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bull_ _ _ _?

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kwebb

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 21, 2006
Messages
112
Location
Texas
Fellas and Ladies:
I have a 25 month old bull with my cows right now (all registered Beefmasters) and a couple of things are bothering me about him. First, since I put him out with this set in May, only 3 of ten of them are bred. Seven open cows has a way of turning a bull into hamburger around me.

Anyway, his fertility results were good--motility, concentration, not much deformation. He had a hard fall and summer with the drought and has not grown frame like I wish he would. I am thinking of giving him until 1-1-07 and then making a move as we finally have strong grass now. Maybe that will get his libido going.

Any advice? He's square, good temperament, etc., but I think smaller than he should be and maybe lazy about chasing cows.
 
Young bulls and heifers do need good general nutrition and Vigortone mineral plays an important part of filling in the holes the forage leaves out. It's a great thing to feed all cattle mineral. Helps in lots of ways.
Good remark, Katrina!!! You've got it figured out.

I don't think being smaller has a thing to do with it.
If you didn't want cows bred by him just put some in with him.

Last year we bought some very moderate bulls (grandsons of OCC
Anchor actually). They were a foot shorter in height than the cows were;
anyway that's what it looked like. We only leave the bulls in for 42
days and we were a bit concerned about the difference in size
of the bulls and the cows they were with. We worried needlessly;
they bred up excellent.

What I would advise, is to recheck that bull and see if something
happened to him that he couldn't breed for some reason. We had
a heifer bull that didn't test the best several years ago. The vet
said he would breed about 75% of the cows he was with. We needed
him to use on a small bunch of cows so we used him. Sure enough,
even with only 12 cows he bred 9 or 10.

We rechecked him that fall with the same diagnosis so we got rid of
him.

There is no way to check libido that I know of. But another story,
we had a real good polled hereford bull when we were in W. Montana.
We never did see him breed a cow, and he was the only hereford
bull with Angus cattle. The other bulls were angus. We always had
at least 40 Black Baldy calves out of him in the spring. Maybe he
was just bashful!!! :wink: He must have bred the cows at night.
 
Check his tool make sure he's shooting straight.We had one that had a crook in his tool and he could'nt find the spot.Seen a buck sheep that would shoot over the ewes back's as he was a bit taller than the ewe's and could'nt get'er done.
 
Sounds like you don't really like him, anyway. There's always somebody that will like him better than you do, and there's always a bull somewhere that you'll like better than you like him. His time would be up if he was mine.
 
There was a story in one of the magazines about twenty years ago, where they checked for libido. We even tried it ourselves.

You find a cow that is cycling, put her in a pen with the bull in question. Watch him closely and count how many times he actually breeds her in a certain length of time. It seems like ten minutes or less was pretty good. More than that, not as good. You be the judge.

If he has a problem with penetration, it can be identified with this procedure.

This doesn't seem to be necessary with most bulls, but in this case I'd try it. If he can't get the job done, why wait any longer?

(sorry if this was too graphic for certain readers!)
 
LOL,

I will never forget one steer I had. I bought him as a young ull and banded him.....He was priced right and pretty small....Never grew to be very big, BUT......He had more libido than anyrhing I have ever seen. I told the guy runnin the yard where I fed him, "I wish I could isolate that gene in him and put it into my bulls!"

That was about the only gene worth isolating in him tho, LOL,

Pat
 
PPRM said:
LOL,

I will never forget one steer I had. I bought him as a young ull and banded him.....He was priced right and pretty small....Never grew to be very big, BUT......He had more libido than anyrhing I have ever seen. I told the guy runnin the yard where I fed him, "I wish I could isolate that gene in him and put it into my bulls!"

That was about the only gene worth isolating in him tho, LOL,

Pat
Click to expand...

I think I had a brother to that steer. Had a show steer that rode the heifers so much he put a permanent whelp on one of them's back that hurt it when showing. Had to finally quit turning him out with the heifers.
 
If he ain't breeding cows, what is he there for? I have had bulls that were not as good in the pasture as on paper or tests. I have had to move bulls that I have paid too much for or that I really liked, were good , but not working any more, and cried all the way to the sale barn. Next morning, when the sun was uop I never even missed them.
 
Shortgrass said:
If he ain't breeding cows, what is he there for? I have had bulls that were not as good in the pasture as on paper or tests. I have had to move bulls that I have paid too much for or that I really liked, were good , but not working any more, and cried all the way to the sale barn. Next morning, when the sun was uop I never even missed them.
Click to expand...

I never pay more for a bull than I can stand to loose the next minute,they sure can die easy especially the high priced one's.
 
kwebb said:
Fellas and Ladies:
I have a 25 month old bull with my cows right now (all registered Beefmasters) and a couple of things are bothering me about him. First, since I put him out with this set in May, only 3 of ten of them are bred. Seven open cows has a way of turning a bull into hamburger around me.

