Mostly Bull Calves

[greenwillowherefords]

Is there any type of study showing why an operation would have almost all bull calves? I am curious as to whether environment plays a role in this. It has been frustrating for me to try to build with replacement heifers when it seems that all I get are bulls! My cattle definitely have to work for a living. They are not pampered. My pastures are in bad need of more fertilizer and spraying for weeds than I have managed to put into them. I try to keep good mineral available. I feed prairie hay in the winter that ranges from pretty good to barely fair, depending on what my supplier has at the time. I supplement lightly in winter with 20% cubes. My cattle have never fallen apart when sold into other herds, because they already live like commercial cattle. Opinions Please.

 

[Campground Cattle]

Is there any type of study showing why an operation would have almost all bull calves? I am curious as to whether environment plays a role in this. It has been frustrating for me to try to build with replacement heifers when it seems that all I get are bulls! My cattle definitely have to work for a living. They are not pampered. My pastures are in bad need of more fertilizer and spraying for weeds than I have managed to put into them. I try to keep good mineral available. I feed prairie hay in the winter that ranges from pretty good to barely fair, depending on what my supplier has at the time. I supplement lightly in winter with 20% cubes. My cattle have never fallen apart when sold into other herds, because they already live like commercial cattle. Opinions Please.

Just the way it goes Willow I am at 90% heifers this year, I want bull calf's as I am out of any breeding age. I have people calling looking for Herd Bulls and I have to send them to the other registered breeder in the county.

 

[cherokeeruby]

Are they natural service or AI, if AI you could be timing it wrong is my only guess. There have to be other reasons there have been years where our crop was disproportionally bull calves. Think our ratio after 18 years still leans towards bull calves. X my fingers so far this year it has been 5 heifers and 2 bulls but don't tell anyone, don't want to jinx it.

;-)

 

[greenwillowherefords]

Natural service.

 

[jerry27150]

think the bull has a lot to do with it

 

[Ryder]

In poker lingo it is called "luck of the draw".

 

[shorty]

I wish I could switch with you , I seem to always have more heifers than bulls, I have an older cow that only had 1 bull calf out of 10 .

 

[Beefy]

was she your best cow?

 

[shorty]

I wouldn't say she is my best cow, she's one of my better ones, she's a big simmental . I kept one of her heifers from 2 years ago which should be calving in the next month , I sold last years calf but the man who got it is keeping it to breed. She has a heiffer again but I'm not sure yet what I'll do this one , she always raises up a nice calf.

 

[la4angus]

I've seen an instance where a herd had 70% B/C and 30% H/C one year and 40% B/C and 60% H/C the following year. Over the years it weill average out to about 50-50.

 

[greenwillowherefords]

It has been like this for 4 years for me.

 

[cherokeeruby]

Natural service.

It has always seemed to me that as a bull got older his calf ratio started leaning toward bull calves. My theory is that the younger bulls service the cow earlier in her cycle due to their eagerness and with female semen living longer than male semen by the time the egg is ready to be fertilized there are more female semen alive.

With hereford bulls with our brahman cows we had more bull calves than heifers even with young bulls, that one I attributed to the brahmans ability to outrun the hereford and brahmans dislike for all cattle that don't carry brahman blood. Therefore the bull is breeding her late allowing the faster male semen to beat the female to the egg.

Other brahman breeders have noticed this too. A brahman bull will breed a angus or any other bos tarus breed but after he is through he will butt her a couple of times and then return to his group of brahman blooded cows.

You can call me crazy now.

:roll: :lol:

 

[plbcattle]

greenwillow, if you were in the brangus business we could do some swapping. in the last 2 years out of close to 100 calves, 90 have been heifers. I need bull calves not heifers but i guess you get what you get.

 

[greenwillowherefords]

My first bull was only a little over two when I got him. The second was 8. The first was a very aggressive breeder.

 

[plbcattle]

i was looking into cloning a bull I had and a super donor cow I had. i ran into some guys that were talking about sexing semen, and eggs. they were talking about in the future you might be able to buy bulls that will sire only males or females. they will be altered so they don't have one or the other chromosones to be able to produce which ever sex you want. I thought that was pretty neat.

 

[icandoit]

cherokeeruby wrote:

Are they natural service or AI, if AI you could be timing it wrong is my only guess. There have to be other reasons there have been years where our crop was disproportionally bull calves. Think our ratio after 18 years still leans towards bull calves. X my fingers so far this year it has been 5 heifers and 2 bulls but don't tell anyone, don't want to jinx it.

Could you explain the timing for AI to get heifers? I'm going to AI 5 of my cows and want heifers if I can get them. Still learning the AI process. I probably should have started a new post on this but it seems to go together. Sorry greenwillowherefords, I didn't mean to hijack your post.

Dick Austin

 

[greenwillowherefords]

greenwillow, if you were in the brangus business we could do some swapping. in the last 2 years out of close to 100 calves, 90 have been heifers. I need bull calves not heifers but i guess you get what you get.

Maybe someday we can produce some super baldies for the commercial guys by crossing some registered cattle from both breeds.

 

[cherokeeruby]

cherokeeruby wrote:

Are they natural service or AI, if AI you could be timing it wrong is my only guess. There have to be other reasons there have been years where our crop was disproportionally bull calves. Think our ratio after 18 years still leans towards bull calves. X my fingers so far this year it has been 5 heifers and 2 bulls but don't tell anyone, don't want to jinx it.

Could you explain the timing for AI to get heifers? I'm going to AI 5 of my cows and want heifers if I can get them. Still learning the AI process. I probably should have started a new post on this but it seems to go together. Sorry greenwillowherefords, I didn't mean to hijack your post.
Dick Austin

Since you are dealing with a lot less semen with AI vs. natural service timing the AIing doesn't really help. Seems like we always got more bull calves with AI. If you AI them right before they go out of standing heat you chances of heifers will improve but how do you know when they are about to go out of standing heat. We are dealing with Brahmans so they have a much shorter standing heat. What we would do is watch her, note how long she was in standing heat and then time the AIing on the next cycle to try to catch her at the tail end of standing heat. We never used any shots to synchronize heat always just natural heats.

But toward the end of our experience with AI we decided to just AI the cows we would not mind having bulls out of since we were getting more bulls than heifers.

 

[la4angus]

We do mostly AI then use a clean up bull. I just checked last years calf crop and it was right on 50% bulls and 50% hfrs for the AI and 50% bulls and 50% hfrs for the clean up bull.