synchronizing heifers before bull turn out?

[mncowboy]

Looking to see if anyone has synchronized a group of females and then turned a bull out with them and if so, how long until you move them to pasture? I've got a new bull that run with the registered herd but wouldn't mind using him on my commercial heifers before he goes to pasture. If I set them up with CIDRs and lute, how many hours do I leave him in there before I move the females to pasture?

 

[simme]

What is the goal of synching when using a bull natural service? How many heifers? If you use CIDR's, I would expect about 75% to be in heat in a 24 hour period with the most of the rest a day (maybe 2) later. Maybe a few a day early. Can this bull handle that many in one day? Heifers should be fertile. Why not just turn the bull with the heifers and save the expense and time?
But, no. I have never synched for natural service.

 

[Dsth]

your post leaves out perhaps the one most important factor; how many heifers are you talking about? My experience is that if you have more than 2 or 3 cows/heifers in standing heat at the same time, the bull will only breed a few several times and not breed the others at all until they come back in heat. I inserted CIDRs last Wednesday and planning on removing today. will probably see cows/heifers in heat starting on Friday and end on Sunday. I wonder the same as simme as to why you are synching if you are going to natural breed them.

 

[Dave]

I know of one person who did something similar. Not the entire CIDRs route. But luted the heifers and turned them in with plenty of bull power. Something like 25 heifers with 8 bulls. The theory was to get the heifers to all calf in a very short window. It worked... I guess.

 

[mncowboy]

What is the goal of synching when using a bull natural service? How many heifers? If you use CIDR's, I would expect about 75% to be in heat in a 24 hour period with the most of the rest a day (maybe 2) later. Maybe a few a day early. Can this bull handle that many in one day? Heifers should be fertile. Why not just turn the bull with the heifers and save the expense and time?
But, no. I have never synched for natural service.

I guess the idea was that I wanted to use this particular bull on the heifers. It won't be an option on pasture because he'll be servicing the registered herd in a different pasture. I'll have another bull with the commercial heifers, just thought it'd be away to get more use out of this particular purchase. There's only 10 heifers but based on the response, it doesn't appear folks think he'd be able to cover that many in a 48 hour window as a yearling.

 

[Dsth]

you could get by using him for 10 heifers if you keep him in a pen and turn 1 or 2 heifers in with him at a time as they show signs of heat. remove them when you see them get bred and cycle in next set. is somewhat labor and time consuming but it would be your best chance to get the most heifers bred by him. a couple hours in the pen between adding next set in will also let him rest a bit and get is hormones recharged if he is watching heifers riding each other on the other side.

 

[SBMF 2015]

I've used MGA to synch hfrs and turn bulls out. It works. The key is plenty of bull power. I had the ability to use 3 bulls on 25 hfrs. Split them up into 3 groups. It worked. I wouldn't go to the expense of ciders though.

 

[GoWyo]

Lute half the heifers and let him at them. Could lute any others that don't come into heat around 4 days before you need to remove him to the other pasture. Would use heat detector patches to see what has been bred if you can't observe them every few hours.

 

[mncowboy]

Lute half the heifers and let him at them. Could lute any others that don't come into heat around 4 days before you need to remove him to the other pasture. Would use heat detector patches to see what has been bred if you can't observe them every few hours.

thanks, I think this is worth a try.

 

[Kcarr]

If you are going through all that trouble it may be worth getting him collected and AIing the commercial heifers. It seems to me like that may be less work if you had someone to do it and the goal was to get a significant group bred to him.

 

[Lucky_P]

The repro folks at UN-L were advocating, several years back, putting CIDRs in for 7-8 days, then pulling them (no lute, just pulling the CIDR), if you were going for natural service breeding. Studies showed that overall, cows with CIDR treatment bred up 3 days earlier than similar group without CIDRs.