Anyway, his fertility results were good--motility, concentration, not much deformation. He had a hard fall and summer with the drought and has not grown frame like I wish he would. I am thinking of giving him until 1-1-07 and then making a move as we finally have strong grass now. Maybe that will get his libido going.

Any advice? He's square, good temperament, etc., but I think smaller than he should be and maybe lazy about chasing cows.
Click to expand...
ok your bull is 26 months old how was his BSE score.it should have been 85 at the time of the test.anything lower than 75 an id be worried.you say you turned him out with the cows in may.an im in texas same as you so i know about the drought.im guessing you have just let him run with the cows w/o feeding him.you should have been feeding him to keep him growing an in condition to breed cows.ive got a beefmaster bull with my cows an he gets fed every morning.i feed him 15lbs a day.id recheck the bull/your cows may not have to flesh on them to rebreed.
 
stockdog said:
ive got a beefmaster bull with my cows an he gets fed every morning.i feed him 15lbs a day.
Click to expand...
Good grief, what a bum. Can he mount anything except a trough?
 
We had a bull do this once... Couldn't figure it out... Figured out two things later

1) He had bred a bunch, screwed up at preg checking and missed it

2) Heifers nutrition was lacking and they were cycling.. The next year we turned him out and he was a pretty aggressive breeder although didn't like it when people were around. This year he was my most aggressive breeder as he was also the oldest bull out there. Unfortunetly for him he hurt his leg in the last week of the season. Don't see it getting any better unfortunatly... He was/is a nice bull but that leg just isn't going to get better.


15 pounds of what a day? Grain? hay? Silage? I couldn't imagine feeding a 2 year old bull 15 pounds of grain to keep him in shape unless all the animals on the place where falling a part due to lack of forage, and than I think I would have to sell way down because my bulls are expected to trhive on what the cows are getting. If forage was so bad that my bulls were suffering my cows would be too and so would the long term health of my pastures...
 
some bulls wont work because of problems other than fertility. He may have a weak back or leg that hurts when working , therefor doesn't really try very hard.
 
the reason i feed my bull everyday is this we are in a drought still.an he has to cover 35 cows hiself.because i beleive in only running 1 bull.an i wont have him getting pulled down.if you dont take of your bulls they wont take care of their job.
 
stockdog said:
the reason i feed my bull everyday is this we are in a drought still.an he has to cover 35 cows hiself.because i beleive in only running 1 bull.an i wont have him getting pulled down.if you dont take of your bulls they wont take care of their job.
Click to expand...

There is something many people don't understand. They want the cows to be in good shape and cycling yet don't worry about the bull.

The first thing to go with a cow or a bull if nutritionally stressed is fertility.

Cows won't cycle, bulls won't settle cows.

The bull usually has a high enough libido that he will still work even if he is somewhat thin, but the lil swimmers need food, and a starving bull can't generate food from nothing.
 
Well,
I believe that stockdog and Jason are right in my case. We have had a couple inches of rain in the area over the past month or so after a bad dry spell and the grass is up green and pretty strong because of the small amounts of rain at a time. Seems like right when it's about to turn brown it rains another half inch and puts the color back in it. The Klein grass I have on the place is really doing well, too, and some of the weaker looking early winter type grasses have come up in the shade. It's cooled off some and the mads dogs and Englishmen have been joined by regular dogs and folks outside--even in the noonday sun.

Anyway, Saturday I saw a cow in the mesquites and wanted to "talk" to them so I pulled out a bag of cubes and hollered at them to round up, and they came running...

Except for Guapo (the bull) and a young cow, #63. I call her Big Red because she is as tall as any I have. They finally came busting out of the woods together a minute later with him riding her and her stopping occasionally to let previously Mr. Passive get it worked out. I fed them and in the time it took for them to clean up 50 pounds of cubes he bred her again as she stood for him. No height problems, no obvious physiological or method problems, etc. This was the first time I had seen him mount a cow, and I saw him mount her and try to mount another later in the day. The other one wasn't standing yet, though.

I think I didn't feed him enough this summer and this is my fault. I also noticed that he is filling out and his frame is growing, too. He is larger now than most of the cows now except for Big Red, a pig called LBar, and Fat Yellow.

I think it is really strange how you can know a lot of stuff and have things like this happen to you anyway. I mean, I'm not Charles Goodnight, but I know cattle and it's odd how things like this that should be so obvious to you don't hit you until somebody says, "Look, dummy."

You know, a bull usually looks pretty slick until he's real sick and my cows look pretty good, too. The way bulls are muscled and such really makes it harder to tell when a bull is stressed. He won't show rib or hip as quick, etc., and I think I just didn't realize early on that this fella was needing more than he was getting. Now, unless he is stunted, I think he will fill out and be more productive. I have fed him some and will continue to make sure he gets what he needs.

Thanks for all the advice and stories. The one about a bull only being able to mount a trough actually made me laugh out loud.
 

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