How many head can a Bull Cover

[3 M L & C]

If a person was going to hand breed some heifers before going to grass. Not having to cover ground to find one in heat. How many could a bull breed in a day for how many days. Would he get wore out or would he not be able to produce enough semen for such constant use. Also when you ai and the ones you miss come in to heat realativly the same time next cycle. How many can you realisticly plan to get bred. It seems to me you don't want to cut down on the bull power to much to keep them all calving as close as possible.

 

[cowman52]

Worked on a place long time back, we did what you are trying, would let bull bred heifer twice first of the day, if second was standing before noon breed her once, and leave him away till 4 or so and if had 2 in the afternoon breed each 1 time. Tried to give him 3 or so hrs between exposures. If had more than 5 in a day would A I the over run. If the 5 were toward the end, and none for the next day être he'd it to 7 one time.

 

[eatbeef]

Have sychronized hiefers and then just used bulls to breed them. Just used lutilyse so they were in heat all at once as in an actual time breed. Did it in a drylot for first week then kicked out. Used 3 bulls with 50 hiefers. Rotated a bull in every day for the first week. Not real feasable with the price of bulls now, but have a few more hiefer bulls than needed and use on cows after breeding hiefers for 45 days. I run them on my larger frame cows to try and lower frame scores in there calves.

 

[Doug Thorson]

This is not a reccomendation because I do some things that I wouldn't do again.

Years ago I herd with AI you got around 60% so I sync the heifers and put 20 in one pen with a 3 year old bull and his daughters in a diffferent pen with 2 yearlings. The pen with 20 in I caught 19 in 3 days.

I sold a bull that pasture bred 45 heifers in 21 days then he went with the cows for 60 days. He bred 52 cows also.

I would say the age of the bull has a lot to do with success when you are talking more than one a day. A yearling will wear himself out on the first one but an older bull might breed 7-8 different cows and only expend the same as a yearling on the first one.

 

[Denny]

I had a 5 year old bull with 75 cows had 63 calves in 42 day's the remainder were strung out a bit but I'd blame that on the cows vs. that bull.I watched him breed 5 different cows and check most of the others in a 30 minute period he was a love them and leave them type of bull.

 

[Jake]

I had a 5 year old bull with 75 cows had 63 calves in 42 day's the remainder were strung out a bit but I'd blame that on the cows vs. that bull.I watched him breed 5 different cows and check most of the others in a 30 minute period he was a love them and leave them type of bull.

Had a big bull out with with 60 head one summer. Seen him breed two one night and I"m not sure the cows knew it was coming until he was done. The one sure sat there hunched up for a minute or two.

 

[burnt]

This is not a reccomendation because I do some things that I wouldn't do again.

Years ago I herd with AI you got around 60% so I sync the heifers and put 20 in one pen with a 3 year old bull and his daughters in a diffferent pen with 2 yearlings. The pen with 20 in I caught 19 in 3 days.

I sold a bull that pasture bred 45 heifers in 21 days then he went with the cows for 60 days. He bred 52 cows also.

I would say the age of the bull has a lot to do with success when you are talking more than one a day. A yearling will wear himself out on the first one but an older bull might breed 7-8 different cows and only expend the same as a yearling on the first one.

Reminds me of the story about the young bull and the old bull standing in the barnyard on top of a hill overlooking the cowherd.

The young bull says "I say let's run down there and breed a few cows."

The old bull says "I say let's walk down and breed them all!" ;~}

 

[burnt]

I had a 5 year old bull with 75 cows had 63 calves in 42 day's the remainder were strung out a bit but I'd blame that on the cows vs. that bull.I watched him breed 5 different cows and check most of the others in a 30 minute period he was a love them and leave them type of bull.

Had a big bull out with with 60 head one summer. Seen him breed two one night and I"m not sure the cows knew it was coming until he was done. The one sure sat there hunched up for a minute or two.

Jake I LOL'ed over than one! :lol2: :lol2: :lol2:

 

[bgc]

Realistically you can expect him to breed 3 or 4 a day if they are strung out throughout the day, and if you can separate the ones he has already bred. Many times a bull will get hung up with one cow and not care about the others until she is out of heat. The age of the bull has a lot to do with it as well and what kind of shape he is in. The weather also has an affect. If it is hot and he is overfat then he wont breed many of them. If you have them in a small pasture where he doesnt have to go far to find them he can breed 4 in a day and maybe 5. I had a two year old bull that I watched breed 5 different cows in 1 day. He was an energetic dude. Again if you can seperate him from heifers he has already bred then he will go back to the others that are still in heat and he will breed more, but if you cant then it is a roll of the dice and completely up to the bull. Hopefully you have some really pretty heifers for him to look at.

 

[PATB]

What kind of diet has the bulls been on? I have had far better luck turning yearling bulls out with cows that have been on hay/haylage diet compared to when we fed grain.

 

[3 M L & C]

They have been eating a variety of hay, and a little green grass. Its coming early this year. Don't like to feed the bulls grain. I'v seen some of the neighbors buy some that boasted huge rate of gain, but by the time the summer was over they looked bad and lost a lot of condition instead of growing more. Also I have one heifer bull that is 3, in really good shape, and one yearling that is not fat by any means they developed him well.