I don't have $3000 in him, but that's about what it will cost to replace him, and I need to ASAP. My 4 yr old beefmaster bull came up lame on this right rear leg. He's had a round of antibiotics, and inflammation meds but looks like tissue damage--he hobbles around but his breeding days are over, and no telling what slaughter prices will be by the time the withdrawal period for the medicines have elapsed. [SIGH]
OOOOOhhhhhh......You sure are a city boy, aint ya Rumer ? < no slight, just teasing we know different things from different life experiences>
Don, is he hobbling as in leg in the air? (torn tendons or hip?) or just limping as in knee or ankle ??
No, you are not talking 3 grand INTO the animal, if its a registered prize bull its 300 grand in sperm.........hell, man for that I would give him 6 months or a year to heal and see what happens.
Unless, of course, ya got a mill policy on him.......then let the adjustor take a look------and I like my steaks medium usually, rare sometimes.
[This message has been edited by MidEngineManiac (edited 09-08-2014).]
Yes, 'can' rent one, but I don't know of any for rent close by and renting one is expensive and full of risks, and you're tied into a pretty hard contract. Anything happens to him at all--my fault, the bull's fault--no one's fault, and I just bought that rental bull. Artificial Insemination is the way to go, but start up is expensive--training/liq nitrogen and bottle-- and there are no AI techs in my area. Semen is cheap tho--anywhere from $25-several hundred $ per straw with the high end being the best bulls in the world. It costs me about $1.95/day to keep a cow or my own bull in my pasture--renting and AI are more expensive IMO.
Why did/do you only have one bull ? Unless, like when I tried to keep a male doberman pup, they just can not get along with the sire/offspring. Does one sell male ???bovine for food consumption instead of selling for breeding purposes ?
Cant you have Cliff come over and milk him? I would say come over and inseminate the cows but after the last time you need to be perfectly clear about what he is over there to do.
My grandparents rented a bull all of the time when they needed one. The guy would drive up in his truck and squirt the bull's contribution into the "momma cow-to-be." I was happy that I wasn't the one who had to get it out of the bull. MaryJane, maybe you can put on some Barry White and warm up those hands a bit.
[This message has been edited by carnut122 (edited 09-08-2014).]
I agree, AI is the best way to go unless you are willing to settle for a lessor bull just to get through this breeding season.
Back on the ranch, we always had our own bull and then co-owned one with a neighbor. Obviously, we had similar herds. This may not be something you are able to do.
Thinking I'd have to consider a cheaper bull for this year but, it's not my herd.
Edited: My thoughts on buying another $3K bull versus renting that same $3K bull is, I'd rather rent him and take my chances. Who knows, MEM might volunteer to help him out.
------------------ Ron Count Down to A Better America: http://countingdownto.com/countdown/196044 Isn't it strange that after a bombing, everyone blames the bomber, his upbringing, his environment, his culture, his mental state but … after a shooting, the problem is the gun?
My Uncle Frank was a staunch Conservative and voted straight Republican until the day he died in Chicago. Since then he has voted Democrat. Shrug
[This message has been edited by blackrams (edited 09-08-2014).]
Why did/do you only have one bull ? Unless, like when I tried to keep a male doberman pup, they just can not get along with the sire/offspring. Does one sell male ???bovine for food consumption instead of selling for breeding purposes ?
I do have 2 bulls. I also have 2 separate breed herds.
1. Full blood Beefmasters. 2. Mix blood Charolais/Simmentals. Never the twain shall meet.
However you solve this problem, do it in an epic fashion, take pics, and see if you can include last weeks helicopter. The helicopter would be the icing on the cake. Definitely get the helicopter.
I say just sling him up in the barn and milk him, hey I always said I ain't no dam farmer !
Use the Milk you get from him for inseminating your heifers when you need to, that way you get a few offspring from him before he goes, to whatever he ends up going. You just might get a replacement for him out of one of his offspring.
Then there is the Ai route, you can just call the guy, buy the semen and have him inseminate the heifers for you, that really isn't all that expensive per stray you buy and per insemination by him. You don't have to do a dam thing, Well except open up that moth filled wallet of yours,
Steve
------------------ Technology is great when it works, and one big pain in the ass when it doesn't
Cant you have Cliff come over and milk him? I would say come over and inseminate the cows but after the last time you need to be perfectly clear about what he is over there to do.
Cliff takes the train
The tracks across the Atlantic are currently out of use due do, well, the Atlantic.
He needs a boat...but boats dont work on train rails
Originally posted by maryjane: I do have 2 bulls. I also have 2 separate breed herds.
Ok. I am still puzzled. Why didn't you have four bulls ? I am genuinely ignorant. Does that mean the steak I buy is full blooded *something* ? I would like to see that on the nutrition/taste label.
