jones:
Yeah, Shauna. So I just, before coming to work for BI, I came to work over the summer, started in June of this year, and before that I was extension veterinarian with the University of Georgia, and I worked in the College of Veterinary Medicine teaching beef production to veterinary students. And so been working in the beef cattle repro world for almost 40 years. So it's been a long, long enjoyable career working in this, and so the importance of just developing females for a long productive life has been a passion of mine for quite a few years.

Shauna Hermel:
Wonderful. Wonderful. Can you go over a little bit of the highlights of what you covered in the Angus University session here at Angus Convention this morning?

Lee Jones:
We looked at some of the different aspects of how to develop heifers and looking at different stages of life and how that can actually affect and improve or enhance longevity and just reproductive efficiency. Those two things for cattle people, whether you're dealing with purebred cattle or commercial cattle, they're absolutely essential. And we look at the different parts, everything from pre-birth all the way through birth, and then weaning and then developing and breeding. And then after breeding, I think it's just as important to make sure that we maintain everything that we've developed.

Shauna Hermel:
Let's walk through some of those points. I thought it was very interesting. And when you were talking this morning about the fact that it doesn't start at weaning, it starts way ahead of that. Can you kind of go through some of that prenatal?

Lee Jones:
Sure. So there's really good research that shows that a heifer's fertility or lifetime fertility is impacted by the follicle count in the ovaries, and that's actually developed within the first trimester after conception. So one of the things we want to make sure that we do is that we treat mama very well because she's nurturing that heifer calf. And so it's very important that we make sure she has adequate nutrition and the best treatment, and we don't have any reproductive diseases that can impact that. So that was a big part of the focus. I don't think a lot of people think about fetal programming as the initial part of heifer development.

Shauna Hermel:
That was kind of a big term here a few years ago. About a decade ago, it kind of came into play and it's kind of died down. Has it become less important?

Lee Jones:
Oh, no, it's just as important, but it's probably just not the most current topic. A lot of the discussion here is in genomics and advanced technologies. We still have to remember though, there's certain things are efficient or essential to make sure that we can take these technologies and apply them to a very productive female.

Shauna Hermel:
You bet. And so I would assume that some of that might go into play in making the decision of whether you want to buy heifers or use your own heifers. Because if you're not willing to put the time and effort into development, it might be a more cost-effective decision to buy.

Lee Jones:
That's absolutely critical that a farmer uses what we call a sharp pencil to make these economic decisions. They have to do the math and make sure that we are considering all the expenses, direct and indirect alike. And then sometimes labor is a big issue now, and some of these things that we talk about can be labor-intensive. And if I don't have the people, if I don't have the expertise and the skillset, then it might be better to outsource that to someone who has the commitment and has the resources to do a good job. I may want to select my heifers and send them to another location and have it done, or I may just say, you know what? I want to purchase heifers because I want to bring in some additional genetics into my herd. Or you could do a combination of both. So ranchers have a lot of options, and I think sometimes we don't necessarily consider all those options.

Shauna Hermel:
So if you commit to developing your own heifers, what are you committing to? What should you be prepared to make sure that you're going to put into your management program?

Lee Jones:
Right. So selection is going to be a big thing. Looking at the heifers, being able to assess those heifers, maybe using the genomic tools that Angus has available or just using the phenotypic tools that every rancher has available. Just looking at those heifers, looking at the background of those heifers, the moms, so the dams and the dam's performance, if they're really good cows that fit in my environment. And then when I keep those heifers at weaning, I want to make sure that I develop the heifers not just from a physical standpoint, but also want to work with those heifers so that they're used to me. I'm doing that stewardship and that stockmanship with those heifers so that they know who I am, they know that I'm their caregiver. And so you're building that relationship with your cattle, you're feeding them, you're looking out after them.
You have to implement a herd health program that does include vaccines. Vaccines are not the only part of a herd health program, but it's an essential component. A good parasite management program is critical, especially as we look at basing our production on forage base. Cattle get parasites from grazing forages, so we want to make sure we're managing that as well. Do I have the pastures or the facilities that I can commit to that? If I'm using bulls, have I got bulls dedicated to heifers? So there's a lot of considerations that I need to think about. Not all heifers that I keep are going to get pregnant, so there's a little bit of inefficiencies in the system, and so I need to do several things to try to optimize my development, but just to understand that there's some hidden expenses in heifer development that I may not be quite prepared.

