Too Many Open

The fall cows are calving now.  But Joe has seen several in heat recently that have not calved.  If it had been a bull issue, he should have been seeing them in heat several times since the bull was taken out in March.  If they had aborted after that, he should have seen evidence of that. But there have been no signs of anything. 

There were 10 that haven’t calves yet.  So Joe had me check them today.
 

He did all the prep work again, even removing the poison ivy from the chute for me.

Seven of the ten are open.  It is unusual to have one open out of this group.  So 7, plus the two from a month ago, is huge.  The vet that checked the bull for Joe last week, seems to think it could be due to theileria, the disease spread by the Asian Longhorned tick.  Between open cows, dead cows, and poor doing cows due of changes in grazing behavior because they don’t like the ticks, it could be difficult to stay in business.  All of that, plus the increase cost of all inputs with no increase in the prices we get, is making raising cattle challenging.