Follow up to Breeding own heifers

[Phil A.]

We try and get at least 80% of cows on one trip of timed AI. And things are showing improvement when you look at our replacement heifers. We try and keep enough heifers back that we could replace 20% of our mature cows per year. We have not had to cull that hard and our herd has grown and these AI females are making some huge improvments for us.

So here is question. With getting 80% one trip timed AI that leaves say less than 50% of our cows for the Bulls to breed. This is the first year I kept bull calves back (AI sired obviously) and used them as clean up. I just have a hard time paying 6-10K for a decent clean up bull. Is anyone else doing this or am I plumb crazy. I do not intend to keep any of these cleanup bull sired calves for replacements.

These bulls were AI sired out of Cows who were a result of an AI mating. So I do have some decent genetics starting to build up on these fellas.

Phil A.

 

[Jessica06]

Not crazy at all. When I mentioned keeping bulls in the other thread, I was mostly alluding to those who start out with a mediocre bull, then pick out a son a few years later to keep, and then pick a son of that son, etc... The way that you are doing it, you're essentially producing something pretty similar to what the purebred guys are, just without a full pedigree. AI can really level the playing field, and honestly, a lot of the bulls selling for 6-10K these days we would probably cull at weaning. If you started with good cows and have been using a lot of AI, I say more power to you! You might be raising bulls as good or better than what you would buy, at a fraction of the cost. We bought our first registered cows about 4 years ago...we do plan on selling bulls some day soon, but we've been thoroughly enjoying raising our own bulls to use, that we would never go out and buy somewhere else (we're kinda cheap!).

Read this article when you get the time.

http://www.angusbeefbulletin.com/Articl ... 002_10.pdf

If you can find a copy of the book that they talk about, I HIGHLY recommend getting one. Pretty similar to what you're doing. It's all common sense stuff, and really makes you think about the way you cull.

 

[pdfangus]

I would agree that your approach is basically the same as mine was as a purebred breeder.....
I tried to AI everything and used my best young bull every year to do the cleanup....
there came a time...after using good young bulls from our best cows who had a random opportunity to breed another of the best cows because I missed her, that our cleanup bulls calves began to perform better than the AI calves....

i attributed this to several generations of stacking genetics that suceeded in our environment....