The Bulls Work is Never Done!

as spring comes to a close and summer starts to roll in around here that means only one thing here on the ranch it's time to go get bulls that's what we're doing today on farmer Tyler ranch [Music] on a normal year I will separate my herd out and breed my first calf heifers to a different bull and then breed the rest of the herd to two other Bulls right now all my cows are running together as one big herd but before I get the Bulls here I need to separate my heifers into their own little herd because they will be with a specific bull and I don't want them to breed with the herd bulls the first step was to round up the entire herd so that I could pull heifers out Sadie was riding along with me on the seat of the side-by-side and she was just itching to get down and chase those cows but she's just not quite there yet you when cutting the heifers out of the main herd sometimes it's easier to just take them one at a time [Music] and sometimes it's easier to take them in a big group in this group here there's only about three heads that I needed but they all wanted to come together so that's the way we did it this is my group of heifers for the 2020 breeding season I've got ten of them in here which for me is a lot usually I only have around five or six the reason that we have so many more this year well there's a couple reasons number one it's because I'm trying to replace some of the cows that I lost last summer and number two I really liked some of the heifer calves in this calf crop so I decided if I wanted to get those genetics into the main herd that now is the time to do it these girls are actually settling down pretty good now but I think I will leave them in this little Corral here until their bull gets here and then we'll put them all together in the big Corral before turning them out to pasture with that being said let's go hook up the trailer find these girls a boyfriend [Music] [Music] [Music] we got the boys back here at the ranch and before I turn them out of the trailer I just thought we could peek through the the walls of the trailer here and get a closer look at these guys all right this guy here is our heifer bull this is the same heifer bull that we had last year and I thought his calves turned out really well for them they were nice and small I guess if I had one complaint it would be that those heifers had a lot of twins I think out of out of six bred heifers we got two sets of twins so that's statistically almost unheard of so I don't know if that was because of him or because of them we'll never really know well I guess what kind of it happens again this year [Music] every time the words heifer Bowl come out of my mouth I get slammed with a ton of questions from people asking me what a heifer Bowl is isn't a heifer a female and a bowl of male yes that is all true but the term heifer Bowl is used to describe a bowl that is only intended to be used on heifers now the reason that we would only use this guy on heifers is because the birth weight of his calves is gonna be particularly small actually quite a bit smaller than what a regular herd bull would throw so for the heifers that's good because the first time they're giving birth they're giving birth to a smaller calf and it's a lot easier for them to push out now I can hear these girls calling for him or maybe they're just wanting out of here either way we're gonna open up these gates and see what everybody thinks of each other all right girls let's go out here Prince Charming you don't even know you guys about to tear my trailer apart so better get you dumped off okay you guys let's go out to pasture one that way everybody go that way here we go that's the enthusiasm I want to see okay we will check in on them in a little bit but these two herd bulls are cooped up in the front of the trailer and they're kind of pissed now because they saw that heifer bull right now and I think they wish that they were running out so we're gonna get them turned loose first and then we'll kind of see how everybody's doing anybody want to guess what we got for herd bulls this year there is the obligatory Black Angus which is standing right here on this side hey there buddy you ready to get to work I hope so but standing on the other side of him is something a little bit different yeah many of you probably guess it we have our Hereford bull back this year he's he's just such a nice-looking bull and he throws such good-looking calves I'm excited to have him back in fact he he is the father to a lot of these heifers so it's another reason why they need to stay separated but but yeah without further ado let's get these guys out and let them get to work [Music] [Music] [Music] or you guys saying what do you girls think [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] when you see them curl their lip up like that after they smell the cow that's called the flame and response and you'll actually see that in multiple species of animals although I don't believe that humans do it basically what it means is that either that cow is in heat or in a scenario like this it's probably more likely that he's just getting excited because he's got all these fresh females here and well let's just say that bull loves his job it is certainly not uncommon to turn these bulls out and watch them go around and sniff every single cow that's out here what is a little bit less common though is to actually see them breed approximately 80% of breeding takes place at night and there's multiple theories on why that would be I always thought just because it's a little bit cooler that they probably kind of prefer to get the get the work done then but go ahead and leave your joke in the comments below today is May 29th usually I don't turn Bulls out until maybe June 5th or so so we're a little bit early this year but I mean honestly a week I mean we'll probably won't even notice it on the other end the Bulls will stay out here with the cows for about three months which will give them access to four possibly five heat cycles and if the cows don't get bred by then odds are they probably weren't going to anyway and even if they did get bred after that they would be so late that their calves really wouldn't fit in with the bulk of the calf crop for that year there are a couple of main reasons why I decided to define my calving season like this well I guess the first and foremost reason is that this is how my grandpa did it and that's how he taught me to do it but the reason that he did it was because he wanted to match the time of the year when the calves were born with the time of the year when the weather was best for that and the cows wouldn't be in the corral in the mud and just basically for this ranch having spring calves was the best environment for everything to be successful another reason that you might want to define your calving season is because when it does come time to take calves to auction there are relatively the same size and then you can make pen Lots and you will make more money if you're selling pen Lots as opposed to just single animals defining your calving season is also helpful because you can match the nutritional requirements from your animals to the forage production and quality with your ranch for instance we have our calves in the springtime and that just so happens to be when we're getting a nice spring flush all that grass growing in the spring is really high quality and really nutritious which is a good thing because the last three months of pregnancy for Mom her net nutritional requirements go way up as about 80 percent of fetal developments taking place then then once she actually has that calf her nutritional requirements are staying high because she's lactating the last reason that I do this and this is really almost just for convenience but it lets me know when I'm gonna start getting calves I know on the calendar that I can only get calves between about the beginning of March and maybe the middle of July so I don't have to come out here and check every day and wonder if I'm going to be having calving difficulties now I realize that not everybody is going to have the facility or even the ability to sort of define their breeding season like that if you try to segregate a bull and he doesn't really have anything to do or any friends it can be very difficult to keep them in that pen so I totally understand why this isn't a realistic management practice for some but if you have the ability to do it I think the pros far outweigh the cons and it's really the only way to go well I've done about all I can do out here all that's left to do this for these guys to get to work so we get this trailer out of here and head home thanks for hanging out at the ranch with me today guys and I hope I'll see you again on farmer Tyler ranch huh yeah you're good [Music]

Channel: Farmer Tyler Ranch

Views: 1,031,867

Rating: 4.7471099 out of 5

Keywords: bull, bulls, cows, breeding, livestock, animal husbandry, farmer tyler ranch, bulls are here to work, beef bulls, angus, angus bull, hereford, hereford bull

Id: H9LLn5AiDV8

Length: 14min 57sec (897 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 01 2020