another bull question.......

Lazy J · #21 02/28/11, 07:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaleK

A heifer has a lot less impact on a herd's genetics going forward than a bull does. If a heifer ends up having duds for calves, you might have to cull a couple. If a bull does, you can have 2-3 years worth of calves from your WHOLE herd with poor genetics before you know it.

A bull can ruin a herd or definitely set it back. As the Angus breeders that used New Yorker in the 80's.

Oakshire_Farm · #22 02/28/11, 07:36 PM

This little bull is from great blood lines, his mother was a top producing Jersey on the farm he came from, she was bred to a top sire to produce another top producing heifer, but she was a he, lol so he has great breeding behind him. My cows originally come from the same farm. My "mama" cow came from this farm 10 years ago and now I have daughters and nieces from her. I am not breeding for top production, I am breeding for my self. I use the milk to raise calves, and feed my family. When I have been using the Dexter to breed my cows all resulting calves will be butchered but I have a few people asking about them for smaller family cows. People that do not want the quantity of milk that a pure Jersey will produce.

tinknal · #23 02/28/11, 07:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaleK

A heifer has a lot less impact on a herd's genetics going forward than a bull does. If a heifer ends up having duds for calves, you might have to cull a couple. If a bull does, you can have 2-3 years worth of calves from your WHOLE herd with poor genetics before you know it.

Yet we poor humans have managed, through the last 10,000 years to produce this wonderful variety of plants and animals without the benefit of AI.........

Listen, I'm all for improved genetics and and selective breeding, but to say that a small farmer cannot use the product of all this breeding to to breed the herd just doesn't make sense. Someone with 6 cows more than likely works off the farm and just doesn't have the time to devote to this as a full time large scale farmer would. None of the fantastic breeds that we have now were created by AI.

myersfarm · #24 02/28/11, 08:42 PM

just to throw in there on the bull side....If a dairy is still in business..he must be breeding great to great to get the right heifer...if it turns into a BULL calf...that will still pass on the best genes...not everybody great is somebody else great....the holstien cow that sold for $1.2 million I did not think it was worth $2000....the bull will bred and thats what she is after..plus some of the offspring will be bulls turned into beef. so there is no big impact ....and if the heifers turn out bad udders sounds like she will just have more beef in the freezer...also a lot of cows will not take to AI will to a bull...why I have 2 bulls with just 12 cows

did not mention that this $1.2 million cow is a 3 year old untested

springvalley · #25 02/28/11, 10:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaleK

More than 99% of bull calves from purebred herds aren't worthy of being used as a herd sire.

Don`t know if I`d go quite that far, some nice calves get steered every year. .> Marc

springvalley · #26 02/28/11, 10:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by agmantoo

Oakshire_Farm

Cease with the head scratches! Never become buddies with any bull. From the time you have a young bull until it leaves your place you must be the dominant occupant of the area shared with the animal. Always have the animal to give way to your movements. Never feed a young bull directly once it is taught to use a bucket or bottle. Put the feed elsewhere and let the animal go to the feed instead of coming to you. I am not saying to abuse the animal, just refuse to let the bull dictates who will be subservient. Stand your ground while the animal is young and the animal is becoming accustomed to your dominance. I maintain an arms length agreement with all my cattle. That arms length is as close as they are to come to me. I treat, castrate and ear tag, all calves by myself and in the same pasture with the brood cows. My cows just stand nearby, occasionally they will vocalize but they remain a short distance back.

Could not have said it better myself. > Thanks Marc

Karin L · #27 03/01/11, 12:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaleK

Very few purebred herds have put the kind of work into genetics to produce that kind of genetics, at least in dairy herds, and even those few that are TRYING don't produce many bulls worth using in a year. Most purebred dairy herds now aren't even registering for any genetic reason, they're doing it because they have to keep track of all the information anyway for quality control so they might as well register the animals too.

