Decision-making on a farm or ranch never ends, and one of the decisions beef producers have to make year after year is when how they plan on weaning calves.
One option is early weaning.
A K-State Extension Specialist shares more on why it can be an effective management tool.
According to Jason Warner, “Early weaning in and of itself is a very effective management tool for us, really from a couple of different standpoints, from not only a calf management and a calf nutrition standpoint but really when we think about managing our forage and our grass resources. And then also, to managing the nutritional status of that cow and being able to allow for some flexibility with some management changes and some management approaches that we might be able to take later on into the fall or into the winter time period. And so, it’s something that certainly is not something that producers would necessarily do every year, although there might be some situations where producers would routinely wean calves early at a young age every year, but I think for most producers, you know, early weaning is one of those things where it’s kind of an annual evaluation or something that’s a decision that’s made on an annual basis.”
However, Warner says that drought conditions are not the only driving factor for early weaning.
“So, some situations where we might think about early weaning would be is if we’re concerned about what our forward supply would be for the remainder of the growing season, but then also too, maybe we’re not necessarily in a drought situation. We’ve got abundant forage available right now at this time of the year, but if we were in a drought situation— last year, we had less than abundant precipitation last year and we know that we had those pastures, those pastures were drought-stressed a year ago and so early weaning and just taking off that grazing pressure and removing that forage demand from the calf can help free up those forage resources and take the stress off the grass and allow that grass to continue to grow,” he adds.
Warner went on to share that early weaning calves can help lower the energy requirements of a lactating cow, decreasing her dry matter intake while also improving body condition.
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