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Gomer bulls

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starvin'dog

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Here's my idea.
I've got some heifers to breed and sell, and to differentiate them from the other gazzillion being bred I might guarantee them A.I. bred.
Would sync and breed them and run a gomer bull with a chin ball marker for a few weeks to mark the repeats.
I've used a 'juiced up' open cow in the past with OK results but I've heard the drugs are harder to come by now. Thinking of buying a longhorn and giving him a vasectomy. He would stay small enough to use for years and my brother in law wants a trophy head.
I enjoy A.I.'ing but burn out with the heat detection part. Daybreak is early up here in June. Have used heat detect patches in the past and I think I miss those quiet heats.
Opinions?
 
Thought of a jersey, they can be bought pretty cheap and have lots of libido. Don't wanna get killed by a dairy bull though, they are supposedly mean little bast@rds!
 
We have used them in the past. When we were using them we would use a chin ball marker. I don't know that we caught any of the quiet heats because they would end up with lots of paint slopped around so even if they did try to mount the quiet heat ones it was hard to tell for sure. We would usually have a handful of cows that had only a single streak down their side, then you wouldn't know if it was because the cow had been ridden or if the bull had just brushed her. We usually ended up watching cows anyway, we would just watch for the bull instead of trying to watch the whole herd. What about timed AI? The conception rate usually isn't much worse than heat detection.
 
If you use a synch program with timed AI, you could potentially eliminate the bull and just do a second round of heat checking 19-23 days after the first go with AI. A $5 preg check and voila!!!
 
RSL said:
If you use a synch program with timed AI, you could potentially eliminate the bull and just do a second round of heat checking 19-23 days after the first go with AI. A $5 preg check and voila!!!
Click to expand...

What is a normal conception rate if you do this on cows in average condition?
Or heifers that are cycling?
 
somewhere in the 60's is normal, and 70's are common and 80's are not unheard of. I would for sure go with timed AI. One major benefit of AI is the elimination of keeping a bull year round, and having a gomer bull would just give you another bull to keep year round. Plus you would have to try to separate him from his hot girlfriend to breed her and that might be hard on people and facilities. I sure as h*ll wouldn't want a jersey bull. I have first hand experience with a jersey bull. A two year old jersey bull actually killed a Mexican feller working at a dairy I worked at in college. pinned him to the rafters in the heifer barn. It was ugly. A longhorn bull wouldn't be bad except for the horns. Especially if you have to keep him with your cleanup or other herd bulls. If you have to have a gomer bull then find an orphan bull calf from your own herd or from the sale barn and raise him. He will at least be more gentle and used to people and you wont have much money in him.
 
HIGHPLAINS said:
RSL said:
If you use a synch program with timed AI, you could potentially eliminate the bull and just do a second round of heat checking 19-23 days after the first go with AI. A $5 preg check and voila!!!
Click to expand...

What is a normal conception rate if you do this on cows in average condition?
Or heifers that are cycling?
Click to expand...

If technique, health, mineral, etc are all taken care of I would expect around 70% (give or take 5%) in the first cycle. There are always eggs that don't implant, or early term fetal losses. By following up with a second round of heat checking in 3 weeks, I don't think 90%+ overall would be too difficult to achieve assuming the heifers have reached puberty.
 
starvin'dog said:
Here's my idea.
I've got some heifers to breed and sell, and to differentiate them from the other gazzillion being bred I might guarantee them A.I. bred.
Would sync and breed them and run a gomer bull with a chin ball marker for a few weeks to mark the repeats.
I've used a 'juiced up' open cow in the past with OK results but I've heard the drugs are harder to come by now. Thinking of buying a longhorn and giving him a vasectomy. He would stay small enough to use for years and my brother in law wants a trophy head.
I enjoy A.I.'ing but burn out with the heat detection part. Daybreak is early up here in June. Have used heat detect patches in the past and I think I miss those quiet heats.
Opinions?
Click to expand...

You can use a 'gomer cow' by putting about 3 implants in each ear and kinda mashing them with pliers. Better if it's a kinda dominant cow, think you want to load her up a while in advance. Export to europe when done.
 
We used to use gomer bulls. We owned them with some neighbors
and staggered our calving dates so everyone could use them. Worked
really good. They were just small whatever's...whatever some of us
had. They really helped the heifers show heat and we got a good
catch using gomer bulls. We syncronized but didn't time breed. There
has been a lot done since those days...making AI not so time consuming.
But we enjoyed it. We used K-mars on the heifers.
 
Often times if a hermaphrodite calf is born folks will snap them up to use as gomers.
 
I think I'll go with timed AI and and heat detect the repeats. I've got a little bull calf who will be about 7 months old to help me heat detect. He should have the interest but not the goods.
It's the ones with subtle heat signs that bug me. Was she on last night or is she just coming in? Or is she just hanging with the hot group?
A comment on another thread was the timed AI should get most of those anyway. Duh! never thought of that.
 
The bad thing about using a Longhorn with a chinball marker is having to restrain the head in order to put it on and then refill it.
 

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