• If you are having problems logging in please use the Contact Us in the lower right hand corner of the forum page for assistance.

bulls

S

SHORTSTUFF

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 21, 2006
Messages
72
Location
DUSTY FLATS
I'm always questioning what a yearling bull can do. I rented some new ground this year, holds 76 pair in 1/2 section traps that we will rotate every 3 weeks. What I'm argueing with myself about is, will one mature bull and one yearling cover this good or should I go get another yearling? I dont have another mature bull that can go down there.
 
I would not put a yearling in with an old bull. I would put just yearlings in and rotate your old bull in to clean up if you rotate. Most should be bred the first 30 days.
 
I always turn a yearling in with a mature bull - - - the mature bull will do 90% of the breeding but the yearling will keep him active and will learn not to fall in love and will make a great breeder the next year.

Just keep it to the two bulls though as if you get anothet yearling they might team up and hurt the mature bull.
 
76 pair need a third bull. If the mature bull is decent disposition, he won't hurt the young uns. If he is big enough they won't try to take him on.

Cycling the mature bull and the 2 yearlings in and out would be ok but is a lot of work.
 
It can be done.

The concern is if one isn't working.

It would better with more numbers, that way, each bull isn't as important.

You are looking a a cow bull ration of 38:1. Not bad if you have 380 cows, you would have 10 bulls. If something happened to one, then the others only have to cover 4 more cows each.

In this case, he has to cover 38 more.

We've bred 105-120 heifers with 3 bulls, and had great results, but again, they are spread out over less total cows if something goes wrong, plus more dynamics among the bulls(not as much concentration on eliminating the singular enemy), all bulls were within a year of each other, too.

If you do it, I would put them both in for about the first 30 days. I would suspect there would be enough activity to keep them busy.

After that, my guess is the younger bull will get hurt.

Just my experience. After the first cycle and first flush of 2nd cycle, younger bulls get to play around on the cows until the cows are really ready, then the old bull shoves them off sideways or butts them under the belly. Either way, in a while the youngers' penis is hanging out, a little swollen and sore, next thing you know, it's cut up in the needle and thread grass. Been there, done that.

MAKE DANG SURE YOU DO A BSE ON THOSE BULLS BEFORE YOU TURN THEM OUT IN THIS SITUATION!!!! Yes, I did shout that. :wink:

Badlands
 
Wow!! We've been told we don't need as much bull power as we use!
We figure one 2-year old or older bull to 25 cows; one yearling bull to 15 heifers. We put yearling bulls on yearling heifers whenever we can and two year old or older bulls with the cows.

It's been a long time since we have had a bull get hurt doing it this way.

I wonder how many cows Soapweed figures to one of his yearling bulls.
Soap? Are you reading this?
 
FH:

The years I was home there, I ran my yearling bull on 43 head one year-Tarentaise. Pasture was odd shaped, 1 mile long, less than 1/4 mile wide. Water on one end, but they prefered the opposite end, so traveled is 2-3x/day. Mom ran hers on around 33 head-Gelbvieh. 1/2x1 mile, multi-water.

AOK.

Bulls gained weight in both cases while breeding cows, but they were single sire pastures. In the other cases with multi-sire pastures, with lower cow:bull ratios, the yearlings lost weight.

They fuss, and fight, and lose weight, even if we don't see them fighting.

I expect that my yearling bulls will gain weight if in single sire pastures.

I like it if multi-sire yearlings do, but don't expect it.

I don't worry about older bulls on heifers. Used up to 6 year old bulls on them. I figure they are pregnant by the time they get lame. :wink: They'll heal up. If they get lame again next cycle, it's cause they got rode again, not a good thing, right? 8)

It depends on bull prices, too. Expensive bulls=breed more cows, cheap bulls=less cows.


Badlands
 
I wouldn't stretch my bulls quite that far. I figure 1 mature bull for 25-30 cows depending on the cowherd size. The bigger the bunch the higher the bull to female ratio.
 
I think Katrina nailed it,if you like to keep your calving season short,get another bull,yes like andy said one bull could breed 76 cows.........if you wanna calve all year..............good luck
 
FH:

I guess I was talking about what we got away with, not what we try to do.

We try to run 1:25-1:35 just like everybody else.