Shauna Hermel:
Let's talk a little bit about the vaccination program for heifers coming in that say heifers that you raised your own. So they're coming up through your own operations environment and kind of used to that, but at the same time they're kind of naive from your vaccination program. What do you need to do to get those heifers jump started and when do you need to start timing that vaccination program?

Lee Jones:
So our vaccination program in the early calf's life is focused predominantly toward preventing respiratory disease. But the interesting thing is some of the viruses that we're wanting to protect against, things like bovine viral diarrhea virus, bovine herpes virus, also known as infectious bovine rhinotracheitis, they also have a reproductive impact. So the calf hood vaccination program can actually transition over into a foundation, reproductive prevention. So what we're doing at that point, when we wean, we've got them on this virus vaccination program.
We can use a modified live or we have to use kilt. A lot of that depends on how the cows are vaccinated, but after they're weaned, we can establish a good modified live program. We have time between weaning and breeding to get a couple of doses of modified live in them, and then at that point, we can either keep them on that program or we can switch them over into a kill program. It really just depends on the dynamics of the farm. There's no one single vaccination program that fits all farms. Every farm is unique. Every farm has challenges and exposures and risks, and we just want to design that program to meet those challenges.

Shauna Hermel:
You bet. Now, as far as buying heifers and bringing them into your program, what might you need to talk to either the herd manager or the veterinarian even of the herd that you're buying those heifers out of, what do you need to do to bring those cattle into an environment? Like here in Florida is quite a bit different than my home state of Missouri or Montana and some other areas. When you're bringing cattle in, what other things do you need to think about to make sure those heifers hit the ground?

Lee Jones:
Right. So it's really important to understand what kind of herd health program that they've already been on. Hopefully that information is available from the seller. If it's not, then you're going to have to try to do a transition work with the veterinarian, work with your herd health representative or company or whoever, and design a transition into your herd health program because ultimately you want these cattle as part of your herd. They have to be on the same program. So when they come in, there's some vaccines that I can give depending on the reproductive status. If they're open when I buy them, wanting to breed virgin heifers, that's one thing. If they come in as pregnant heifers or pregnant cows, that's another thing. So there may be some testing I want to do. There may be some diseases that I might be very interested. It depends on where they come from.
Do these cattle have BVD? Do they have anaplasmosis or something like that? So there might be a minimum amount of diagnostic testing that I do. I want to make sure that we get them on the same type of parasite management program as my cow herd. You've got a period, we call it quarantine of about four to five weeks when they're introduced to the herd. We don't want to just go out and take those animals and dump them right into our cow herd. They've been through some stress. They're getting transitioned. So bring them here, get them acclimated into our environment and our herd, make sure that they're clean and they're not introducing anything into my herd. Make sure that I can get their vaccinations up to date and kind of as current, as close as I can to my herd health program. Those types of steps are something that I'm going to want to make sure that I'm doing to transition those cattle into my herd.

Shauna Hermel:
Sometimes those wing calves can be some of the ones we forget about from a parasite standpoint. What kind of advantages can you get with paying more attention to those heifers and the differences between having those heifers in a dry lot versus out on grass?

Lee Jones:
So yeah, there's a couple of different, if you're in an environment where you can actually graze cattle on grass, most of us would... Oftentimes we think that's the lower cost. If you're feeding a lot of stored and processed feeds, that's going to be pretty expensive. The pens themselves have an expense and you've got to have feeding equipment to provide that feed into the bunk. But it also depends on where you are in the United States and the time of year.
It might be in the southeast, we can typically graze cattle eight to sometimes 10, 12 months out of the year. And so there's some farms that just have winter annuals. Sometimes like down here in the far south, we have to plant our winter grazing. So it really depends on the time of year as to whether I have adequate forages. We want to make sure that those forages are capable of develop and growing those heifers. We really want them to be gaining that pound, a pound and a half a day on grass, if that's something that our forages are capable of doing, providing that kind of nutrition. Good mineral program, obviously that's going to be absolutely critical just to make sure that they grow and they develop so that they're cycling when we want to breed them, and then they're going to reach a mature body weight at an appropriate time.

Shauna Hermel:
And with the body condition score goal target before breeding, what would you put out there for target?