Yes for dairy, but your comment, to me, also implied the same thing about beef cattle which I initially didn't agree with. I could see this concern with dairy herds since they are selecting for only one genetic trait--being milk production--and don't focus on any other traits, thus having to turning these bull calves into steers for beef or veal. But since I'm more focused on the beef part of things here, there are quite a number of purebred herds that do produce the kind of genetics that make that breed desirable to other breeders. With that, they can produce a good number of bull calves and heifer calves that are sale-able to other producers. These number of bull calves do have the potential to become good herd bulls, whether it's for a small hobby farmer, a commercial cow-calf producer, or a seedstock producer.

Unlike in dairy herds, beef bulls are selected not on one trait only, but on many traits; and even then dairy bulls are not selected at all, but the females are, making the bulls unwanted and of poorer quality than they should be. THAT's where the differences lie: thus, it's obviously, from the both of our stand points no surprise that, on the dairy sector, that it does rings true that "more than 99% of [DAIRY] bull calves from purebred [DAIRY] herds aren't worthy of being used as a herd sire."

And yet, I also agree with tinkal here. For the smaller producers who are only going to keep a bull around for a year or two, all they're concerned about is whether he'll be able to settle their cows, and if he's healthy and sound enough to breed. But at the same time, it's also good to point out the genetic merits of having a good bull to improve one's cows on.

I may sound like I'm flipping back and forth here, but these are just my thoughts.

dosthouhavemilk · #28 03/01/11, 03:23 PM

Milk Production alone is not anything anyone should be breeding for if they want to make it in the dairy industry. If you don't have the body and breeding to produce and maintain that production you don't make it in the Industry. A cow can be bred solely for production but if she falls apart in less than one lactation (and passes that onto her daughter{s}) then the farmer is losing. It costs a lot of money to raise a heifer up to production age. To get less than 6 months out of her and then cull price the farmer is losing money.
When we breed we look at their body, then production and components. If you don't have the body first and foremost, all the milk in the world is not going to get you a productive animal.
Top 10% of any breed/herd is where the bulls "should come from."
Or at least an improvement over the females being bred. What is an improvement in one herd might be a step back in another.
When dairy farms are breeding their dairy cattle, the larger farmers use breeding consultants that look at the pedigree and the animal, then make suggestions on sires. These breedings are meant to be improvements over the dam. AI does provide a lot as far as furtherance in a shorter amount of time since you can handpick bulls for each cows weaknesses (and strengths) and not trying to find one bull to help out as much as possible. It was always nice when a stud rep would walk in the barn and comment on what nice udders our cows had and how good they looked. We used bulls from three different studs and used herdbulls regularly (every 3-5 years or so).
Herdbulls should not be discounted either. A good herdbull from a solid dam line (and strong sire line) can do a lot for a herd.
Our family has been breeding Jerseys for generations (back into the late 1800s). When AI came about, my grandfather (and then my father) served on the board for NOBA (now CRI/Genex). This herd has used AI a lot, but we still keep back herdbulls on occasion to run clean up. They are usually bulls that when the dam was bred she was bred in mind that either gender would be kept. So a good solid outcross from the majority of the herd that would be an improvement over the solid dam. Usually an older cow, rather than a younger cow. We kept two sons out of one cow as herdbulls. The second was not used heavily in our herd since his brother had bred the herd the year prior, but he went onto two or three other herds to be used as well. Herds that also AIed.
When Cadence was bred three years ago it was with the idea in mind that heifer, or bull, it would be kept. She had a bull. He went to a herd over West of Columbus for nine months and bred their herd, including their hard breeder and now he is home.
Went off on a tangent...no shocker there.
There is way more to breeding in dairy cows than milk production. If you breed solely for production you will fail. If production was the only concern there would be no other statistics available from bull studs.

Using a bull for one generation (where usually half are bulls, or more if you us) won't have that huge an impact in a small herd.
I think the idea is doable. Jerseys don't generally turn until 15 months at the earliest, though 18 is when we start really watching. Used to be 2 years before people expected a Jersey bull to turn but times change. They can settle cows nice and young and be done and in your freezer in no time.
Mast (our current Jersey herdbull) will be 2 in April. I am hoping we can keep him long enough to breed the cows. Especially since we likely lost over 300 straws of semen in our tank including the Topkick I was thrilled to track down.

