Loading Bulls and Taking them to the Ladies

hi i'm mike and today we put the bulls out with the cows and try not to get censored on our wyoming life [Music] welcome back and thanks for joining us once again if this is your first time here be sure to subscribe follow along as we explore the ranch life and escape the ordinary it's a windy day on the ranch which is really no surprise in northeast wyoming but it's also a very busy day on the ranch because we have one project to get done first here this morning and that is that we have to get the bulls in with the cows it's not the uh the most glamorous of projects in the world but it's one that has to happen every single year or else well we don't have any calves and for those of you who might have missed that class in fifth grade i hope you didn't but if you did there are basically two ways to go about this process there's uh natural service uh which we do and then there's a eyeing which we we don't do and we never have done not that i wouldn't try it uh artificial insemination is a great way to improve genetics of your herd and make sure that you've got the diversification out there that you may need but for us natural service has been the way that we've always done it and this year though we've got a few little wrinkles thrown in that we have to think about as we head out to get the bulls and to do that we need a trailer [Music] always remember to close your tailgate that's a really expensive mistake [Music] today we're moving bowls in our featherlite 16 foot steel trailer which feather light is a little bit of a misnomer because this is actually one of the heavier trailers that we have on the ranch and we always use it for moving bulls just because bulls can kick really hard and the aluminum trailer trailers that we have they'll actually kick right out of them um this is a good example right here of a kick that went into this trailer and you can see where it bowed that whole thing out if that was an aluminum trailer i think it probably would have went right through so rather than risk that we use this trailer to move our bowls around [Music] so our bowls are located right across the highway where they've been hanging out in their own little bachelor pad about a five acre pasture for the last few months since we took them off the cows last time they did their job and on our ranch they really only have one job and that is to get as many cows pregnant in as little amount of time as possible so placement of this trailer is actually really important uh it's the door is only so wide and the bowls are just as wide as that door some of them weigh over 2000 pounds so i got to make sure that i've got everything lined up so that the bulls are able to get in the trailer and not get stuck trust me it's happened okay so we've got the trailer backed up to the chute really all we have to do now is bring in the bulls and get them on the trailer but we have one more issue that we have to deal with and that is another bull well kind of a bull this is our problem child he doesn't look like much in fact he looks like a steer kind of but with one just one big difference he's actually what we would refer to as a stag he's a steer that was castrated back at branding time unfortunately uh when we put the band on the testicles we try to count one two sometimes we only count one and that's what happened to him he is basically a one bald man and he's off to the rodeo in fact tuesday on our tuesday project list video we're gonna deal with him so make sure you subscribe follow along as we explore the ranch life and escape the ordinary that's coming up on tuesday on our wyoming life but for now we have our project to do and that is to get the bulls up and in this corral so what i'm going to do is i'm going to basically do like i always do whenever i move cattle and that's walk the path backwards from wherever i want them to go and make sure the path is clear all the gates are open and everything's ready to go so this is just something i like to do i don't know if it's required but i've ran into situations quite a few times where you get the bulls or the cows or whatever trying to move this far and you realize oh crap there's there's a gate closed i got to start all over so whether it's in a corral system or we're just putting them on a trailer we start here at the end and we work our way forward this gate could actually cause a little bit of an issue just because we could get a bowl back behind it so i'm actually going to open it all the way up against this fence and then when the bulls come in here we're able to lock them up same thing here with this gate and this gate as we're going to be moving the bulls from their bull pasture which is about five acres into the sheep pasture uh where we used to keep buck sheep um which is about five acres and then eventually into the corrals so the bulls are right over here there they are all three of them we've got our red angus bowl there a black angus bull behind him and another black angus bowl over there to the side that one is actually i don't know if you can see him back there but that is due vader who was a brand new bull to the ranch last year and here's the rub each one of these bowls weighs over 2 000 pounds like i said each one is horny they're full of testosterone and i don't want to tangle with them on foot i'm just not fast enough to get away from them so i'm going to go back over to the shop grab a four-wheeler come back over and work them in with the four-wheeler especially since i'm here by myself aaron's got some epp stuff to do jeff is actually down fixing fence and getting a fence checked on the summer pasture as we already have cows down there as you'll see in just a few minutes as we get these bulls down there so i'm gonna run across the road grab a four-wheeler and i'll be right back and i think we're already making headway uh these guys have already moved up into the sheep pasture here so we're gonna go ahead and close this gate to keep them from going back into the bowl pasture [Music] alrighty boys you ready go come on let's go back down this way come on follow your friend come on let's go to work the hope is uh that these guys are anxious enough to go to work that uh they kind of know the routine they've been through this a few times so hopefully they're able to just uh go in the corral and load themselves up without much interference from us get in there yeah let's go come on [Music] come on boys come on all right i got to get this gate closed there we go [Music] we've got them locked in a much smaller area now which makes things a lot easier so now we go from smaller area to even smaller area come on boys nope nope nope come on crap i got myself cornered here a little bit come on boys [Music] scooch up come on come on follow your friend let's go come on come on everybody in the trailer let's go can we get everybody in there [Music] we got them they're loaded up no problem at