Your Reputation Rides on What You Sell Protect your name and your ranch’s reputation when you are selling animals in the Bucking Bull business. When you are selling calves, a good feed program and vaccination program are essential. Having them ABBI Registered is also a great enhancement when selling calves. If you do not have them registered, at least know the sire and dam so they can be registered by the buyers. Good record keeping of your breeding program is very important regardless of how small or large your program is. You also will have to decide if you want to sell your bull calves bucked or unbucked, and if you are going to buck your heifers. If you do, you need to get the best videos you can on each of them and when you bucked them. Video every trip out, the time that you don’t video a trip, sure enough that will be the best trip out they had. Buyers don’t care what you tell them about the trip, they want to see it. When raising and selling cows, having a basic understanding of the production cycle of the cow and her changing nutrient requirement is very helpful. Not only for the cows you are selling but for the ones you are keeping. By knowing and anticipating the changing nutritional needs of the cow, breeders can plan their feeding programs and lower feed costs. Cows use the nutrients provided to them for bodily processes in the following order: 1) maintenance - keep alive and moving, 2) lactation - providing milk for the calf, 3) growth - including weight gain, and 4) reproduction. For nutrition and management purposes of your cows, the annual production cycle is important to understand. They can be divided into 4 phases: Pre-calving, Postpartum, Lactating and Pregnant, and Gestation. Each one of these phases is unique and each has its own set of nutritional requirements. Postpartum (after calving) is the 80 to 90 day period that begins at calving. It is the period of greatest nutritional demand. Cows must lactate, repair their reproductive tracts, resume heat cycles, breed, increase activity and, if young, grow. All these processes put considerable strain on the cow. However, her voluntary feed intake, how much feed she will eat, is highest during the postpartum period. If she is not fed to meet her nutritional demands, she will fail or be delayed in rebreeding and lose weight. Lactating and Pregnant is a period of 120 to 130 days. Nutritional requirements are still high. However, energy requirements decrease about 13% and protein needs about 8% compared to the postpartum period. During the lactating and pregnant period, cows reach peak lactation and then decrease milk production. Cows are pregnant, but the limited fetal growth does not add much to requirements. However, activity is still high, and two and three year-olds must continue to grow. Cows usually lose some weight during this period. Gestation is the 100-110 day period immediately after the calves are weaned. Nutritional requirements are at their lowest because lactation has ceased. Energy needs are 23% less than the previous period and protein requirements drop by 36%. This is the best time to put weight back on thin cows and increase body condition to BCS 5 or 6. Cows are pregnant, but growth of the developing calf is still slow and activity decreases; however, heifers still need to gain 1 to 1.5 lbs per day. The cows voluntary feed intake is lowest during this period. Pre-calving is the period 50 to 60 days immediately before calving. This is the most critical period of the year. Cows must reach or preferably maintain body condition score 5 or 6 during this period. Cows must calve in body condition score 5 or greater to have healthy calves and breed back quickly. Energy and protein needs increase by 20% or more compared to gestation. Fetal growth is rapid. The calf may gain 60 lbs during pre-calving, and the placenta is also growing. Cows need to gain 1 to 1.25 lbs per day, while heifers and young cows need to gain 2 to 2.5 lbs per day. Along with fetal and placental growth, cows are preparing for lactation. Late in this period feed intake may decrease because the fetus and associated structures take up space normally occupied by the rumen. (Note: Percentages and data obtained from Texas A & M ) Bucking bull’s nutrition program is also very important and in the bucking bull business is usually done a little different. Every breeder has their own type of feeding program, usually based on the area they live in as far as pasture and forage. That alone is usually not enough if you are trying to raise athletics. Proper nutrition is one of the most important components in raising bucking bulls for competition. When bull calves are weaned a good feed program is important. They are still growing and developing. Normally they are turned out on pasture with good forage, for spring, summer, fall and hay in the winter. If you do not have good pasture during the entire year, you will have to hay them. Most breeders supplement them all year long with a good feed high in protein and also have required minerals and vitamins. When supplementing them, during the winter they should have free