Full-time or part-time bull

[dieselbeef]

all yr calfing brings income all yr. work all yr also. we sell a lot as beef so the availability of animals is good for our supply chain. I don't think uniformity is as imp when you have 20 cows as it is when you have 200. I think one months dif in age is also not really a uniform crop. agewise maybe but not size/weightwise. 100 lbs diff?

im sure yall read my thread about calfs..how would I ever have had any calfs if I had pulled the bull after 60 days...suppose he bred none..then check him and either get another or put him back in? or do ya check all yer cows for being bred after ya pull yer bull.

if as the op said...he missed a few....how do ya handle that then...season gets pretty long if ya gotta get the bull to try it agin..no matter what the reason.. just supposing for argument sake he checked ok when he went to work that day...

 

[Lucky_P]

I'm with you Nesikep.
But, I see so many folks - here and elsewhere - and encounter them on a regular basis, who would never dream of keeping a bull more than 2, maybe 3 years - why, he might be breeding his own daughters! They'll be coming out with 3 eyes, 5 legs, you name it! NOT!!!
In a commercial setting, when we were doing all natural service...if I liked the bull, I had no issue with breeding him back to his own daughters. Just made good economic sense in most cases.

 

[Taurus]

I'm with you Nesikep.
But, I see so many folks - here and elsewhere - and encounter them on a regular basis, who would never dream of keeping a bull more than 2, maybe 3 years - why, he might be breeding his own daughters! They'll be coming out with 3 eyes, 5 legs, you name it! NOT!!!
In a commercial setting, when we were doing all natural service...if I liked the bull, I had no issue with breeding him back to his own daughters. Just made good economic sense in most cases.

That if that bull is FREE of genetic detects. I'm okay with F1 inbred cattle if the sire is an expectation but I wouldn't dream using an average bull to breed to his daughters or keep replacements out of sire/daughter matings.

 

[dun]

Just as your heifers should have the better genetics compared to your cow herd. A young up an coming bull should too. That's the reason we only use a bull for 2 years, because we usually have a better (we think) bull coming along to replace him. If we don;t we keep the old bull another year.

 

[Dave]

I have a good source of relatively inexpensive bulls that are as good of genetics as there is out there. I get 14 month old AI bred bulls for about what a 3 year old is worth to kill. So it make economical sense to sell as 3 year olds. I can sell a bull in July when he is done breeding and not have a new young bull arrive until April/May when I need him. I save 9 months or more of feed. Big bulls eat a lot. They also tend to tear more things up. Also it tends to be that young bulls are easier to get along with.

 

[Nesikep]

Taurus, you're right, the bull has to be free of genetic defects, recessive ones in particular would show up. We've kept about 15 daughters from our last bull, and had 17 father-daughter matings, with no issues whatsoever... 2 of the resulting daughters were nice enough I had to keep them.

However, just because you're changing bulls doesn't mean you will avoid recessive defects... There's lots of them out there, I'll just take CCD which I believe is in some Angus bulls... Yes, it all started with a specific bull if memory serves me right, so even if the two bulls are only related to this original bull by 5 generations on each side, you could still get it.. Yes, probabilities of it are lower, but it can still happen.

Here are my two replacements from father-daughter matings
Tifa, who *really* looks like her mother, Grandma was a SHxSaler


And Sofa, who's also very similar to her mother except for a lighter colored coat. Her mother is my best cow, as was her grandmother, hopefully she keeps the tradition. Grandma was a SHxHerf


If you can get good young bulls for the price of your culls, I guess it's reasonable to swap out... Of course when you have one you really like, it's always a gamble on whether the new one will indeed be an improvement. That is the case with the Limo bull I have now, he's got really big shoes to fill and only next year will I see if he can.. Part of the reason I'm keeping one of my own this year as a back-up plan if all goes to crap.

 

[midtncattle]

Bull is at my place from May 1 until thanksgiving then goes to the guy who went in partners with me on him. Works great for us both.

 

[randiliana]

We run our bulls for about 50 days. They go in about June 1 and come out about July 20. They then spend the rest of the summer in a pasture (8-9 of them) by themselves. In the late fall, we will often run the bred heifers and some old cows that need a little more TLC with the bulls, but they are all pregchecked bred so there is really no concern about an off season calf. Open cows are culled in the fall.

This year we changed things up a bit, and used some Char bulls. All the GOOD first cycle (calving) cows ran with a Shorthorn and Red Angus bulls for the whole season, the second cycle(calving) cows ran with Red Angus for the first 21 days, then we pulled the Red Angus bulls and put the Char bulls out. And we had a bunch of problem cows (bad udders, feet, poorer producers) that ran with a Char bull all season. This should eliminate us keeping any later born calves, or calves off cows with issues as replacements...