A 4 yr old bull would make the toughest steaks you ever tried to eat. Too much testosterone and adrenalin, almost zero marbeling, and a LOT of sinewy connective tissue. . On top of that, few, if any processors here would touch him--or any other bovine over 30 months old. It's called the BSE OTM rule. (Over Thirty Months) ALL their equipment would have to be completely cleaned afterwards and they have to deal with the SRM--Specified Risk Material. SRMs are: the brain, skull, eyes, trigeminal ganglia, spinal cord, vertebral column (with some exclusions), dorsal root ganglia (DRG) of cattle 30 months of age and older, and the tonsils and distal ileum of the small intestine of all cattle. Law says all that must be removed and disposed of properly and records kept pretty much forever. This is all BSE (mad cow disease) related--the BSE prions are located in the nerve tissue of the above body parts)
Commercial plants deal with it all the time, but small processors and private abattoirs usually just say "no thanks, we'd rather not process him".
Really, the beef from an older intact (not castrated) bull is good only for burger, and not very good burger at that.
There is a LOT more to AI than just sticking the semen in--fresh semen begins to die almost immediately--and even frozen semen has to be reconstituted correctly and used very quickly. Then, there is the very small "window of opportunity" within which to inseminate the female. She may appear to be in estrous (heat) for a full day, but there is only a couple of hours in which she will actually have a chance to conceive. To AI you will want to do all your females at the same time, so the calving period is short and predictable--they all give birth within a few days of each other--the calves wean at the same time, and the same weight, and you send them to market at the same time. For my small herd of mommas, it's just too much trouble. I Have AI'd but not since I was about 16 or 17 and it's changed greatly since then. You can read about the protocols if you wish: Lutylese, CIDRs, heat detectors, and synchronization Oh My! That's assuming as well, that you can guide the tip of the AI gun into the right position at the body of the uterus--not too short and not too far.
Even if you do everything perfectly, there's no 100% guarantee AI will work every time, which is why everyone that AIs also keeps at least one 'cleanup" bull. (In baseball, a cleanup batter is a long ball hitter whose job it is to bring home any runners that got on base) In livestock, the cleanup bull has a similar job of breeding any female that the AI didn't work.
[This message has been edited by maryjane (edited 09-09-2014).]
Ok. I am still puzzled. Why didn't you have four bulls ? I am genuinely ignorant. Does that mean the steak I buy is full blooded *something* ? I would like to see that on the nutrition/taste label.
1. Cost too much to carry that many bulls. I only use them 2 months out of the year, when I put them in with the females. 2. 4 would fight like crazy--I have enough trouble with just 2.
Full blood just means they aren't a crossbreed. Full blood but not registered with a breed association. No paperwork. IOW, I can't trace mine back to the original foundation sires and dams of each breed.
The beef you buy in the grocery store can be of any breed or mix, and most of it is. Even Certified Angus Beef allows for a certain mix of other breeds. If I remember correctly, anything with 5/8 Angus qualifies as CAB (with certain restrictions on ribeye area size, coat and hair color) They have to be predominately black--black is a dominate gene, so anything bred with an Angus, Brangus, or Black simmental will produce a black or mostly black) offspring. Angus cow bred to a Hereford bull is a f1 cross that will produce a black calf with a white face--what we call a black baldie. Breed that back to a Brangus (Brahma/Angus derivitive) or anything with some Brahma influence and you get a f2 offspring--called a Super Baldie. Baldies are not a breed--they are a hybrid, tho some Hereford breeders have attempted to create a Black Hereford herdbook (breed association) in order to cash in on the black hide fever craze. Black herefords are nothing more than a black baldie--and baldie's have been around forever. (Red Angus is a breed of it's own but also qualifies as CAB)
[This message has been edited by maryjane (edited 09-09-2014).]
There is a LOT more to AI than just sticking the semen in--fresh semen begins to die almost immediately--and even frozen semen has to be reconstituted correctly and used very quickly. Then, there is the very small "window of opportunity" within which to inseminate the female. She may appear to be in estrous (heat) for a full day, but there is only a couple of hours in which she will actually have a chance to conceive. To AI you will want to do all your females at the same time, so the calving period is short and predictable--they all give birth within a few days of each other--the calves wean at the same time, and the same weight, and you send them to market at the same time. For my small herd of mommas, it's just too much trouble. I Have AI'd but not since I was about 16 or 17 and it's changed greatly since then. You can read about the protocols if you wish: Lutylese, CIDRs, heat detectors, and synchronization Oh My! That's assuming as well, that you can guide the tip of the AI gun into the right position at the body of the uterus--not too short and not too far.
Even if you do everything perfectly, there's no 100% guarantee AI will work every time, which is why everyone that AIs also keeps at least one 'cleanup" bull. (In baseball, a cleanup batter is a long ball hitter whose job it is to bring home any runners that got on base) In livestock, the cleanup bull has a similar job of breeding any female that the AI didn't work.
quote
Originally posted by maryjane:
1. Cost too much to carry that many bulls. I only use them 2 months out of the year, when I put them in with the females. 2. 4 would fight like crazy--I have enough trouble with just 2.
