This absolutly stinks!

[Goat Freak]

My mother, my father, and I spent ALL morning trying to get our cows, who are in heat, in the trailer so we could take them to my grandparents so that their bull could get them pregnant. We then spent another couple hours trying to get them into the right pasture. After ALL THAT we found out that the bull was TOO LAME to mount them! We have been telling my grandparents FOREVER to get another bull, they inbredd their cows so badly that ALL of their heifers and cows are related to the bull, they let their cows get pregnant as soon as they are old enough to give birth at about a year old, NEVER seperate the bull from the girls so the girls are pregnant ALL YEAR ROUND, uhh they make me sooo mad! The way they have always don it is when the bull they are using can no longer do the job, they just keep one of the bulls sons and let him breed the girls. Well this year they did not have ANY meat type boys born, just hosteins, so they now do not have another bull to breed with. By the way, the whole insese thing is a problem with their cows because for the last 5 generations, ALL of the bulls have gone lame due to a genetic problem, and they have done NOTHING ABOUT IT! And they REFUSE to buy a bull that will be able to breed right away, so we will have to wait abnother year before our girls get pregnant! By the way, my mother has been telling them for the last 6 months that they need to get a new bull, and they just ignore her! So now our girls are going to have to wait a LONG time before they can have babies, they are currently about two years old, so right now would have been perfect. Thanks for listening guys, just needed to vent. See ya.

[ozark_jewels]

Oh, how disapointing.......Is there no one else around that has a bull you could borrow or could service your cows????
I have met folks who do things like your grandparents........and they don't want to listen to WHY they are having so many problems!

Emily Dixon
Ozark Jewels
Boers, Nubians, Lamanchas and Alpines

[willow_girl]

You could easily have them AIed for less than the cost of feeding (how many?) open cows for a year.

Or, buy a bull, run him with the ladies for a few months and take him back to the sale barn.

Good luck!

[MaineFarmMom]

I think willow has a good idea. That also keeps you from breeding a bull you know has bad genes to your cows.

[Goat Freak]

I know, they are NOT the nicest grandparents in the world. They try to screw my parents every time they can, actually my grandma is the one who seems to like screwing them and my grandfather is stupid and thus does not know what she is doing, she made them get tens of thousands of dollars in debt and he did not know! We wanted to purchase a cow from them before, we offered to pay full price and everything, even offered to go to the auction and replace the cow, who by the way was incesest by about 4 generations! But my grandma said no, and we know that it was because my mother wanted the cow, she REALLY hates my mother. We could always look for another bull, but we have little experience in that matter, and REALLY do not want to AI our cows, we can not get that close to their butts, they let us rub them and stuff, but GOD FORBID you go near their butts. I have been trying to get my parents to just buy a little bull calf at the auction, but they REALLY do not want to, because they would want to keep the bull seperate from the girls other than when they were breeding, and our goats are starting to take up a LOT of room, and we still have more that we will want to keep. That and really, my parents just do not want to deal with a bull. I will ask my parents about the bull that a friends father-in-law breed his cows to, he had lovly herefords born. Thank you everybody for the comments, I am just REALLY mad at them for being so stupid. Well once again, thanks. Bye.

[Tweetybird]

Well, doing AI would be done by putting them in a stantion, or some people use nose tongs. These do not hurt them, but restrains them much as a twitch on the nose of a horse. If you find AI not right for you then you could go the auction route. I would check out the auction and go a few times before you purchase anything, just to learn how. You might buy few small things, such as hens or supplies such as chicken waterers just for practice and so you can get things you need for the homestead. Then get to know the cattle men in your area and then you will be able to work out a fair deal.

I find it very disturbing that your grandparents allow inbreeding to such an extent. Can they not afford a nice young bull bought at an auction? The cattle then that are defective, can be slughtered and used for meat. Use one a year for their own use, and sell the others off for meat. You can designate that the animal has to be slaughtered when you sell it and it will be directly shipped to the slaughterhouse. Then once their herd is culled out. They should get themsleves a good bull. If they had not let this go on for so long then they may have been able to get a new bull in trade for theirs with another cattle man.

Just some ideas I had, and theiught they might help. By the way, anyway, you would not want to breed your cattle to that seriously defective bull anyway, so in the long run it may have turned out to be in your favor, not continuing that defective line. Well, good luck and take care.

[JeffNY]

Either buy a bull, breed now, or wait so you can get a calf in January. Calves seem to grow better when born around that time, as it gives them all spring, and summer to grow. I am not sure about the south, but here if any calf is born in March, or even Feb. They grow very nicely.