all and uh and they're ready to go as for our one bald friend that got to hang out and watch the uh the lack of excitement really we are going to push him back into his corral here if we can find him hey bud you got to go back up there where he gets to hang out until tuesday when we're gonna do something about his a little situation make sure you subscribe hit the bell button so that you get notified when we have a new video come out every tuesday and friday right here on our wyoming life back to the bulls in the trailer we're going to get them a little bit of medication on our way through as we head down to the cows to get them dropped off to get to work okay so back here at the shop i want to grab some ivermectin for these guys it's a medication that we've usually put on the cows during branding we also do it during frag checking and it's basically just to kind of keep the parasites down some black black flies mites slice all that kind of good stuff so i'm going to dig that out and we'll get these guys treated before we take them down to the cows all right so i ever met i've got plenty of the problem is i do not have oh yes i do here's one right here all right so this is the ivermectin gun basically just squeezes a dose onto the back of each bowl we want to make sure that we get them pretty well covered and i think it's around 80 milliliters per 800 pounds so there's a little dial on here you just set that probably right there so we'll take this out we'll get these guys dosed up really quick all right so it's really super simple all i got to do is get in here and spray it on the back of each bowl okay so this one's gonna get a couple doses because of how big they are okay next all right that should keep anything off them for a while and probably off me too all right i'm gonna drop this off here in the shade put that away when i come back because now it's time to head out to the cows it's time to go so we're going to be driving back about five miles or so to drop off these bulls all right so we talked earlier about um some of the tricky things that we're going to be dealing with here with these bowls and you may have noticed there's only three bowls in here so the general boy it's getting hot here the the general idea or the general concept or however you want to look at it is that each bowl will service about we usually go about 25 cows for each bolt so that's over a normal breeding season so obviously we only have three bowls uh right now and that's because we lost a bowl over the winter he actually just passed away we're not sure what exactly happened but we're down to three bulls and that puts us at about 75 cows that these guys are going to be able to service in a normal breeding season now there's two ways around this and one of them really isn't a way around it but the first option that we have is that we leave the bulls in for a longer amount of time now our normal breeding season is about 60 days or so so we could leave them in for 90 days and give those bulls some extra time to service those extra those extra cows and get get the job done of course that then extends our breeding season uh to 90 days as well but right now we're in the middle of this drought i don't know if we're going to have enough food or be able to buy enough food to be able to feed these guys all winter long so are we better off to just keep the three bulls let them service for two months like we normally would and um then basically we hope that they impregnate 75 cows in that time frame they might impregnate more um and then at preg checking we take the cows that aren't pregnant and those ones we get rid of thus calling the herd creating a smaller herd so that we don't have to feed as many cows over the winter these are some of the questions that we have to deal with almost on a day-to-day basis luckily um i don't have to answer that question today because we're going to go put the bulls out we have obviously lots of time the entire summer basically to try to figure this out and how we're gonna do it so i have 60 days to figure out what we're going to do and so it gives me time to find hey figure out prices and all that kind of good stuff get a loan from the bank and be able to um to buy hay and then figure out what calving is going to look like and what the herd is going to look like for this winter and what calving is going to look like uh next season so that's kind of kind of where we're sitting and how life um life is leaving us hanging so we've got quite a ways to go before we get back to the cows we're going to drop these guys off and see how they do but until then why not just kick back and listen to some tunes [Music] [Music] everything's all right we've been longing for each other and it feels like [Applause] [Music] i don't wanna be without you this is something that i know for sure it's just something about you i just want more tell me what you wanna do right now tell me what you wanna do tonight i really don't care as long as i'm with you [Music] everything's all right we've been longing for each other and it feels like [Applause] [Applause] so it looks like a majority of the cows are actually uh a lot farther away than i thought they were we're about almost six miles um back on the ranch right now heading back towards our old wooden windmill and a little pond back here that it's pumping into and we'll get the bulls off to the ladies off to the races [Applause] [Applause] [Music] yeah it feels like i'm on cloud nine [Music] well there you go we managed to make it through an entire episode of putting the bulls out without getting censored by youtube or anybody else so congratulations to us so the bulls are out which means that calves will be on the way in roughly 283 days hey siri hey siri give me the date 283 days from today sunday april 10 2022. there we go that will be the beginning of calving in 2022 and of course another 30 and 30 on the way probably so lots of fun this is the beginning of something cool on the ranch something good that keeps the ranch going for another year and well keeps us all going for another year thanks guys for hanging out with me once again we will see you on tuesday remember we're going to come back with the project list and take care of that stag bowl the one testicle bowl we need to basically cut bait with him and figure out what's going to happen that's coming up on tuesday should be a lot of fun new videos on tuesdays and fridays make sure you subscribe and follow along as we explore the ranch life and escape the ordinary thanks guys and thanks again for being a part of our wyoming life come on you

Channel: Our Wyoming Life

Views: 99,258

Rating: 4.9558911 out of 5

Keywords: Ranch, cow, cows, horses, cowboy, gardening, farmers market, Wyoming, our Wyoming life, animals, animal videos, peacock, farming, planting, cattle, ranching

Id: ZqCe6x4o5nY

Length: 21min 48sec (1308 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 02 2021