New skills--tailbleeding

bourbonred · #1 02/18/11, 08:47 PM

It's a great feeling to get a new skill under your belt. Today our family ran all the beef herd through the headgate, re-tagged and drew blood for pregnancy testing. We drew from the tail (Which I told my DH our cows would never stand still for). It was really a cinch compared to what I expected. We ship 24 blood samples tomorrow. It's rather late considering that many are due late March, but he wanted to see now since the bull has had plenty of time to do his job and go ahead and ship anyone non-productive while the prices are so high. I couldn't believe how cheap the costs were too. What a great herd management tool.

Tom in TN · #2 02/18/11, 10:12 PM

Bourbornred,

Thank you for the encouraging post. I just ordered my first set of vials and syringes today from BioTracking. I have a small cow/calf operation. Presently, I have 38 head of black Angus cattle. In my herd, I have three heifers that are just over 2 years old. My bull runs with the herd year round. Two of the heifers don't look like they're pregnant so I'm eager to get the results back and decide whether to keep or sell them.

I hope I have as much success as you did.

Tom in TN

myersfarm · #3 02/18/11, 10:18 PM

Now is time to sell if your going to.....fast as you can

dosthouhavemilk · #4 02/19/11, 10:55 AM

Boy. Kudos to you!
I would rather draw blood from 200 goat necks than from 10 cows. Goats are much easier to control and the jugular is easily seen.
I just cannot seem to get the tailbleeding with cows. Half I end up having to do jugular draws on. That is not easy because cows jerk and flinch when you simply touch their jugulars.
Of course, if they are 6 months or more, palpating and bumping is what we rely on here. Then again, ours are dairy cows and our few beef crosses were hand raised. There is one cow we can't do anything with. She is a stray beef cow from the local sale barn. We tried getting a halter on her once. It did not work.

bourbonred · #5 02/19/11, 01:16 PM

Tom in TN--Put someone strong and fearless in charge of holding the tail up. Do you have a good headgate system? Ours is OK, you can get in behind them, but they can wiggle alot, esp the heifers. With their tail up it didn't seem that they could kick. Like any skill, it takes practice and even then we weren't getting blood on the first stick every time. As we went along we got better. The bigger cows were easier to draw--prob d/t bigger veins. If you stick and don't get blood, back out a little and readjust in another direction. Also we found that sometimes DH would reposition the tail slightly and get blood. Like I said, I just didn't expect them to stand there for us like they did. Amazing. We're just not a big enough outfit yet to synchronize everybody and AI, and I really like keeping a gentle bull or two for reliable progenesis, so something like this is both affordable and saves you from losing a whole calving season.

Tom in TN · #6 02/19/11, 04:54 PM

Thanks for the advice, Bourbonred.

My head catch chute is pretty good. It's all homemade but I think it will contain the cows well enough to mess with their tails. My wife normally helps me vaccinate, so we'll try it with her holding the tails, but if that doesn't work, I'll solicit some help from my brother-in-law.

I'm really eager to give it a try.

Tom in TN

bourbonred · #7 02/25/11, 08:24 PM

Yeah! Results were emailed back to us today. 21 of 24 are pregnant. 2 of the 3 that aren't are young heifers anyway, and the 3rd is a heifer that tested marginal, reccomended re-test. Wow, will definately do this again.

myersfarm · #8 02/25/11, 08:45 PM

the fed ex cost me more then the test did...when i send mine in...surely eases the mind know they bred...you do know some can lose them...not from the test but just lose at weeks or months in

bourbonred · #9 02/26/11, 05:00 AM

Yep, you can't count your chicks (calves) before they hatch. But after the last dismal calving season, it is a relief. 14 of 14 cows bred and 6 of 9 heifers. Whoooo!