February is a good time to consider bull power
/by Amy Higgins
Oh, February. It’s the shortest month of the year and the one I consider the last real month of winter because even if March is blustery and wintery, it’s still closer to spring coming. So, what kinds of things do we think about in February? One critical piece to a cow-calf operation is bull power. This is normally the time of year that bulls come to market. The Maritime Beef Test Station in Nappan, N.S., is one place to go look but there are breeders who feed their own and sell via a private treaty or private bull sale.
In the Atlantic Beef School module on herd procurement and retention that was presented back in November, Alberta rancher and consultant Sean McGrath gave some tips on what to look for when selecting animals – whether heifers or bulls. There is no silver bullet. There are different goals and different production systems in the beef world. The key is knowing what you’re trying to produce and working backwards from there.
What are your goals? Are you selling most of your calves into the feeder market to go to work in feedlots or are you breeding retention females and bulls to pass along genetic influence in your own herd or someone else’s herd. A bull that’s ideal for one may not necessarily be great for the other.
I won’t get into what breeds to use. We could spend all day arguing and never get anywhere on the ideal breed for your operation. There are great bulls around the Maritimes representing all the major breeds. It really is a case of finding one that suits your goals. You may plan to maximize on the hybrid vigour of a crossbreeding program or you may have to use something that fits into a straightbred program.
A herd bull battery – whether that’s one bull or five bulls – is going to influence 50 percent of your following year’s calf crop and is a critical piece to think about.
Metrics are something that every producer will have a different take on depending on – you guessed it – their goals. Low birth weight and calving ease tend to be popular traits that result in a slippery slope if selected too hard for.
A cautionary tale is that if you continue to retain heifers out of ultra-low-birth weight bulls, that may drive down the size of your cow herd, which may require you to continue selecting that way. Being cautious of first-calf heifers and breeding them one way and then using a moderate bull to cover your cow herd may be a good play. Don’t get me wrong, pulling a baby elephant out of a cow or having to pay for a number of C-sections is not good business sense short or long term. Tend toward moderation.
Extreme traits typically cause some issue. For example, extremely high rib-eye scores usually means lower marbling scores. And high milk numbers may correlate with feed inefficiency because the cow tends to have a greater dry matter intake.
The Maritime Beef Test Station animals have the benefit of a robust set of numbers, so you’re able to perhaps identify the balances and/or trade-offs of the metrics. And the Beef Cattle Research Council – at www.beefresearch.ca – has a handy calculator to help you figure out what your bull budget may be.
Having these thought experiments about why we’re selecting the bulls that we are can lead to great strides in genetic improvement.
(Amy Higgins is the Maritime Beef Council’s industry coordinator. She raises purebred Angus cattle on the family farm in Quispamsis, N.B., and also operates a veggie box program. She’s president of both the New Brunswick and Maritime Angus associations.)
