14 Bull Calves Born in a row...
 

Oiighh!....For a dairy farmer, that is not a good thing.

We are 7 bull calves so far for the year. Since Essie was due Tuesday....well, it's looking like number 8 in on its way.

So far here 2 bull calves, and 3 heifers. Last year I was about 60/40 (60% heifers).



Jeff

Up North, that's just crazy. I've had some odd runs but never that odd.

alot of small farmers in Kansas will buy bull calfs for bottle feeding for the freezer,

I believe it's got something to do with the temps last year when they bred..

Were all these calves out of the same bull?? If so I sure hope it was AI and not a bull you own.

Hey look at it this way, that if your going to be timing future calving with the seasonality of grass they were born wrong, and calf prices are pretty good now. Besides with the new move you are probably busy enuf without all those babies to feed, ( and more milk to sell) . I am lucky to get two heifers a year.

There is an old story about breeding by the moon, in order to get the sex you want.

It's a mix. The calves are from both AI and our Ayrshire bull. We did have a run of heifers before the run of bull calves but enough is enough already. I wanted to puke when we had this absolutly gorgious red Normande born. Great coloring with lots of unique spots. Of course it was a bull! I've been trying to get a red Normande heifer for years now.

Heather

I don't have anything like the same number of cows as you but interestingly of the 5 that calved last October, 3 were bulls and of the four that calved in April, 3 were bulls. Lambing was the same - of the 28 lambs docked, 19 of them were ram lambs.

I have a friend who operates an Angus stud and 75% of her calves by both bull and AI were bull calves. She was very disappointed as it narrowed down her options for keeping replacement heifers. I prefer bull calves as I'm not keeping anything for replacements and bull calves suit me better but certainly a problem if keeping replacements from within your own herd.

Up North, your just going to have to wait a little longer for that Normande, another breed I don't have here. I'll have to do some research on that.

Cheers,
Ronnie

It will run in cycles. Last year one of the dairies around here, had 30 bulls out of 40 cows. And so far this year she has had 10 heifers in a row. I do not know how this season is going to run. Guess will fined out in about three weeks. But since half the herd is due in the next 60 days. I hope for some bulls at least. Do not have that many trees in the yard. LOL

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Kinda makes sexed semen look cheap huh UpNorth? Using 100% sexed on my heifers now, we've had 12 heifers and 1 bull out of the last 13 including about half cows and half heifers.

DaleK do you mean your first calf heifers? Or are you talking about 2nd on.

We had a two year stretch when we had three keepable heifers the entire time. There were a couple JerAngus heifers during that two year time since we ran a clean-up bull, but they were sold within the first week for the most part.
That was when we were calving out a good 40 cows a year, I think.
We currently have 6 heifers under a year old.
Oddly enough, another farmer I know has had a run of bulls similar to your length if not more. This includes twin bull calves as well. She's had a couple of years with no dairy heifers. She's smaller than us.
Must a been something in the air. Most people I've run into have run mostly bull calves this year.

regardless of the number of animals owned it is always a 50/50 odds.

If you're going to be selling any as bottle calves, depending on how much you're asking, we would be interested in a couple for meat for the freezer. :)

We only have the one milk cow but she had a heifer and we wanted a bull. Of course all of our goats had bucks this year and we wanted does, we got one doe only.

Number 8 arrived late yesterday morning. He's a big boy. If he weren't so related to most of the herd (Myrher-P, Jace, Lemvig, Lester) he'd be raised for a clean up bull to use in 9-10 months. That and all the papers on his daughters would go back to J1s since he'd be a UR bull.
Ah well. Here is Essie (3/4 Jersey, 1/4 Norwegian Red) and her bull calf out of Ahlem (1J619-test sire {Jace X Lemvig}), so he's 7/8 J, 1/8 NR.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...100_4038-2.jpg

We are now over half way done with calving this year.....

Number 15 bull calf born yesterday. Heck, even Marks sister gave birth to a boy the same day. :) We can use the bull calves as an excuse to check out all the sale barns since we are new to the area. Brought a group of bull calves to Newkirk, OK last week. Was the first time I went to a sale barn. Very interesting. Here's our newest bull calf.
http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g2...s/IMG_0765.jpg

Heather

Good looking lad there.
I've managed to sell most of our bull calves off the farm in the past few years. Goat people in Ohio don't have much outlet for their milk, so they buy bull calves and raise them.

Thanks, he sure is a fiesty bugger. We've sold a bunch privately as well. With being new to the area it's a little harder right now. With having so many being born at once and with still trying to get the new farm settled we want them gone ASAP to reduce chore time.

Heather

I remember when the first bit of sexed semen cropped up, I beleive it was Select who had a few. They weren't the greatest bulls, now there are better bulls they are able to sex. The unfortunate thing, they can't sex the bulls I am after. I would love it if they had Talent sexed, Advent sexed, heck shottle sexed (problem with shottle is he is 85, sexed would probably bump him to 160 or more). Thing is though if you did get a heifer, and it was a good mating, shottle is popular, so you would get your $$ back, even if it was a couple breedings. Still expensive.


But Alta, ABS, Select, not sure if Semex has sexed. But it seems to be getting more popular. Heck, some are even using sexed to flush cows. They use all 5 units to do that, but the way they look at it. If they get 3 heifers, they pay for it all.


