Why Heifer Maturity Matters

Dr. Gavin Staley shares what he sees is the impact of well-known key factors, such as weight and age at calving, as well as average daily gain (ADG) on production.
Breeding heifers earlier has significant advantages, such as lowering heifer inventory and feeding costs. Not surprisingly, there has been a global trend within the industry to breed heifers earlier. However, the caveat to early heifer breeding is that the growth of these animals needs to be increased to meet the new earlier calving age. The evaluation of a significant number of field records (DC305, 174 herds, representing 456k cows) strongly suggest that improved heifer growth has not occurred in tandem with early heifer breeding. This has resulted in increasingly immature animals being bred, resulting in long lasting negative productive outcomes in these herds.

[@ramchandrareddykomatireddy771]

Very nice explanation about heifer growth Professor dr K. Ramachandran Reddy , college of veterinary science PVNRTGVU, Hyderabad, India