Keeping bulls in year around?

[eatbeef]

Do most ranches in texas keep bulls in year around? If so, why? Every cattle deal coming of the drought areas that i have seen or heard about seem to have a very spread out calving season or cattle bred from first to third trimester.

 

[Big Muddy rancher]

It's Texas, Must be the way to do it. :wink:

What would us waddies from farther north know. :lol: :lol:

 

[littlejoe]

We shoot for 80% first cycle--but bulls stay in till fall. A late bred cow has options---an open don't.

 

[Wyoming Wind]

Do most ranches in texas keep bulls in year around? If so, why? Every cattle deal coming of the drought areas that i have seen or heard about seem to have a very spread out calving season or cattle bred from first to third trimester.

Up here where our ranch is located we pasture our bulls with our cows in the winter as we only have one place on the creek that springs up and stays free of ice for them to water in...it works great for us as we preg-test and ship our open girls, the bulls all calm down with all bred cows, and if one slinks, they help to let us know which cow it was! Once we start calving we pull the bulls out and they really put weight on after our long winter.

 

[RSL]

We run a fairly short breeding season, but to pose a question, is a long calving season (year round) a management problem/issue or a marketing problem/issue.
If you had 1200 cows calving year round and shipped 100 calves a month things would cash flow pretty nicely and you would spread your market risk. I can see the need to make sure cows don't slip back too long on their interval, but you could also run fewer bulls per cow, etc.
It would not be fun if you had calving issues in your herd, but a relatively trouble free cowherd would be pretty slack.

 

[4Diamond]

We run a fairly short breeding season, but to pose a question, is a long calving season (year round) a management problem/issue or a marketing problem/issue.
If you had 1200 cows calving year round and shipped 100 calves a month things would cash flow pretty nicely and you would spread your market risk. I can see the need to make sure cows don't slip back too long on their interval, but you could also run fewer bulls per cow, etc.
It would not be fun if you had calving issues in your herd, but a relatively trouble free cowherd would be pretty slack.

We don't run bulls all year but I agree having calves to market monthly or quarterly would help majorly with cash flow and money management.

We wean and background and sell from 3-6 times a year a different markets and sizes of cattle. We also run yearlings and short yearlings to help supplement the cow/calf operation.

Most people around here own bulls but don't have places to contain them when they aren't with the herd so the just let them run. Worst thing about pulling bulls is it takes them a month to fight and mess around before they calm down and start putting weight back on.