About Us
County Impact Statements - Polk County
Beef Producer Taking Advantage of Programs
to Improve Registered Cowherd
Scott Sullivan of Wickes is heavily involved in two programs offered by the
Extension Service. Triple S Ranch is farm number 767 in the Arkansas Cow Herd
Performance Testing Program and also grows out two sets of Polled Hereford bulls
a year with the On-Farm Bull Test program.
Scott picked up the reins on the Polled Hereford program in 1997. His goal
was to produce purebred bull calves that would perform well in commercial
cowherds. Scott soon learned that growing bull calves was a little more involved
than he thought. He had some problems with cows that were too large and didn’t
milk like he thought they should. Culling worked on the poor milking problem,
but efficiency of the cows still wasn’t there.
In the Spring of 1998, Scott enrolled in the CHPT program and started working
towards some new goals. He needed to increase weaning weights, improve muscle
scores on the calves, and reduce the overall frame score of the herd. The
biggest problem was large cows that were not weaning 50% of their body weight.
Cows and calves are weighed at weaning and recorded into the CHPT computer
program. The animals are then ranked so that the top and bottom animals are
easily recognized.
Scott says, "CHPT has allowed me to make some management decisions that has
both saved me money and improved the performance and efficiency of my cowherd.
The On-Farm Bull Test is just another tool to help me manage my cattle. This
program has helped me improve weight and desirable conformation to sell a high
quality herd sire that meets the need of the commercial cattleman."
Scott takes all of the bull calves and starts them on the On-Farm Bull Test
within two weeks of weaning. This program consists of monitoring weights and
adjusting forage based rations to maximize growth and production of the calves
for 168 days after they are weaned. The bulls are tracked on an average daily
gain to determine potential for growth in offspring.
Triple S Ranch’s Registered Hereford Bulls
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Impacts
- Cow efficiency (pounds of calf weaned compared to cow weight) has
increased 10% in the past four years.
- Average weaning weights for bull calves have increased by 175 pounds.
- Average weaning weights for heifer calves have increased by 91 pounds.
- Muscle scores on calves have increased from 11.2 to 12.0.
- Frame scores for calves are holding consistent at 6.1.
- Body condition scores for the cows have increased to 6.4 at weaning.
- Bulls on the On-Farm Bull Test are averaging 3.01 pounds of gain per
day.
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