another bull question.......
 

I have a small herd of 4 jersey and a angus holstein heifer and a pb holstein heifer. Last year I picked a dexter bull up for breeding them, I was getting sick of putting out the $80 to breed the cows, and I had a heifer that was not getting bred, AI'ed her 5 times so I found this little bull for $300 he was 6 months at the time. I figured he was worth it, he could bred the girls then head off to freezer camp. Well everyone is bred and he is a joy to have around so he gets to stay a little longer......

Now for my delema..... I would love to keep going with pure Jerseys and Jersey crosses.... and I happen to have a gorgeous little bull calf in my barn right now! A farm I get bull calves from had a pure Jersey bull calf barn born, they said there is no market for him, so they threw him in my trailer for free. I am considering.... I know how dangerous they are! Keeping him till he is a year or 18 months old, just to breed all the girls once, then sending him off.

I know all the dangers of keeping a bull and especially a Jersey bull. He would live in a separate pasture with the Dexter bull away from the cows and out of sight and hearing range.

I am not looking for everyone to tell me don't do it! I am asking if keeping him till he is a year old, will he be as dangerous as they can be? Any one with Jersey bull experience? I am not yet sold on the idea just because he is a Jersey? I love my little Dexter bull, he is so easy to work around, he is not "friendly" but easy to work around, will tolerate the odd head scratch, but does not demand them. I know if I do keep the jersey, he will only live long enough to breed each cow once, then he will be gone!

Sorry, this post is alot of rambling...... :)

I say go for it. He should be OK for a year and a half, and if he does start getting froggy you can always ship him early. He should be able to breed at 7 to 9 months.

I agree, keeping him for a year and a half shouldn't be an issue at all. Just be aware as he gets older and you should be fine. For the first year he should be no trouble at all.

I think if you consider EVERY bull of breeding age a danger, you will be OK. It seems that it is never the bulls (or cows or steers) who exhibit aggressive behavior that hurt people, because folks are on guard around them. It is the ones that people let their guards around that kill.

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.

Agree with Agman...I have 2 jersey bulls one 6 year old and 3 year old.....both walk away from me when I walk toward them......the 6 year old throws heifers like crazy or he would be gone long time ago..... this year I think it is 8 heifers and 4 bulls...and it is like that every year...for 4 years now.....the 3 year old I raised from a AI bred cow.....I would walk up to 3 year old as a calf and make him walk away from me...now all I have to do is say GET OUT OF HERE...and he will walk away...GET YOUR BLUFF IN NOW AND KEEP IT....if one of these every puts there head to the ground and paws the ground there gone

I just do not understand the "Any bull will do" mentality.

Thanks everyone! The little man is drinking from the bucket now, I am thinking about moving him down with the older calves now. Just to get him out of the barn. He is very tame now, and my girls love him! So I will kick him out so he can start getting "distanced" from us. I think 18 months would be the longest I would keep him, maybe only as far as next fall. Then I will not have to feed him through the winter?

The bull in question came from a purebred herd. I believe that this is one reason the OP wants to breed him.

Is it worth keeping, growing and then wintering the extra animal? If the price of the AI service is an issue, then what about the value of the hay you either have to buy or what you could sell the hay for in your (expensive hay) area, if you produce your own? Other than maybe saving you a few dollars, you would have the hassle of keeping bulls separate and you would be giving up on being able to have an amazing choice of proven AI Jersey sires. I think it would be worthwhile only if you have trouble catching your cows at the right time, or if there was no AI tech in your area.ck

He is still going to be salable beef when they are all done with him. I don't see any economic loss here.

Six times $80. is $480. You can buy quite a bit of hay for that amount.

I am not familar personally with dairy bulls, although Ive heard many a jersey would rival a devil..:)

I think your plan is a good one. I also agree no head scratches or pets..Bulls do not make good pets..it seems once a month I hear of a person severely injured or killed by their bull who was "gentle as a kitten"

The cow that I bred 6 times was also exposed to 2 different bulls. I bought her for $1000 spend all the money on the AI'ing her, having the vet do a few breeding exams, and then ended up having to have her butchered! For another $500! When she was butchered, the guy that "did the job" said that her uterus was badly scared? I told him about all my issues with getting her bred so he said he would take a look. I bought her as a never been bred 2 year old. No idea what could have caused the problems, but that is a big $$$ loss.

The cost of keeping the bull is not really a issue, we make our own hay and have lots. The local AI tech lives just around the corner from me and stops in for a visit every few weeks. It is just nice being able to save some extra $$$. The little bull calf cost me nothing, he will be a year old next winter not a big mouth to feed, so I have nothing into him at this point other than the milk he drinks till he is weaned, then he will be on pasture all spring/summer. If I can breed a few of my cows with him, I will come out ahead and have a freezer full of beef at the end of it all :) And there are a few, very few, local people with family cows that I sure would line up to bring there cows to him for a breeding.

Thanks for everyone with the positive responses.

Oh, and I hear your pain regarding AI-ing..we dont even have a tech near us..I have a small herd and while many may not see the reason for getting a bull, I am *hoping* to purchase a bullcalf this year. We have done OK hauling the girls to a nice Brangus bull..but that gets tiring

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

I find that really hard to believe. Genetically, a purebred herd is supposed to be superior-quality enough to produce superior stock, and this means producing good herd bulls from that superior stock. I could see this happening with an inferior "purebred" herd, but not one that a producer has worked his/her rear off in getting top-quality animals. So I honestly can't see how or where you got this info from. JMHO.

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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.

In that case then 99% of the heifers would be as unworthy.

While breed purists are an amusing distraction, most people here have a job to accomplish and as long as the breeding stock is healthy and free of obvious defects they will usually do nicely.

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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.

So you didn't have an AI or bull problem you had a HEIFER problem.

Following the "any bull will do" mentality will get you offspring, but what quality. If you continue to breed average with average you soon get below average animals. Our ancestors that developed the breeds we have today learned to select animals for specific traits and to improve those traits. Simply buying any bull wont' help improve your herd.

Jim

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

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.

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.

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

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

Could not have said it better myself. > Thanks Marc:)

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.

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. :mad:
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. :o Learn something new everyday.

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. :)