Also does anyone know what is up with Jace? Is he dead? Or is he sick? Because he wasn't in the May proofs. I wanted to use him on this one Jersey, but I settled for Paralegal, but I wish I had seen Max first, like him over paralegal.


Jeff

I don't know what's up with Jace. I used our last straw of him on a heifer out of Paramount. She's a looker and she's almost a month past breeding with no strong signs of cycling. I sure hope it took, since he was costly when we purchased him years ago. Our last clean-up bull was a Jace son and his first daughter is due to calve in August.
Our only Jace daughter is milking 67 pounds at 2 months fresh (she's down from 70). She's a 2 year old.

I couldn't track anything down online about Jace.

Hey, this is interesting to me because I'm working on a PhD looking at the effects of nutrition on birth sex ratios in mammals.

There are a couple papers out of Australia that show that cows in increasing condition conceive more male calves over females calves. This occurs in lots of species. It has to do with glucose metabolism early in development.

So I'm testing this out to put animals on diets, so their circulating blood sugar decreases, then breeding them to see what sex offspring they produce. I think you'll be seeing a lot more of this theory in large herd management in a few years.

So my question to you is - did you increase their ration when you started breeding them?

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Jeffy Semex just released SEMEXX sexed semen. They have Final Cut, Givenchy, Hyatt, Lomax, Lucky Star, Milkstar, Pagewire and Wire in Holsteins, Comerica, Legacy and Senior in Jersey, and Conn in Ayrshire.

It also seems to depend on the cow itself, some cows seem to spit out more heifers than others. We have a Jersey, two heifers in a row. Another, a holsten had two heifers so far in a row. Another has had two bulls in a row, while another had a bull last year and a heifer this year, and another has had two bulls in a row. It also can depend on breeding time, but that could be a myth. But diet seems to effect many things. The way I see it, a steady diet of good feed from the time of conception to the time of calving then right to the time of calving is key to developing a solid animal. A good example of the way animals can develop differently out of cow are ET's. You can take an ET, which is exact at conception in the donor dam. But the recips eat differently, and process differently. No two et's are the same development wise. Out of say 3, you can have one super animal, with one not as good as the other two.


Jeff

UpNorth, what did you think of the sale at Newkirk,OK? And, was there a lot of baby calves there for sale? I wish I would've known you would have that many babies for sale. I would've rather drove to see you guys instead of going to Miami, OK last weekend for six MilkingShorthorn bull calves. It would've been closer to come see you and I could've checked out the new spread! I just had to have a new batch of calves NOW. I've been cycling six through the barn every 12 weeks and the current batch was on week number 13.

Francismilker - A couple young fellows recently started up in business there, so it's not nearly the size or scale of the sale at Winfield, KS. I will say they called out any animals with defects right up front, and they are working hard to build a business. One week a batch of 6 brought $135 on average, the next week we only had one smaller Ayrshire, and he brought less. Black colored bring more money, no surprise there. Only a few dairy calves go thru, lots of beef.
July 28 they are having a sheep &goat sale. We may go just for the education.

This group of bull calves were born between June 22 and July 14, so they were conceived roughly Sept. 22 to Oct. 14, after the heat of summer eased into cool, mellow nights.
Mother nature increased their rations just prior to conception, as the early fall rains(Yes, Fall begins in September in Northern Wisconsin, USA) provided lush pastures of Birdsfoot Trefoil and white clover legumes.

We Had A Run On All Bull Calves A While Back. Our Cows Are On Bahia Grass, Free Choice Mineral, Mineral Blocks And "breeding Herd" Pellets By Purina With Hard Molasses Barrels As Supplement.

Whenever I Would Run Out Of Pellets On A Saturday I Would Have To Shop Where All They Had Was "sweet Feed"' Which Is Also A Horse Feed. I Couldnt Figure Out The All Bull Calf REASON Except To Stop The Sweet Feed Completely.....did That!

Now We Have A 60-40 Ratio Of Heifers To Bulls In Our Small Herd.

Mom

So we have all these companies that have invested millions of dollars on research to develop sexed semen and the common belief for hundreds of years that the male determines the sex of the offspring. Now you are going to say diet controls sex in the offspring. :nono:
Boy are you really going to have a hard time proving that even if it is true. You know how people are. You hear the same thing from different sources for so many years it is hard to believe a new idea. :shrug:

So you are saying a better diet produces males. How is this going to play out in milk production. If I cut or change the diet to produce females; isn't this going to in turn reduce milk output.

NO, I am saying that INCREASING body condition at the time of conception favors the male embryo.

The sire always produces the X or Y sperm. Whether the dam maintains the pregnancy and implants the embryo depends on her body condition at the time of conception.

So there is a whole timeline of events that affect whether a male or female conception is favored. Some people believe that stress, steroid hormones in the follicle, or a 'sire effect', can also influence whether a male or female calf pregnancy is maintained.

Google the Trivers-Willard hypothesis - this theory has been around for 35 years, it's only recently that we've understood the mechanism behind it. Now we can start to use it to our advantage to adjust overall birth sex ratios.

Thanks for your thoughts on this!

B.

Fairly even this year as calves go. Like to see those heifers, we are getting $775 for 4 day old holstiens. Bulls are in the dumps though only a $1 a pound or so.