Breeding Mistakes

Help Support CattleToday:

J+ Cattle

Well-known member
Joined
May 21, 2006
Messages
764
Reaction score
1,040
Location
North Texas
Tell us about the AI bull that you used in the past that you consider to be your biggest breeding mistake and tell why it was a mistake.
I ask because it's the mistakes that we make that causes us to learn the lessons that we never forget. Help us learn from your lesson so we don't make it ourselves.
 
Eagles Run High Roller on a first calf heifer. 98.5 lb hard pull resulting in a dead bull calf. Won't use him on any other heifers for sure- no matter what the breeder or EPDs said!
 
Yes I see they advertise "moderate" birth weight but his own birth weight was 90 lbs. Fine for an experienced cow but too much for a heifer
 
Yes I see they advertise "moderate" birth weight but his own birth weight was 90 lbs. Fine for an experienced cow but too much for a heifer
The old Rainmaker 340 bull had 90# BW himself but he was definitely a PROVEN heifer bull. You can't go by BW alone. You must search the bloodlines and the contemporaries.
 
Southern Charm on heifers. He was CED 7 or 8 when we used him. Just a little much for heifers, but at least they were all hand pulls. Checked his CED after tugging calves out of heifers and he was CED 3. Not a big mistake because we were watching them close.
 
Not my mistake (best kind), but a buddy bred 50 to the Rampage bull.. he reports that they were the wildest, meanest bunch of calves he's ever experienced.. he was hoping to sell a bunch of the bulls and retain a bunch of the heifers.. ended up getting rid of most to the sale barn at weaning.. wonder why they named him Rampage?
 
Not my mistake (best kind), but a buddy bred 50 to the Rampage bull.. he reports that they were the wildest, meanest bunch of calves he's ever experienced.. he was hoping to sell a bunch of the bulls and retain a bunch of the heifers.. ended up getting rid of most to the sale barn at weaning.. wonder why they named him Rampage?
Did the name not tell him something!
 
Got the most off type and higher BW from that one.
BW comes more from the cow than from the bull. If you have heavy BW in your cows,
you can expect higher BW from any bull you choose. Sorry you had problems with Rainmaker. We used him quite a bit with zero problems. And I was skeptical at first.

Just wondering: Did you use him on purebred Angus cows? That's what we used him on.
 
Sorry to be a downer, but my biggest AI failure has been AI itself. Not worth it to me, as far as time and effort, with having to keep and maintain cleanup bulls. I prefer to let the bulls do their job. Liked the AI results years ago with Charolais. Got some decent Angus calves too in later years, but not all those bulls were all that. Then there was the caveat that different techs were using TAI and timing that is essential was often off and the results were disastrous.
AI is fine if you do it yourself or have a tech that has time to work with you. Avoiding young bulls of the month EPD wonders can help too.
I used Absolute on some heifers, supposed to have been too docility. Absolutely not docile, some of the craziest calves I've ever had the misfortune of having. They were good looking calves though but ended up being sold as commercial calves.
Used Final Product on heifers before his EPD for calving dropped.
Had a tech out to breed some cows and we were discussing the current calves and how one that we all thought was an AI calf was much more powerful than the others. Turns out when we went to register him dna didn't match, he was actually out of my herd bull.
 
BW comes more from the cow than from the bull. If you have heavy BW in your cows,
you can expect higher BW from any bull you choose. Sorry you had problems with Rainmaker. We used him quite a bit with zero problems. And I was skeptical at first.

Just wondering: Did you use him on purebred Angus cows? That's what we used him on.
Reg Angus without BW issues. Daughters that survived were frail, brown and small. I might have been born at night but not last night! One of the ugliest bulls I ever saw was a son. Same thing.
 
Not an AI mistake, just a lack of education and a painful on at that. Probably 17 years ago the place I'm herdsman for needed a hfr bull. A seed stock guy that we had bought several bulls from had a "little black bull" that he was going to butcher. We traded a fat steer for him. Found out later that he was a "little black bull" because he had pneumonia as a calf. He spent most of the summer under a tree panting. Some how he got 19 heifers bred. I pulled 18 of those calves, saved most of them. Had one her prolapse in the middle of the night and die.
It was a hard knock lesson in how important EPD's are.
 
Reg Angus without BW issues. Daughters that survived were frail, brown and small. I might have been born at night but not last night! One of the ugliest bulls I ever saw was a son. Same thing.
Used to have a red Angus bull that through beautiful daughters on the out outside. They couldn't pass when we pelvic measured though. Just for fun we pelvic measured that bull as a two year old. He had a smaller pelvic sqcm than the two blk Angus yearlings that we measured to compare.
He became an instant terminal cross.
 
Not an AI mistake, just a lack of education and a painful on at that. Probably 17 years ago the place I'm herdsman for needed a hfr bull. A seed stock guy that we had bought several bulls from had a "little black bull" that he was going to butcher. We traded a fat steer for him. Found out later that he was a "little black bull" because he had pneumonia as a calf. He spent most of the summer under a tree panting. Some how he got 19 heifers bred. I pulled 18 of those calves, saved most of them. Had one her prolapse in the middle of the night and die.
It was a hard knock lesson in how important EPD's are.
Purchased a group of 40 beautiful bred heifers several years ago. Bred to the farm's "proven" heifer bull. Ended up pulling 20+. It was awful.. calves all had heads like cinder blocks. Lost 6 or 7 of the calves but saved all the heifers.
 
I remembered one that topped all. The first bull I ever used. Summitcrest Double Play. Calving ease and a new kid on the block for ABS so the rep said that it would be cheap and good for me to learn AI but ought to make nice calves. He was right - nice calves, I learned to AI and every daughter was sterile. Also had a small pelvis bull that was a Select Sires offer with the nickname O G. We found out about the pelvic issue from daughters. But the commercial sons as steers were market toppers.
 

Latest posts

Top