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What Would It Be Worth?

N

Northern Rancher

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 10, 2005
Messages
12,247
Location
saskatchewan
If the mature cows go this fall I'm going to have a fair bit of extra grass-the bucking horses can run in the bush pasture. What I was thinking of running a grass bull test like Dylan Biggs and I used to at Coronation-they'd be rotationally grazed-one thing we learnt that in a big bunch of yearling bulls we had a 100 plus together-is moving to fresh grass pretty much stops riding-maybe they should try opening a buffet in prison. We'd have room for 100 yearling bulls pretty easily. We live five miles from the salebarn so any EXT bred bulls can go straight there lol.
 
I suppose we could a deal with a little bit bigger bunch of heifer calves to-they could be pastured and A'I bred-we've got some pretty good clean up bulls that can be used to.
 
Heck, we got some bulls that we wouldn't mind weaning off and sending up for a grass test. But, we have enough ground here at home that we could do a decent test. Anyway, I'm still awake NR!
 
I'd just as soon take cash lol. An old fella I know got offered the cash or favours once for picking roots-he said 'I'd really like to but I kind of need the money'.
 
It's a good idea NR, your grass test would sort out the men from the boys. I'd love to see some of the "big name" herds drop their pampered babies off at a grass test and see how they do.
We are actually running one ourselves on a small scale - I took on 14 bull calves from 4 breeders in total last fall and we are down to 10 bulls now which will be offered for sale from December onwards. It's nice for our numerically small breed to be rearing the bulk of the bulls we have for sale in one group, on grass. Convenient for buyers to see them all at one place and reared under the same conditions too. Now if only there were any ranchers looking for bulls in Western Canada between now and next spring :roll:
 
I hesitate to NR because we weren't real organised and didn't have any clear parameters in mind. I'm not really looking for the top gaining bulls on grass per se anyway as this can be influenced by how tough you are on them in the winter. The other problems we ran into were technical - first I never actually got a turnout weight on them only a 1st April weight when they still had a while to go on crappy hay before green grass. Then I weighed them in July and the scale broke down half way through :roll:
However to give you an idea of our results calves were weaned at 5-6 months @ 500lbs (last October) wintered on hay/poor silage only gave us gains of 1.2-1.5lbs a day (was aiming for 1.8lb but the cold weather and feed quality was against us) Turned them out in May in the 700-850lb range. The gains from July 14 till September 28th on the ones we weighed ranged from 3.16 - 3.55lb/day. They were mainly in the 1150 - 1300lb range in late September and will graze until we get snowed up.

I am collecting data but I'm more interested in watching who does well on the system - some are butter fat now while others are more framey. At the end of the day they will finish up about where any bull I've ever reared has - 80lb bw, grow them at around 2+lb day on average and get a 2 year old in the 15-1700lb range. They will grow out to their mature weight between 2-4 year old. That has always given me bulls that last for years. Of course not getting grain or hot feed we never see foot or other health problems. Will try and take some pictures of them soon and will post them if I do.
 
I sold a grasstested bull I'd used myself to a neighbor as a five year old and he ran him three years and sold him to his buddy about four years later his buddy said I just shipped that bull I bought as a four year old-he couldn't believe he was eight when he bought him. They do tend to last a signifigantly longer time-it's nice to have to move bulls because you have too many daughters not because their liver calved or their feet blew off.
 
You go buy the fattest bull at Calgary it's about the same time they're going to hack my liver up. We'll butcher that bull and see whose looks worse my cancerous one or his grain wrecked one-I'm betting a hundred bucks mine looks better.
 

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