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Semen Testing Bulls

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randiliana

randiliana

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We had BSEs done on all our bulls yesterday. The vet called this morning and said that one had a bunch of bent tails, and another had pus in his semen. He says to give the one with the infection 4 treatments with micotil and retest in a month. And just to give the other about 3-4 weeks and retest. Problem is that in a month there won't be many bulls left on the market and I don't really want to be stuck with a leftover bull because of this.

So..are these bulls likely to test good in a month, or should we just cut our losses now?
 
Probably... Never had pus in the semen- but with the bent tails our old Vet always said give them a couple of weeks on green grass and it will fix them right up.... Seemed to work...
 
Draxxin will clean up the infection and you won't have to handle your bull as many times.

Think I would be looking for a replacement for the other. Just in case. An extra bull never hurts to have around.
 
Bulls are getting pretty picked over already,i try and always keep a couple extra ones around.I might not need them,but if i do it's sure nice to have them.
 
At our annual cattlemen's banquet we had a vet from Utah State University come speak to us. One of his topics was a study they are doing on bulls. The preliminary data says 20% of the bulls in a given herd breed atleast 80% of the cows. (in one herd those 20% bred every cow) They verified that with dna testing. Now the trick they want to figure out is WHY? To bad you dont know which bull group your bent tailed bull belongs in, the lazy group or the go-getters. It would make your decision a lot easier. :D I'd lean towards shipping the problem bull and replacing him, but i am pretty conservative.
 
Years ago, I had a bunch of heifers on a wintering program and there was summer grass available there, too. We hauled up saddle horses, red bulls, and black bulls with two trailers. The object was to sort the heifers, put red bulls with the red heifers, and black bulls with the black heifers. Upon arriving on location, there was a big old ton Charolais bull in with the yearling heifers. I said, "That doesn't look good." The owner assured me, "Don't worry about him; he's shooting blanks." As it turned out, the bull wasn't "shooting blanks" after all, and there were four heifers that got bred to him. Two required C-sections, and the other two were hard pulls. My experience has been that fertility testing bulls is somewhat of an inexact science. Usually we just turn out several bulls per pasture and not worry about testing.
 
OK, Draxxin sounds a lot easier for sure, and I really hate using Micotil anyways.

Our bulls generally run 1 bull per pasture. I like knowing what calves are out of what bull, and all our pastures are either cross fenced, or they are too small to run more cows than a bull can handle. The thing is at $4000/ bull, I really don't want to buy more than we need. There are a couple bull sales that are coming up in the next few days that we would go to though if we had to.
 
turn the bull with broken tails out with some cull cows and let him get cleaned out. had a bull last spring tested only 30 percent motility turned him in with a couple cows 3 weeks later tested 70 percent.
 

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