Lee Jones:
Five or six out of... On a scale of one to nine, we're going to want them to be in the middle. We don't want them overdeveloped. We don't want them too fleshy because we're going to set them up for some problems down the road, just like buying a bull that's too fleshy. If they're really too thin, they're not going to be cycling. They're not going to be developed. So we're going to hurt ourself in not getting that heifer pregnant. And we know that the research, years and years, decades even of research that shows that at Heifer, that breeds in the first 20 to 30 days of the breeding season in their first life, those heifers are more productive over their lifetime than a heifer that waits and breeds the second or third month.

Shauna Hermel:
One of the things you also mentioned this morning, that it doesn't just end once we get the heifer pregnant. Expound upon that a little bit.

Lee Jones:
Yeah. So once we get her pregnant, we need to make sure that we continue to feed her so that she's going to calve in a good body condition. And then we also need to make sure that she doesn't lose body condition after that first calf. So that first calf heifer is the highest risk that we have for leaving the herd because if she's not in adequate body condition, she's not getting adequate nutrition soon after she has that first calf, she might not breed back. And we have a lot of expenses and we have a lot of effort into that heifer getting her to this point. So it's important that we provide that additional effort into her to make sure she stays in the herd, not only for her sake, but the calf's sake. Right? Because if she's in a good body condition, she's going to produce colostrum.
That calf's going to benefit from having adequate colostrum, get the passive transfer, and then that calf will also be set up for. So it's really important. I think it was Dr. Larson in Kansas State coined the term reproductive momentum. And so we want to build a positive reproductive momentum or a virtuous cycle, if you will, of just a positive cycle of effects in our cattle reproduction and in our reproductive efficiency in our cow herd. And we do that with proper heifer development and making sure that we take good care of them all the way until they're two or three years old.

Shauna Hermel:
As few heifers as there are out there, and cows as there are out there. We sure want to increase that longevity these days.

Lee Jones:
You're exactly right, Shauna, because if you look right now... At the cattle inventory hasn't been this long in quite a while. So every heifer matters, every female matters, and we need to optimize production now to the cows that we have. So you think about that because there's not a lot of people holding heifers back right now. The value of those heifers is tremendous, and a lot of farmers are trying to capitalize and capture some of that value, but at some point in time, we're going to have to start keeping heifers and putting them into the herd because our cow herds going to keep aging one more year every year.

Shauna Hermel:
It will. Let's hope we can get some of those calves started out right to where they can stay in the herd 10, 12, 15 years.

Lee Jones:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Because I mean, a commercial cattleman really cares about longevity, cares about productivity, cares about efficiency, and just disposition as well. So those four values are really going to drive the commercial cattlemen. I think Angus plays well into that.

Shauna Hermel:
Well, thank you for visiting with us today. Thank you for presenting the Angus University this morning. For those people who didn't get here to convention, they missed out. It was a great presentation. But I appreciate you spending some time with me here this afternoon to kind of go over a few of those. And if people have questions, I assume they could probably get ahold of you or-

Lee Jones:
Yes, absolutely. I'm a professional services veterinarian. Just started with them, so I'm excited to be a part of the Behringer Ingelheim Animal Health team. But yeah, you can reach me at lee.jones@behringer-ingelheim.com.

Shauna Hermel:
Excellent.

Lee Jones:
And they're certainly welcome to send an email to me.

Shauna Hermel:
We'll put that email address in the footnotes to our broadcast, and we try to wrap up our Angus At Work podcast with something positive that's happening in your life, and maybe the move here to Behringer was one of them.

Lee Jones:
Oh, yeah. I'm real excited to be a part of BI Animal Health. I've been using BI products for years, and the opportunity I was able to stay. I didn't have to move. So this opportunity in my region came up. I do have the East Coast, so it's quite the variety. Everything from Florida into the Middle Eastern Atlantic states and all the up into New England. And so there's quite a diversity of production, but it is really exciting and been looking forward to all the things that we get to do just in that part of the world.

Shauna Hermel:
Well, appreciate it. Appreciate your time today. Thank you.

Lee Jones:
Thank you, Shauna.

General:
Listeners, as always, thanks for joining us for this edition of the Angus Beef Bulletin Extra Audio. To access the full slate of stories from our latest Angus Beef Bulletin Extra or to sign up as a subscriber, please check out the link in our show notes. If you have any questions or comments, let us know at ABBeditorial@angus.org, and we would appreciate it if you would leave us a review on Apple Podcast and share this episode with any other cattlemen on the go. Thanks for listening. This has been Angus Beef Bulletin Extra Audio.