In these cases, either the cows were registered, and I couldn't get another pasture, or the bulls were expensive.

When commercial bulls bust over $2500, I get creative.

Badlands
 
What's harder on a bull breeding 40 cows or fighting with another bull as they both try and get 50 in calf. Bush pastures are by far the toughest on bulls-water everywhere so cows scatter out and never get together-at least in a dry field they congregate at the tank-one year I had a South Devon in a multibull pasture breed 45 cows-he'd done 35 at my partners before I got him-he was a breeding machine.the 25 cows per bull has been around since before semen testing etc. Maybe we need to do some selection on breeding capacity-a good bull in decent pasture should be able to settle 40 cows and gain weight doing it. we did a Synchro trial for a drug company using bulls instead of A'I'-a Charolais bull we had bred 12 cows in the A'M and settled 9 of them-I don't think 40 in 50 days is pushing it. Ourselves we just A'I' and then turn the bulls out in a bunch.
 
Man, we always figure a yearling can handle 20 easy.... And our older bulls can go 40-50 without a problem assuming no illness. We generally keep a few bulls back as emergency ones in case blindness or footrot or something like that. Have always heard/seen that too many bulls equal to much fighting.
Foot rot seems to be the bane of bulls existance on this farm.

If I had to have a bull for evey 25 cows I think I would switch to AI and go to a bull per every 50-75 cows.

I will agree that some bulls just run themselves down during this but most of those are the ones that are to busy beating the crap out of each other instead of eating. I watched one day as 3 bulls basiclly just fought and fought and fought and the fourth and fith bulls did all the breeding. Day two, it was the same story...The bulls that did the breeding were in good shape all of breeding season. Two of the other three had to get pulled because they were flat out spent.
 
You might be setting yourself up for always having it the way it is, FH.

If you don't let them get older, and spread out the ages, you never let them set a pecking order, you are always in a constant state of fighting since there are similar aged bulls all the time.

Would be interesting to keep them longer and see how it goes if you can spread out your age distribution.

One possibility would be to keep the least of the fighters as they age, or your favorite phenotype, or the one that makes the best daughters, whatever. If you do that a couple years, they should spread out in age distribution and maybe settle down.

Part of that would pertain to how many cows (thus bulls) you run. If you only have a few bulls, then you are limited in how they spread out in age. But if you get up to 6 or more, then maybe it would work.

Badlands
 
I ran a 6 year old on 75 cows last year 59 calved in the first 45 days 3 opens and 4 that went over 60 days.He's getting 75 to 80 cows this year again.My yearling will get 25 to 30 head and the 2 year olds will both get 35 head.After 60 days my 2 year old viking bull will go with 20 late calveing cows we have.So he will breed about 55 head this year but will have 60 days on 30 off 60 on.Bulls cost to much to not get all you can from them.I wont buy a bull with small nuts I buy them to breed cows either they get it done or down the road.When I was a young fella I could work all day and romance all night no different then those young bulls. :wink: of course I have the kids to prove it.
 
I won't run a bull past 4 years old because the vets claim thats when they start getting and spreading trich....Also seems like some of those old bulls want to just lay up in the hills away from the cows and sleep all day and fight all night.....
 
We use all yearling bulls and turn out one bull per 25 cows. As the season progresses, and if any bulls get hurt, we might have to do some bull trading in different pastures.

Back quite a few years ago, my dad bought a yearling black bull that was three fourths Chianina and one fourth Angus. He was a tremendous looking, rather expensive bull ($7500), so Dad wanted to get as many calves out of him as possible. He picked out his 200 best Angus cows and turned just the new bull in with them for two weeks before adding any other bulls to help. The other bulls were all Herefords, so he would know that the black calves were Chi-cross and the baldies would be sired by the Herefords. The next spring, there were 65 Chi-cross calves out of the new yearling bull.
 
That's what we do too, OT. And by then we have daughters of those bulls. So it fits our program better not to run old bulls. We don't get much fence tore up or anything else. I'm not saying we NEVER get fence torn up, because we did last year, but at least it was our own fence.


I'll bet that is some of the reason Soapweed buys yearling bulls every
year. And when you think about it, it is the young buck deer that do the breeding, not the big old bucks. We get by fine doing it this way.

'Sides that I like to buy bulls~ :wink:
 

Latest posts

Back
Top