Full blood just means they aren't a crossbreed. Full blood but not registered with a breed association. No paperwork. IOW, I can't trace mine back to the original foundation sires and dams of each breed.
The beef you buy in the grocery store can be of any breed or mix, and most of it is. Even Certified Angus Beef allows for a certain mix of other breeds. If I remember correctly, anything with 5/8 Angus qualifies as CAB (with certain restrictions on ribeye area size, coat and hair color) They have to be predominately black--black is a dominate gene, so anything bred with an Angus, Brangus, or Black simmental will produce a black or mostly black) offspring. Angus cow bred to a Hereford bull is a f1 cross that will produce a black calf with a white face--what we call a black baldie. Breed that back to a Brangus (Brahma/Angus derivitive) or anything with some Brahma influence and you get a f2 offspring--called a Super Baldie. Baldies are not a breed--they are a hybrid, tho some Hereford breeders have attempted to create a Black Hereford herdbook (breed association) in order to cash in on the black hide fever craze. Black herefords are nothing more than a black baldie--and baldie's have been around forever. (Red Angus is a breed of it's own but also qualifies as CAB)
Don, Thanks for the refresher course, it's been a long time since I was involved in AI and the cattle industry. Kind of miss it. Have you decided what you're gonna do yet?
[This message has been edited by blackrams (edited 09-09-2014).]
Originally posted by maryjane: A 4 yr old bull would make the toughest steaks you ever tried to eat. Too much testosterone and adrenalin, almost zero marbeling, and a LOT of sinewy connective tissue. . On top of that, few, if any processors here would touch him--or any other bovine over 30 months old. It's called the BSE OTM rule. (Over Thirty Months) ALL their equipment would have to be completely cleaned afterwards and they have to deal with the SRM--Specified Risk Material. SRMs are: the brain, skull, eyes, trigeminal ganglia, spinal cord, vertebral column (with some exclusions), dorsal root ganglia (DRG) of cattle 30 months of age and older, and the tonsils and distal ileum of the small intestine of all cattle. Law says all that must be removed and disposed of properly and records kept pretty much forever. This is all BSE (mad cow disease) related--the BSE prions are located in the nerve tissue of the above body parts)
You do realize that this is complete news to most of us? Where does the SRM come from if it is not already in a calf? The meat should be good at least good for gator bait.
You do realize that this is complete news to most of us? Where does the SRM come from if it is not already in a calf? The meat should be good at least good for gator bait.
1. At 30 months, it isn't a calf, but yes, SRM tissue exists in all beef and dairy cattle, regardless of age. They are born with all of it. 2. There has been some relaxation of the 30 month rule, but I'm not sure what the latest protocol is, tho I do know that as of last Nov, the local processors would not accept anything over 24 months for processing, citing USDA FSIS restrictions. You can read thru the following if you want to: http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wp...0-13.pdf?MOD=AJPERES
And just for the record, I haven't had one of my own butchered since the live cattle prices began going up, so the same protections that are in place for everyone else, also protect me, since I buy most of my kitchen beef just like everyone else does--at the grocery store. This is a business for me and the cattle I raise are simply worth more to me on the hoof than in my freezer because Jane & I prefer mostly ribeye, tbone steak--an occasional round steak for chicken fried steak, ground beef, and chuck roasts. All the rest of the hanging carcass I would have ground into burger and you can only eat so much ground beef before ya just get sick of it. I have ground beef in my freezer from 2011. Haven't cooked a rump, arm, or shoulder roast in years, and don't want any skirt steaks, soup bones, tongue, oxtail soup or flank steaks either, and we don't eat guts. Having one butchered, you lose 60% of the live weight thru skinning, head removal, gutting, bleeding, srm removal, and inedible connective tissue, AND, I have to pay someone to do all of it--kill, skin, gut, hang, cut and wrap, but I get paid by the lb for the whole thing when I sell it live so it's just a matter of economics for me.
Hate to see you put that bull down. I understand the reasons, I just hate to see it.
So, what's the prognosis?
------------------ Ron Count Down to A Better America: http://countingdownto.com/countdown/196044 Isn't it strange that after a bombing, everyone blames the bomber, his upbringing, his environment, his culture, his mental state but … after a shooting, the problem is the gun?
My Uncle Frank was a staunch Conservative and voted straight Republican until the day he died in Chicago. Since then he has voted Democrat. Shrug
[This message has been edited by blackrams (edited 09-12-2014).]
Cracked cannon bone--equivilent to our shin bone more or less, and a bruised tendon or ligament. Getting better but if I can get him to stop limping, and after the 18 day withdrawal period for the shots of Draxxin is over, he growin' wheels.
no slight, just teasing we know different things from different life experiences>
Well except open up that moth filled wallet of yours, 
some people are into that weird sh*t
