# of AI bulls use in a herd

[Alan]

How many different AI bulls will you guys/gals use per year in your herd? per number of cows?

Meaning if you have 100 cows to AI will you use 4, 5, 10, 20 AI bulls?

Can you hurt your ability to find a good AI/cow niche by using too many AI bulls?

Thanks,
Alan

 

[KNERSIE]

I usually use two or three and sometimes would use just a couple of straws of another to test him before using him more heavily.

For me its a case of using bulls of similar type, but with with different strong traits to use as corrective breeding to address certain issues in the cows. The bulls I use are all in the frame 5-6 range all heavy mucled, but some are maternally stronger while others have better eyes, etc.

If you find a nick with a certain bull on a certain line cow its always a good idea to replicate that mating as often as possible while semen is still available on that bull.

 

[dun]

We use a different bull for each 4-5 cows. Selection is by what will comliment that particular cow. Some cows get bred back to the same bulls year after year. Great results and if it ain;t broke etc..........

 

[cfpinz]

I use one bull for every 25-30 cows or so. We are talking Automatic Inseminators, right?

cfpinz

 

[Ned Jr.]

It's all just personal preference but I like to see large sire groups. When I get a sale catalog and they have a different sire for nearly every lot I don't like it for some reason. When I finally find the bulls I want to AI to I'll use them fairly hard.

 

[Outrigger2]

the more bulls you use the less uniform your calves may be. unless the bulls are brothers or flush mates.

 

[Frankie]

How many different AI bulls will you guys/gals use per year in your herd? per number of cows?

Meaning if you have 100 cows to AI will you use 4, 5, 10, 20 AI bulls?

Can you hurt your ability to find a good AI/cow niche by using too many AI bulls?

Thanks,
Alan

We AI everything. The number of bulls we use varies from year to year. If we find a bull that works well with a cow, we'll use him on here again and probably on her daughter and sister just to see how they do.

 

[*Cowgirl*]

We use a different bull for each 4-5 cows. Selection is by what will comliment that particular cow. Some cows get bred back to the same bulls year after year. Great results and if it ain;t broke etc..........

Not sure what the ratio is.....

 

[HEREFORD ROADHOG]

I use one bull for every 25-30 cows or so. We are talking Automatic Inseminators, right?

cfpinz

how much for the used cows?

 

[msscamp]

We use a different bull for each 4-5 cows. Selection is by what will comliment that particular cow. Some cows get bred back to the same bulls year after year. Great results and if it ain;t broke etc..........

I'm not sure we used that many bulls, but I agree 100% with the rest of your response. That is how we did it, too, but I don't think EPD's existed back then.

 

[Beef11]

It's all just personal preference but I like to see large sire groups. When I get a sale catalog and they have a different sire for nearly every lot I don't like it for some reason. When I finally find the bulls I want to AI to I'll use them fairly hard.

I'm the same way. I like to see a bunch of brothers and sisters so that i know what the bulls calves look like. I get frustrated when i'm looking through a purebred herd and every cow has a completely different pedigree than the rest. I get real frustrated when the herd has as many types of cows as it does cows.

 

[Putangitangi]

I used 17 different bulls one year, natural and AI, in a herd of less than 50 cows. Needless to say, my results were uneven. I was using up a whole lot of odds and sods in the bank and thought I'd see what I got. Many of the cows were cross-bred/commercials and so their bulls were steered and did not make an easy line to sell.

This year there are 10 sires in 43 pregnancies - again using up a few odd straws, and trying out a couple of new yearling bulls. I expect my results to be far more even than in the earlier instance, having a more uniform herd of cows and the bulls being ones I've used before and know to produce what I'm looking for.

 

[TexasBred]

We've been using 2 bulls on this years heifer crop. (lst calf heifers) Already have 2 picked out for their moms and have one picked out for what those "expected" calfs should need as far as improving them in areas needing a bit of refining.

 

[tlmcr]

I try to stick to 1 AI sire for about each 10 cows. This give you a contempary group of calves from one proven sire and makes it easier to measure how each cow preformed.

 

[Northern Rancher]

I've used the same bulls for the last ten years pretty much A'I-we have some in the tank work well so we just will use them till they are used up. We bred 150 head to our Lad Horned Hereford bull this year-would like to get a large group of daughters off him soon.

 

[MikeC]

There is high accuracy in large sire group analysis.

 

[TSR]

I have been using 3 different bulls, one very heavily. Like most I try to match the bull to the cow and then you find this one that really clicks and before you know it three fourths of your young cows and heifers are sired by this one bull-- then comes the problem of finding another bull that will compliment these females.
Same is true of your cows, you will find several that will just outperform the others. They probably need to be flushed but I just can't talk myself into spending that much money. Probably in the future I will wish I had, but to this point I am just retaining all the heifers out of these cows and trying my hand at some line breeding.