Randi
Well-known member
Yesterday we got the last of the bulls out to pasture. We try to stick to a June 1 turnout, but with so many pastures that isn't as easy to make happen as I wish, lol. That and uncooperative weather meant that most of the boys got turned out May 29 rather than June 1 this year. With the forecast calling for rain May 30 and 31, and the fact that we have some difficult areas to get into if it does rain much we decided to beat the forecast and hauled them out a couple days early. Shouldn't make a big difference (actually will help the ones bred Char to calve a little closer to the start of calving next year), and I'd rather have a few early, rather than later calves anyways. These were the easy bunch, a truck, a trailer and drop them off with their cows....
The other bunch of cows, is 2 hours north of us, but the roads up to the pasture are not a problem even with a lot of rain. Getting them to the pasture...no problem...Getting them to the cows however....
This is the yearling Shorthorn bull that will be on our heifers.
Actually, it went fairly well. We had to trail 2 about a mile, and 1 about a 1/2 mile. The 2 year old, went along quite well, but along the way he turned into a bloodhound, and that made moving him a bit more challenging :cboy:, as he thought he should follow his nose... The yearlings went fairly well, the 1/2 mile was easy. But the other one gave us a bit of trouble, he decided that he'd rather go back than keep going forward, and DH had taken off with the bike to finish setting up the electric fence. But once he came back the 2 of us were able to persuade the bull to keep on trucking. And he found the prize in the end....
So, here's what we do for breeding season. Starting June 1 (or so) all the bulls get to go out. We run about 1/2 the cows with Char bulls for the whole season. About June 1 to July 20
Here's 2 of the 4
The other 1/2 go out with either Red Angus or Shorthorn bulls (I'll get some photos of the new guys eventually) for 21-22 days. Then, we run the Char bulls on all the cows until the end of breeding season.
The plan is to get replacement heifers on the first cycle, on the best cows, and breed for pounds on all the other cows, and on all the later calving cows. I'm fairly strict on what gets bred Red Angus or Shorthorn, to get bred Red they have to have decent conformation (no bad bags or feet, etc), have a good temperament, have calved on the first cycle, and raised a pretty good calf last year (or in the case of the first calvers, have a pretty good looking calf coming along).
Now, having said all this, we're pretty strict on culling for most of this stuff anyways. But I'll keep a cow with poorer feet or udder around as long as she's raising a decent calf without any assistance from us. I know this year I had a difficult time choosing some of the cows that went Char off the start, but we don't like to run too many cows per bull if we can avoid it (30 for 2 years and up and about 20 for yearlings) And I went back into my records looking at things such as if we'd ever kept a heifer off of her/did that heifer make a good cow.
The hope is that next spring, out of 100 cows bred Red, a minimum of 60%-70% will have calved on the first cycle (60-70), and 50% of those should have heifer calves, so we should have about 30-35 heifers that should almost all be replacement quality. AND, by breeding all the poorer end and later calving cows Charolais, we won't be nearly as tempted to keep those heifer calves as replacements :cowboy: And an added bonus in this area, those Charx heifers sell at the top of the market too.
The other bunch of cows, is 2 hours north of us, but the roads up to the pasture are not a problem even with a lot of rain. Getting them to the pasture...no problem...Getting them to the cows however....
This is the yearling Shorthorn bull that will be on our heifers.
Actually, it went fairly well. We had to trail 2 about a mile, and 1 about a 1/2 mile. The 2 year old, went along quite well, but along the way he turned into a bloodhound, and that made moving him a bit more challenging :cboy:, as he thought he should follow his nose... The yearlings went fairly well, the 1/2 mile was easy. But the other one gave us a bit of trouble, he decided that he'd rather go back than keep going forward, and DH had taken off with the bike to finish setting up the electric fence. But once he came back the 2 of us were able to persuade the bull to keep on trucking. And he found the prize in the end....
So, here's what we do for breeding season. Starting June 1 (or so) all the bulls get to go out. We run about 1/2 the cows with Char bulls for the whole season. About June 1 to July 20
Here's 2 of the 4
The other 1/2 go out with either Red Angus or Shorthorn bulls (I'll get some photos of the new guys eventually) for 21-22 days. Then, we run the Char bulls on all the cows until the end of breeding season.
The plan is to get replacement heifers on the first cycle, on the best cows, and breed for pounds on all the other cows, and on all the later calving cows. I'm fairly strict on what gets bred Red Angus or Shorthorn, to get bred Red they have to have decent conformation (no bad bags or feet, etc), have a good temperament, have calved on the first cycle, and raised a pretty good calf last year (or in the case of the first calvers, have a pretty good looking calf coming along).
Now, having said all this, we're pretty strict on culling for most of this stuff anyways. But I'll keep a cow with poorer feet or udder around as long as she's raising a decent calf without any assistance from us. I know this year I had a difficult time choosing some of the cows that went Char off the start, but we don't like to run too many cows per bull if we can avoid it (30 for 2 years and up and about 20 for yearlings) And I went back into my records looking at things such as if we'd ever kept a heifer off of her/did that heifer make a good cow.
The hope is that next spring, out of 100 cows bred Red, a minimum of 60%-70% will have calved on the first cycle (60-70), and 50% of those should have heifer calves, so we should have about 30-35 heifers that should almost all be replacement quality. AND, by breeding all the poorer end and later calving cows Charolais, we won't be nearly as tempted to keep those heifer calves as replacements :cowboy: And an added bonus in this area, those Charx heifers sell at the top of the market too.
