Why Holstein Heifers?
This actually relates to an advanced grazing topic. One of the challenges as you raise more grass is figuring how to “market” it. We are looking for ways to expand our operation, but we don’t want to milk more cattle. On April 24th, 1998, we purchased 21 Holstein heifers through the Manchester sale barn. All were calfhood vaccinated and had been checked to be breeders. Seventeen of these heifers weighed 800 lbs, and four weighed 500 lbs. The plan was to expose the 17 bigger heifers immediately and sell them as bred heifers in the fall. We hoped to grow the 500-lb heifers and sell them as breeding age heifers in the fall. Pertinent questions and our answers – 1) Why Holstein heifers? Our expertise is with Holsteins. We know the market, we know how they perform in our pasture program, we owned a Holstein bull to breed them to, and we could keep any heifer that doesn’t remain salable and use her in our dairy. 2) Why 500-lb and 800-lb heifers? We have not had good luck putting heifers less