We keep our bulls for as long as we can. Usually 4+ years. They get culled when their temperament goes, go lame, or the BSE test is no good.

As far as sires breeding their own daughters, it isn't an issue here, we run enough bulls and keep good enough records to prevent it from happening for the most part. And if we have the occasional accident, we've never encountered any problems yet...

 

[cow pollinater]

For me, running a bull year round would be a disaster as my feed is dry from june-december. I do it kind of like randiliana and focus on making keeper heifers in the first part of the breeding season and anything that breeds up after that is producing a calf that will get sold no matter what they look like. I do leave my bulls in for six or seven months but that's only because the feed in the hills is free and if I bring them home then I have to feed them until my irrigated valley pasture comes around.

 

[Lucky_P]

Goes without saying - or, it should/would - that if a bull is a carrier of an undesirable heritable defect, that it's more likely to be expressed in calves resulting from sire/daughter matings. Before the advent of gene tests, defect-free status of a bull was determined by breeding him to 35 or more of his own daughters - if no affected calves were born from those matings, the statistical likelihood that he was a carrier was pretty close to zero.

Current bull here has great disposition, sires good docile daughters who produce well. If that weren't the case, he wouldn't still be here at 10 yrs of age. Since he's mainly doing cleanup after AI, most calves for the past 5-6 years are not 'his' - but the ones that he does get are considered for retention right along with the AI sired heifers - and on a percentage basis, they wind up as 'keepers' about as frequently as do those by AI sires we're using - and with greater frequency than calves from some sires we've sampled.
So far, only one cow from a sire/daughter mating is in production - and she's doing a good job with her first calf. We don't, and won't, have as many sire/daughter calves as Nesikep - but again, if you like what the bull brings to the table, the pluses can outweigh the minuses.

 

[OklaBrangusBreeder]

We run our bull basically year round. That said, we pen him up about 30 days after the first calf hits the ground until turn out date which for me is Valentines Day since I like mid November calves. If I don't pen him up at all, the calving dates for the cows starts edging forward of the target date.

I keep a bull usually 4 to 5 years. I don't mind at all him breeding a few of his daughters, but I don't keep any of those calves.

 

[TennesseeTuxedo]

We run our bull basically year round. That said, we pen him up about 30 days after the first calf hits the ground until turn out date which for me is Valentines Day since I like mid November calves. If I don't pen him up at all, the calving dates for the cows starts edging forward of the target date.

I keep a bull usually 4 to 5 years. I don't mind at all him breeding a few of his daughters, but I don't keep any of those calves.

You intentionally calve in mid November? Burrrrr...chilly.....

 

[OklaBrangusBreeder]

November around here is actually generally pretty mild. High temps in the 50's most of the month. Mid December is when the cold typically arrives in earnest.

 

[TennesseeTuxedo]

November around here is actually generally pretty mild. High temps in the 50's most of the month. Mid December is when the cold typically arrives in earnest.

I understand. November in Tennessee isn't too bad either.

Our farm is in northern Kentucky and we have six inches of snow on the ground today. I think weather patterns might be changing.

 

[Post Oak]

I have been thinking of breeding my bull to his daughters next year in order to keep my bull and to take advantage of his calving ease, but his sire is a genetic defect carrier.

 

[Lucky_P]

PO,
If sire is a known carrier, and you like the son, why not test him? If he's clean, you could do the sire/daughter matings - but if he's also a carrier, disaster could be in the offing...
Co-worker bought a bull shortly after the AM/NH thing deal was first identified in Angus - 1680 was his paternal grandsire... and evidently the AM gene carried down to this bull; bred some of his daughters before they moved him out, and had one AM (curly calf) out of 8 heifers.

 

[Nesikep]

Testing the bull you have would probably a great idea.. don't know what the cost is, but if you really like him otherwise... There's a 50/50 chance he is a carrier, and if I'm not mistaken, if he is a carrier, 1 in 4 calves (statistically) would actually have it.

 

[Post Oak]

Where do I go to get him tested? Is there some way that I could draw blood and send it off to get tested?

 

[dun]

Where do I go to get him tested? Is there some way that I could draw blood and send it off to get tested?

Your breed association most likely has a method of getting it done. I know there are a number of companys that do it but that's as far as I go.

 

[herofan]

A lot of money is made up in the uniform calf crop and marketing large groups of calves at once, rather than one here, two there, another 6 sometime else. I remember lots of single calves being sold and being docked upwards of $200 per head. On even 10 calves, that adds up to some coin. You can retain them and feed them larger, but when does your expenses and time, negate the effort? The lone steer is likely still going to go as a single later on and likely docked, so was anything gained?

Are you saying you sell yours as a group instead of individually? Do you sell at the sale-barn or to an individual buyer? I believe people here purposely sell individually at the sale barn because they feel they bring more that way.