He has a younger half brother we left intact just in case, but I do not know the sire's line well (polled line, he was a herdbull) and prefer what I know of Mast's lineage (Morgan X Clarion).

Karin L · #29 03/01/11, 04:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dosthouhavemilk

Milk Production alone is not anything anyone should be breeding for if they want to make it in the dairy industry. If you don't have the body and breeding to produce and maintain that production you don't make it in the Industry. A cow can be bred solely for production but if she falls apart in less than one lactation (and passes that onto her daughter{s}) then the farmer is losing. It costs a lot of money to raise a heifer up to production age. To get less than 6 months out of her and then cull price the farmer is losing money.
When we breed we look at their body, then production and components. If you don't have the body first and foremost, all the milk in the world is not going to get you a productive animal.
Top 10% of any breed/herd is where the bulls "should come from."
Or at least an improvement over the females being bred. What is an improvement in one herd might be a step back in another.
When dairy farms are breeding their dairy cattle, the larger farmers use breeding consultants that look at the pedigree and the animal, then make suggestions on sires. These breedings are meant to be improvements over the dam. AI does provide a lot as far as furtherance in a shorter amount of time since you can handpick bulls for each cows weaknesses (and strengths) and not trying to find one bull to help out as much as possible. It was always nice when a stud rep would walk in the barn and comment on what nice udders our cows had and how good they looked. We used bulls from three different studs and used herdbulls regularly (every 3-5 years or so).
Herdbulls should not be discounted either. A good herdbull from a solid dam line (and strong sire line) can do a lot for a herd.
Our family has been breeding Jerseys for generations (back into the late 1800s). When AI came about, my grandfather (and then my father) served on the board for NOBA (now CRI/Genex). This herd has used AI a lot, but we still keep back herdbulls on occasion to run clean up. They are usually bulls that when the dam was bred she was bred in mind that either gender would be kept. So a good solid outcross from the majority of the herd that would be an improvement over the solid dam. Usually an older cow, rather than a younger cow. We kept two sons out of one cow as herdbulls. The second was not used heavily in our herd since his brother had bred the herd the year prior, but he went onto two or three other herds to be used as well. Herds that also AIed.
When Cadence was bred three years ago it was with the idea in mind that heifer, or bull, it would be kept. She had a bull. He went to a herd over West of Columbus for nine months and bred their herd, including their hard breeder and now he is home.
Went off on a tangent...no shocker there.
There is way more to breeding in dairy cows than milk production. If you breed solely for production you will fail. If production was the only concern there would be no other statistics available from bull studs.

Using a bull for one generation (where usually half are bulls, or more if you us) won't have that huge an impact in a small herd.
I think the idea is doable. Jerseys don't generally turn until 15 months at the earliest, though 18 is when we start really watching. Used to be 2 years before people expected a Jersey bull to turn but times change. They can settle cows nice and young and be done and in your freezer in no time.
Mast (our current Jersey herdbull) will be 2 in April. I am hoping we can keep him long enough to breed the cows. Especially since we likely lost over 300 straws of semen in our tank including the Topkick I was thrilled to track down.

He has a younger half brother we left intact just in case, but I do not know the sire's line well (polled line, he was a herdbull) and prefer what I know of Mast's lineage (Morgan X Clarion).

Touche, I guess I was being overly generalistic in my post.

Learn something new everyday.

dosthouhavemilk · #30 03/01/11, 04:21 PM

Sorry. The whole thing hits a bit of a sore spot for me.

Dad pointed out that there are farms where they have made the decision to buy heifers from the highest production bulls, milk them through straight for two years and send them for slaughter. So I guess farms can make it that way but in the end, they aren't breeders.

Karin L · #31 03/02/11, 03:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dosthouhavemilk

Sorry. The whole thing hits a bit of a sore spot for me.

Dad pointed out that there are farms where they have made the decision to buy heifers from the highest production bulls, milk them through straight for two years and send them for slaughter. So I guess farms can make it that way but in the end, they aren't breeders.

No worries.