Northern Rancher
Well-known member
I'm just starting to get the spring deluge of bull sale catalogues-the footnotes about how the bulls are managed are a bit confusing. One outfit claims their bulls are 'sensibly grown out on 15-18 lb of grain a day' then they go on to say that yearling bulls shouyld be kept on a fairly high concentrate ration up till breeding because they will lose weight out breeding the 12-15 cows you reccommend that you use them on. In fact most of them are filled with that sort of hogwash. I can't imagine turning a hockey team loose for the summer with this advice 'Gain as much weight as you can because next season will be tough and your going to lose some pounds'. Most NHL players probably get as many breeding opportunities as those bulls do lol. The first thing I do when buying bulls for me or on order is check out how they move. A good hard well exercised calf can breed a heck of alot more cows than 15 in 60 days too. I know fat is a beautiful colour but I'm sure glad there's still a few outfits that breed and raise athletes.