Jeff

[Goat Freak]

Originally Posted by Tweetybird

I find it very disturbing that your grandparents allow inbreeding to such an extent. Can they not afford a nice young bull bought at an auction? The cattle then that are defective, can be slughtered and used for meat. Use one a year for their own use, and sell the others off for meat. You can designate that the animal has to be slaughtered when you sell it and it will be directly shipped to the slaughterhouse. Then once their herd is culled out. They should get themsleves a good bull. If they had not let this go on for so long then they may have been able to get a new bull in trade for theirs with another cattle man.

By the way, anyway, you would not want to breed your cattle to that seriously defective bull anyway, so in the long run it may have turned out to be in your favor, not continuing that defective line. Well, good luck and take care.

They can afford a new bull, but the problem is is that they are so cheap that they will not. By the way, my mother figured out why they did not buy a bull when she warned them, they are going to wait, and continue with the inbreeding, until WE buy them a bull so our girls can get pregnant, my parents REFUSE to have a dairy cow touch our girls, they are meat type cows and hoilsteins are all that they have left as far as bulls go once this one is gone. And trust me, it just might happen, my dad is a pushover, BIG time. I agree though, I did not really want the bull to get our girls pregnant, I wanted to buy a bull of our own, but we do not have enough room to seperate a bull from our girls. By the way though, they NEVER tell the people that they sell their bulls to that they have defective genes, and some of the bulls are REALLY nice looking, good enough to be breeders. It just makes me so mad that they try to screw us on EVERYTING. Thank you though for the advice, just might do that. Well see ya, bye.

[linn]

I agree with Willow. Call the AI tech. and get your cows AIed. You can get a good bull that will pass on his genes to the offspring and there is no risk of passing on disease as there would be with natural breeding. I used to AI our cows and still do the milk cow. I have found that the best results from AI is to wait for 12 hours after standing heat to AI.

[fourwindsranch]

Lots of people don't keep bulls, rams or bucks around all the time, they do as suggested by others and buy a bull to use and when the cows are preggers they sell him.

I might be off base here but there are 2 sides to every situation. Just curious what your family does to compensate your grandparents for the use of the bull and pasturing the cows during the breeding season?
M~

[ozark_jewels]

Originally Posted by Goat Freak

I wanted to buy a bull of our own, but we do not have enough room to seperate a bull from our girls.

We let our bull/s run with our Jersey girls year round, except for two months after calving. We like for the girls to get two months rest between calving and rebreeding. So you could buy a bull, let him run with your cows till they got withing a few weeks of calving, then sell him. Or maybe by that time, you could have a separate pasture for him. But he would need a companion. Anyway, as long as he isn't mean, you can let him run with the cows most of the year. He will also be a much more contented feller that way, and will have less tendancies to get into trouble because he is bored.

Emily Dixon
Ozark Jewels
Boers, Nubians, Lamanchas and Alpines

[pygmywombat]

I would AI them or rent or buy your own bull. Its ridiculous to wait another year to breed- you are risking your cows getting too fat to settle properly. AI is cheap and if the cows are a bit wild pen them up and get a squeeze chute and do the shot series to bring them all into heat at the same time. With all the inbreeding going on with your grandparents there is no way on earth you should be breeding your cows to one of their bulls anyways! Heck, get a bull at an auction, leave him with the cows for 3 months, then run him through the auction again or get him butchered.

[Christiaan]

I don't understand why you would want to breed your cows to such problem-laden bulls??? If you want to produce good calves you need good parents. Go the AI route, the guys can handle almost any cow, that's their job. You also wont have to torment your cows by rousting them all day to get in a trailer or in the right pasture. You might want to undertake some halter training, too.
As for the whole family dynamic, is grandma the only one allowed to do any thinking for the whole bunch? Sounds to me like a bunch of willing victims.

[tinknal]

Seems a lot of trashing of some old folks who are just minding thier own business here. Goat, if you don't like the way your grandfolks do things, quit whining and do things your own way. Get off your but, get outside, build a headgate and chute, and call the A.I dude.

[Goat Freak]

Originally Posted by fourwindsranch

Lots of people don't keep bulls, rams or bucks around all the time, they do as suggested by others and buy a bull to use and when the cows are preggers they sell him.

That is a REALLY good idea, I will defintly tell my parents that one.

Originally Posted by FOURWINDSRANCH

I might be off base here but there are 2 sides to every situation. Just curious what your family does to compensate your grandparents for the use of the bull and pasturing the cows during the breeding season?
M~

My parents help them ALL the time, my dad is contstantly going over there and mowing their pasture, repairing & installing things, and my mother helps my grandmother keep her stuff organized most of the time, my grandma is REALLY sloppy. Oh yeah, they do not spend ANY money on their cows, the cows are on pasture and they get bread for free from a church.

