Keep or Cull: What Your Ewe and Cow Records Can Tell You
Most culling decisions get made in a sorting alley, in a few seconds, based on what an animal looks like that day. Body condition, teeth, udder, feet — that check matters and no record replaces it. But the animal in front of you only shows you this year. Records show you the pattern.
The decision is a history question
Extension culling guides for both sheep and cattle keep coming back to the same point: the animals that hurt you are the ones whose problems repeat. One open year might be bad luck. Two open years is a pattern. The questions worth asking at culling time are history questions:
- Has she weaned a lamb or calf every year she was exposed?
- How many did she rear, not just bear?
- Has she needed assistance more than once?
- Has she been treated for the same thing twice — mastitis, lameness, prolapse?
- Are her offspring consistently at the bottom of the weaning weights?
None of these can be answered by looking at her. All of them can be answered by a record you made months or years ago — if you made it, and if you can find it.
What the record adds to the eyeball check
Say you are working through a hundred ewes at weaning. Ewe 287 is in decent flesh and her teeth are fine. She walks through. But her record says: single last year after twins as a two-year-old, dry this year, one mastitis treatment in between. The eyeball check passes her; the history puts her on the truck list.
It cuts the other way too. A thin ewe at weaning might be thin because she reared triplets. Her record is the difference between culling your hardest-working ewe and giving her the feed she earned.
The same logic runs in a cow herd: calving date drift, a hard pull, a late-bred cow showing up at the back of the calving season two years running. Each event is minor on its own. The record is what lets you see them stacking up on the same animal.
The records that make this possible
You do not need a complicated system. You need a handful of events tied to one consistent animal ID:
| Record | What it tells you at culling time |
|---|---|
| Lambing/calving result each year | Open years, singles vs. twins, drift in calving date |
| Reared/weaned count | The difference between born and raised |
| Assists | Repeat difficulty |
| Treatments with date and reason | Repeat health problems, withdrawal status |
| Weaning weights (if collected) | Whose offspring perform |
| Cull reason for animals that leave | What your flock or herd is actually losing animals to |
That last row is easy to skip and worth keeping. When you record why each animal left, a few years of those entries show you what to select against — and whether your culling is voluntary (performance) or forced on you (health and fertility).
Records inform the call — you make it
A record system will not tell you which animals to cull, and you should be suspicious of anything that claims it will. Market conditions, feed on hand, flock age structure, and your own breeding goals all weigh in, and they change year to year. What records do is make sure the decision you make in the alley is made with the whole story, not just this season's impression.
Ranch.Bot keeps lambing, calving, treatment, and weaning records in one searchable history per animal — built from plain-language notes, reviewed by you before anything saves. Start a 14-day free trial at ranch.bot.