new calf

[cattletom]

one of my prebred non registered angus cows just had a healthy bull calf(2 days old). we are going to sell him. i am just looking for some advice on whetther its best to castrate and sell him as a steer at weaning age or if it is best to just sell him as a bull at weaning age or grow him up a little bit and sell him as a yearling - 18 mth old breeding bull. we will probably sell him at out local sale barn or maybe put an ad in the paper. any advice would be helpful. we have to decide soon because if we castrate him, the sooner the better, right. any advice on the best method for castrating would be helpful to.

thanks cattletom

 

[dun]

Band him now. With the number of registered bulls available at reasonable prices, a generic bull doesn't have that much sales value. Depending on the market you might want to look at all the atternatives come weaning time. Salesbran, private treatym growing him out and feeding him for private treaty carcass beef.

dun

one of my prebred non registered angus cows just had a healthy bull calf(2 days old). we are going to sell him. i am just looking for some advice on whetther its best to castrate and sell him as a steer at weaning age or if it is best to just sell him as a bull at weaning age or grow him up a little bit and sell him as a yearling - 18 mth old breeding bull. we will probably sell him at out local sale barn or maybe put an ad in the paper. any advice would be helpful. we have to decide soon because if we castrate him, the sooner the better, right. any advice on the best method for castrating would be helpful to.

thanks cattletom

 

[la4angus]

Band him now. Most of the feeders will dock bulls. Beside this, if you decide to keep him around he will not be giving you any trouble. Trying to breed the young heifers. With 30 acres you I don't see how you could have room to keep heifers seperated from the cows and your older breeding bull, and also away from the young bull without having a small pen to keep him in by himself. This means added unnecessary work for a market animal.

 

[D.R. Cattle]

One of my aquaintences just lost her pride bull because of uncastrated yearlings being around. She got a little complacent about the young bulls (they were his calves) and didn't castrate on her small farm. One of the young bulls got aggressive and challenged king daddy. It was a freak thing but the yearling hit him sqaure in the boiler room and cracked a rib. The rib punctured one of his lungs and killed him. Small farms like that should definitely castrate. If hte bulls aren't challenging each other, they are likely to challenge people and other things when heifers are around.