[woodspirit]

who owns the cows?
What kind are they? holstein or beef?
You can't or won't keep the bull separate?
The bulls aren't the only ones with the "bad" gene you know.
How do you know for sure that it is genetic and not something else like overweight or wet conditions or?
You complained about them getting bred and being constantly pregnant? And yet now that they aren't you are complaining about that too?I'm trying to figure out where you are coming from but so far its is that you hate your grandparents and don't like the fact that your dad doesn't. How do you know that they can afford it? Hell I don't know if I can afford gas for my truck. I realise that you weren't looking for anyone to give you feedback that you don't like. I wonder if that's the same problem you have had with your grandparents? I figure that you're gonna let me know though without helping me to understand the answers to my questions. Oh yeah the word you keep spelling wrong is incest. Not really all that uncommon in cattle and in fact necessary to some degree if you want purebred animals.

[pointer_hunter]

From the original post, I'd say that the Grandparents have one beef bull and a few Holstein bulls that they keep their cows preg with all the time. Goat and the family loaded up their beef cows to take over to their grandparents to breed with the beef bull.

As for trying to get your family to see things your way....good luck. For me, it has come down to the point of selling mine off and waiting until I have everything I can do better on my own. Some folks are just set up differently.

[Goat Freak]

Originally Posted by woodspirit

#1who owns the cows?
#2 What kind are they? holstein or beef?
#3 You can't or won't keep the bull separate?
#4The bulls aren't the only ones with the "bad" gene you know.
How do you know for sure that it is genetic and not something else like overweight or wet conditions or?
#5 You complained about them getting bred and being constantly pregnant? And yet now that they aren't you are complaining about that too? #6 I'm trying to figure out where you are coming from but so far its is that you hate your grandparents and don't like the fact that your dad doesn't. #7 How do you know that they can afford it? Hell I don't know if I can afford gas for my truck. I realise that you weren't looking for anyone to give you feedback that you don't like. #8 I wonder if that's the same problem you have had with your grandparents? I figure that you're gonna let me know though without helping me to understand the answers to my questions. #9 Oh yeah the word you keep spelling wrong is incest. #10 Not really all that uncommon in cattle and in fact necessary to some degree if you want purebred animals.

O.K.:

#1- which cowsm the ones we want to get pregnant, or the bull? We own the cows we want to get pregnant, they own girl cows as well, but they own the bull.

#2- a mixture, the bull is a red angus, some of the girls are red angus, and most of the girls are holstein/red angus.

#3- the bull is my grandparents, our girls are just visiting . If you mean why we can't get a bull, we do not have room to seperate a bull so that our girls can have a bit of a break.

#4- Well it would not be wet conditions, pretty sure. But it could be problems with being overweight, we still think of htat as a SMALL possibility, but you see, all the bulls they have had for the past 5 generations have gone lame, at only about 4-5 years old.

#5- Well I do not like the fact that my grandparents cows are ALWAYS pregnant, but hey it does not seem to bother the cows much, although I HATE the fact that they let one of their heifers give birth at one year old. I do NOT like the fact that our cows can not get breed this time around, but hey you know I have a reason, I have bee nwaiting fo over a year for these girls to be ready, and now it is too late.

#6- The reason I do not like them is far too complicated, but to make it simple, lets just say that they love my cousins but do not like me and my siblings as much, NO WHERE NEAR AS MUCH. They ALWAYS play the favorite game, adn I am getting sick and tired of it. I am not mad at my dad for not ahting his parents, I am mad at my grandparents for using him, they always ASSUME that he will do whatever they ask, and they are right.

#7- I KNOW that they can afford it, they are buying a brand new t.v, and expensive one, they go out to eat almost EVERY night, my grandma is ALWAYS shopping, and heck, lets just say that I know.

#8- I think that One was answered in #6.

#9- Thank you, I had NO idea how to spell that word.

#10- I now, it is just that they have kept inbreeding their animals for the past I don't know how many generations, without introducing ANY new animals.

P.S: I hope that you did not take anything that I wrote to be mean or offensive, I just wanted to answer your questions to the best of my ability. By the way, I know that I have issues with my dad's side of the family, but it is just that everybody on that side is either stupid or mean, my mom's side has problems too though.

Well see ya, bye.

[woodspirit]

Wow!!!!!!!!You're very good.......and funny too
I have a hard time listening some times
But the most important question I have is how can I afford gas for my truck?
Could there be a lack of minerals involved? It just seems strange that the lameness only affects the bulls and around the same age. I suppose it could be though since bulls weigh more than cows and that could possibly have some influence.

[Goat Freak]

I have no idea, but you should see this guy, before he went lame he looke EXACTLY like a full grown hippo! Now that he is lame he has gotten MUCH more skinny, he has such a hard time walking he does not get much to eat. By the way, thank you for the compliments, wasn't really trying to be funny, but hey if you say so I will be VERY happy to accept the compliment, normally I am told that I am boring and too serious. Well see ya, bye.