choice hay and if you do not have good forage all year long, free choice hay. There are several performance feeds available on the market to choose from. You can contact any of them and they will be happy assist you in finding a feed for your program. Some breeders go to their local feed company and have a mix made up for their animals with the requirements needed to promote growth, development and athleticism. When you start bucking your calves, you want them healthy, energetic and have stamina for bucking. You are requiring them to “perform”, so give them the tools they need to do the best they can be, a good nutrition program. This can also help reduce possible injures to young calves. When selling these young calves, you want them to have a top body condition score (BCS). This is why good nutrition is important. Not only for the bull calves, but the heifer calves. The heifer calves are growing, developing and should have a good BCS so they can become pregnant and have a healthy first time calf. You have to develop heifers to an appropriate weight for breeding. For most, this is 65 to 70 percent of mature weight. Under fed heifers won’t cycle. Minerals play a role in the developing heifers. Depending on feed resources there could be a fine line for breeders when it comes to deficiencies or toxicities. Some additives could also be helpful in the ration during the growth cycle. For most breeders, these heifers are the future of your program. If you decide to sell some, you want to offer them in the best BCS possible, so the buyer is purchasing a good, developed heifer that will be ready for breeding. Breeding Bulls should have conditioning prior to enter breeding season. This period is the most important next to the development phase, but that could be debated. Not only do growing bulls need this conditioning period, but mature bulls also need to be conditioned before entering the breeding season. Growing bulls generally may have just gone through the development phase which consisted of a high-energy concentrate-based diet. As such, these bulls need to be cycled down from that high plane of nutrition. That means there needs to be a transition from a development diet to a conditioning or maintenance diet that is often forage-based. The conditioning period should be around 60 days. This time frame should allow adequate time for the bulls to adjust to a new diet. For well-conditioned bulls this time frame will allow bulls to moderate their fat cover and “harden up”, likewise thin bulls will have adequate time to increase their body condition if required. Additionally, the 60-day time frame provides adequate time for the sperm population to turnover and quality sperm to develop prior to the bull entering breeding season. The bull should enter the breeding season with a body condition score of 5.5 to 6.5 (9 point scale). This body condition provides the bull adequate body reserves to draw upon during the defined breeding season. During the breeding season, bulls can lose from 100-400 lbs of bodyweight which equates to a loss of 1 to 4 units of body condition score. The amount of bodyweight and body condition loss will be influenced by the age of the bull, prior body condition, length of the breeding season, and the level of activity experienced by the bull. After the breeding, season bulls generally will need some attention to restore their bodyweight and body condition. The amount of bodyweight and body condition that needs to be replaced can be considerable depending upon how much bodyweight and body condition the bull mobilized. A 2,000 lb bull that loses 200 lbs could require up to 1,200 lb of 65% TDN feed to fully regain all of the bodyweight that was lost. If you are selling a breeding bull before breeding season, condition him prior to sell so he is healthy and has a good BCS. You also want to obtain a BSE (Breeding soundness evaluation) on him. Having this done gives you the ability to guaranteed he is sound for breeding. You may have used him last spring for breeding and he did a great job, however so many things could happen to a bull during the winter that could affect his breeding soundness. You never want to be in a position where you sold a bull for a breeding bull and the buyer has him evaluated to find out that he is not able to breed. If you are new to the business or have been in for awhile, you always want to sell a good quality animal, learn to cull hard, keep good records of your breeding program, take the best videos you can of your bulls and or heifers bucking, never be afraid to ask questions and learn more about the business. There are plenty of breeders that have been doing this for a very long time that would be happy to give you some guidance. There is not an EXACT way of doing things in this business, one reason its unique, gives you the ability to do your program like you want. But no matter how you do your program, you just better remember this if you want to succeed, “Your Reputation Rides on What You Sell”
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 16:46:29 +0000
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