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"Quiet" weaning

Actually this thread show there are lots of ways to do the job.We adapt to what works in different situations.

We generally have to get help to gather and sort and our corrals are usually dusty. We try to handle to the minimum. That's why we only gather once and give shots and wean. It worked slick this year locking up the cows until after preg checking and having the calves out on a grassy patch.
I can see where the nose tag would be a great way to wean if your situation fits the program. Fence line weaning , pre-conditioning shots a couple weeks before,or leaving them on until the next calf is born. If it works for you try it but be adaptable. :D
 
Double L, the charolais has been good to us. My dad was one of the first to use AI Charolais in Scotland back in '61. We have used them off and on ever since as our terminal sire. I think they are ideal for putting some uniformity in the calves from a mixed cow herd. We are stopping using them now because we will no longer be selling calves. With selling yearlings some of the advantage is lost - the top dollar always seems to be for good haired tan calves up here. Maybe someday I'll go back to them - cross out the bottom end of my red cow herd to show people the potential of my Luing cows when crossed to a terminal sire. Maximising hybrid vigor and man do they breed a beautiful colored and haired charolais calf.
Only faults I have with charolais was that in Scotland they never really sorted out the hard calving trait like they have here. Don't have that trouble in Canada but the trade off seems to have been bulls that don't cover a lot of cows. Like any breed of course there are exceptions.
 
I've never heard of a correlation between hard calving and serving ability of a breeding bull-or do you have ten siblings and a coarse shouldered DAD lol. I do know the Angus breed is getting more faint hearted every year-when they weren't so popular and overmanaged you didn't get as many sorry bulls as you do now. Guess I just bought two lease bulls neither one made the summer-guess living on grass was just too much of a burden for their mortal souls.
 
Northern Rancher said:
I've never heard of a correlation between hard calving and serving ability of a breeding bull-or do you have ten siblings and a coarse shouldered DAD lol. I do know the Angus breed is getting more faint hearted every year-when they weren't so popular and overmanaged you didn't get as many sorry bulls as you do now. Guess I just bought two lease bulls neither one made the summer-guess living on grass was just too much of a burden for their mortal souls.
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I think you are right. I bought a really good looking older bull last year who spent all of his life in a small herd in a big field close to the barnyard. He lasted only one season when he had to work a little harder and travel more than he was used to. I got some pretty expensive calves coming out of him next year . . .
 
I think serving capacity is associated with temperament. Not every quiet bull will fail to breed cows, but in general, I think more aggressively tempered bulls will breed more aggressively. May be a testosterone thing, or it could be just my perception. I would like to see some data on the subject.
 
I think these bulls just had no will to compete for anything much less the favours of a cow. It's a bigger deal in cattle than one would think-all things being equal a cow will usually raise a bigger calf if she's run in a small group rather than in a herd with a few hundred. Just having to interact with more herdmates takes a bit of a toll-most bulls can get through breeding in a little paddock by themselves-but turn them in with a group of prizefighters all looking for the same thing and some just find a willow clump to go pout themselves to death in.
 
I maybe caused a bit confusion there - I didn't mean to imply there was a direct correlation between hard calving and fertility or work rate. I have just found the charolais bulls here to be terrible - put 3 in a field with cows, two are fighting and the third is nursing a sore foot from the last fight. That's been my experience anyway. Mainly with some custom cows I grazed my first summer. They sent 2 mature bulls and a yearling with 70 cows - all three were eventually replaced and 2 of the 3 replacements went wrong too. 2 of the 6 bulls were dead by the end of summer and at least another 2 shipped - buys his bulls at Calgary bull sale mind you :roll:
I really like my Luing bulls - they are aggressive at breeding cows but they are not aggressive to each other or me. In other words they don't waste their time fighting as much as some other breeds. Maybe that's a factor or how we raise them to an extent but breed factors in too.
 
We ran Chars for alot of years and they sure can sour up after breeding too-we never had trouble with one not covering cows-mind you we calved early then and they were pen breeding at the start. We actually did a synch/natural breed trial for a drug company-a Char bull from Bill Hunt's served 11 cows one morning and settled 9 of them. Bill had good cattle-ran Charolais but let them rustle out and just be cows-I had alot of fun working for him.
 
Bull verility or whatever you care to call it, has been a real issue for us the last few years. We've had a handful of Galloway bulls that were real breeders, but I have to admit the majority have been a pain in the @$$. We've had more broken penis's and fighting injuries in the last 5 years than the previous 20. We've had pastures where there's been 1 bull running river hills with 50-55 cows and only have 1 or 2 opens, then have some groups of 60-120 cows with 2-5 bulls, and have 15% open. It's frustrating to say the least, and almost enough to make me dip into the semen tank on some Angus bulls from the 60's, and a couple we raised in the 90's. They'd breed 60-70 cows some years, never less than 50, and have 5% open at the most.

It's not that our Galloways can't cover cows either, they just seem to do an awful lot of fightin' and messin' around, which always ends up with somebody gettin' hurt. Best ones we had the last 2 years were home-raised bulls, which I sorta expected anyway.

There's a real cost to this issue though. If you've got 300 cows and have to have 10 bulls, that's a big expense. If you can get bulls that'll cover 60-70 head like some claim, you'll run 1/2 the bulls for the same number of cows. They're still a pain, but 5 is better than 10.
 
Yeah we found the Galloways were scrappers too. We never ran them in multiple groups but I can image they could be a pain in the $%% in that situation. They always seemed to be grumbling and moaning at each other even in winter when they were nowhere near cows. I really think there are quite big breed differences on this issue.
 

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