Got my hereford Ai sires picked out for this year

[MRRherefords]

We are getting ready to AI on Monday. Have everyone synced and primed to come in heat that day. Selecting bulls to mate with certain cows is one of my favorite things to do. This year we are going to be using:
Msu TCF Revolution 4R
Mohican Excede
BEHM 100W Cuda
KCF Bennett Revolution X51
and KJ Redeem.
Going with some oldies this year as well as a couple new ones from Select Sires that we have liked. Can't wait to see how these matches work!

 

[Stocker Steve]

That's a lot of different bulls. What is your mating strategy?

 

[MRRherefords]

We try to produce superior females out of our combinations. So I look at each individual cow, their strengths and weaknesses, and try to match them with best possible bull that will pick up where a few may have some shortfalls. We have used 4R, X51, and Redeem before with great success, so those were old go to's. Excede and Cuda are only going to a couple cows each, just kind of as an experiment to see how we like them.

 

[SPH]

The Cuda bull is on our radar and there is a good chance we buy some semen on him. 4R is probably one of the best bulls we ever used, sires some great females. He's why we never used X51. X51 looks like a hard doing bull from his pictures but have seen some nice progeny out of him over the years so he's surprised me there. Those older bulls take a lot of the guesswork and risk out of AI compared to younger, less proven sires as they have daughters and sons in production now you can see how they perform.

Got our first calves sired by KT SMALL TOWN KID 5051 this year and we plan to use up the rest of the semen on him this year as we have been pleased with the calves we got. Good bone and structure on his calves with some thickness. It's always hard to tell just a month or so after calves are born how they will grow out but so far his calves are the ones that stand out in this calf crop at this stage. Have liked what we've seen by his sire Hometown but the $75 certificate cost on top of the $35 semen a little pricey for our small operation so when we came across 5051 we really liked the combo of Hometown and the dam side of his pedigree and costs less to breed as well.