Has anyone ever tried this ???

[Angus Cowman]

I read an article the other day about breeding where the rancher would turn one bull in with say 50 cows leave him in for 14-21 days then pull him out and put another bull in for 14-21 days then put the first bull back in he would do this rotation for 60-80 day breeding season
He said since he had been doing this his breeding percentages had came up and he also stated that you could see by the way the calves hit the ground how it worked had several calves in each bull group that would hit the ground within the first 7-10 days of new bull turn out

Can you see any advantages or disadvantages to this ?

 

[NoCO]

I think one disadvantage would be having to gather one bull every "x" amount of days and replace him with another bull. This may work on small scale operations but it would not be feasible when bulls are out on large pastures. I guess it would just depend on the operation and how many head you are running. I personally would want both bulls on my 50 cows to get as many cows covered in the shortest amount of time.

 

[mbangus]

Yes many people do this with their herds. Your bulls are fresh and not over run. A family down the road change bulls out every week to me they are a little over doing it, but they breed during the hot part of summer so they say it really saves the bulls. They say it has also really tightened up there calving. We only ever run one bull at a time and our cows are checked every three days so if a bull seems off he is replaced. Usally with a closly realated bull to keep the calves uniform. All of our bulls will just walk into a trailer anytime we want him (unless a cow is cycling). It all depends on your herd and what will work and what wont.

 

[rockridgecattle]

we have tried this and it works. But the time it took to get the bull out and a new one in...time could have been better spent elsewhere. We instead try to put 1 bull with about 26 cows and each bull gets his own cows and pasture. Tos works well too.

 

[Angus Cowman]

Thanks for the comments
The article just got me to thinking because I have never seen or heard of this before

I break my cows up into groups of 40-50 hd and run 2 bulls per herd I have a couple sets of full brothers for bulls and the rest are paired as 1/2 brothers so they throw uniform calves and I have had pretty good breeding % the last couple of yrs about 96% on a 75 day season

 

[randiliana]

We have friends that do this with their cow herd. They run about 300 head of mature cows with Charolais bulls. They were running into a lot of problems with bulls fighting and getting hurt, so they decided to try this. Now they kick out 2 bulls for 2 weeks or so, and then pull them and kick out 2 other bulls. It has dramatically reduced the # of injured bulls they have each summer. I cannot speak to if it has helped tighten up their calving season though. It has also enabled them to have an idea of what each bull is throwing for calves. Now if they have a bunch of high BW calves, or some that didn't grow as well as they should have, they only have to look at 2 bulls, rather than wonder which of 8 or so it was.

 

[RanchManager]

Hi,
We do something similar in our small breeding groups where we only need one bull. I do it for two reasons. One is if the one bull has an issue early on that you are not aware of, like an infection in the epididymus, you might not see any outward signs, but his sperm count can be drastically affected. You might not know and find out at preg'n time. This avoids a big wreck. Yeah, it's a pain to have to go pull a bull away from his girls, but it's cheap insurance. We have all of our bulls tested just before breeding season, but there is still no guarantee a fetile bull won't develop a problem, still mount and appear active, but be a dud. Two, putting in a fresh bull that is raring to go insures a hungry active sexual appetite and a bull that is going to keep making the rounds. It's worked well for us!

 

[msscamp]

I read an article the other day about breeding where the rancher would turn one bull in with say 50 cows leave him in for 14-21 days then pull him out and put another bull in for 14-21 days then put the first bull back in he would do this rotation for 60-80 day breeding season
He said since he had been doing this his breeding percentages had came up and he also stated that you could see by the way the calves hit the ground how it worked had several calves in each bull group that would hit the ground within the first 7-10 days of new bull turn out

Can you see any advantages or disadvantages to this ?

Ummmm, yes, I can see a major disadvantage to this type of breeding. Unless you have the time to set and watch to see which bull has bred which cow, and follow up to see if she actually settled on that breeding, how are you going to know who bred whom? If you put a bull in with a particular herd, leave him there for 60-90 days (depending on your schedule), and then pull the bull - you will know who settled, who didn't, and who sired those calves.

 

[RanchManager]

You would know by the calves birth day compared to the days you exchanged the bulls. There will be a few born in the middle that could go either way, but the majority on each side of the breeding season is pretty much a sure thing. If you have to be sure and want to avoid the possibility of overlapping conception, then pull the first bull, wait 4 -5 days then turn in the new bull. First bull pull date plus 285 days plus your 4 -5 days. Anything born after that was sired by the second bull. For us it is not worth the 4 -5 days wait and the possibility of missing a few cows cycle. It's not a registered herd and if we are not 100% sure on a few calves it is no big deal. We typically find that the large majority are born within the time frame of the first bull, we have a period of no calves and then the late, stragglers, are born of the second bull.

 

[msscamp]

Sounds to me like you've already made up your mind, so why are asking for opinions/thoughts?

 

[Angus Cowman]

Sounds to me like you've already made up your mind, so why are asking for opinions/thoughts?

I haven't made up my mind like I said I was reading an article and found it interesting and was wondering if anyone had tried it or heard of it being done
You can't always believe what you read and was just trying to get others opinions and more informaion I thought that was what this forum was about if not I guess they just need to close these boards and everyone will go back to being close minded and uninformed