Bulls - Keep Your Eyes Peeled for Poor Performance

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Bulls are crucial to the success of any beef breeding enterprise. We place tremendous faith in the bulls to work alone or in small teams and continue to deliver a new crop of calves year on year.

If we set the following aspirational goals for our beef cow mating:

95% in calf for a 3 cycle/9 week mating period.

  • 65 calves in the 1st cycle/3 weeks.

  • 20 calves in the 2nd cycle/3 weeks.

  • 10 calves in the 3rd cycle/3 weeks.

A little time and attention to making sure the bull team is fit, free from disease and actively working is critical to achieving these goals.

During mating

  • Check bulls twice each week for the first 3 weeks and then weekly for the next 6 weeks. Get up as close as reasonably possible. Watch each bull walk, check for swellings around the sheath and for lameness. Once bulls are 6 years old and beyond their 4th breeding season, they are much more susceptible to subfertility, poor mating ability and breakdowns. These bulls should be subject to more rigorous scrutiny as they often fail to mate effectively and start fight with the younger bulls. Ideally bull teams would have been matched on age and body weight. I’d be deeply suspicious of a dominance issue if a younger bull has poked up a gully and is constantly “off by himself”.

  • Have a spare bull or bulls available to immediately replace any that break do due to lameness, back issues, broken penis or obvious illness.

  • Rotate bulls in single-sire groups to make sure that any bull infertility is covered. Single sire joining works well, but it has risks.

After mating

Suspicions may be raised during the mating period, but scanning is the first true indicator of weather these goals have been achieved. Alarm bells start ringing when a higher-than-average empty rate occurs, particularly those results above 20% empty. In these situations, the first question I’m often asked is “could it have been the bulls”. My response is to ask the question “did you have confidence in your bull team during mating” and then to suggest a deeper dive into the scanning data and examination of any suspect or broken down bulls.