Indoor bulling

shearerlad

Member
Livestock Farmer
Struggling for grass this spring and cows will be in for another 2-3 weeks unless there is a serious shift in growth. Ideally the bulls would be put out to work around the 25th of this month which is usually after turnout.

Is there any issues with putting bulls to work inside at this time of year, and turning out the groups as and when grass becomes available?
 

Optimus

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
North of Perth
Struggling for grass this spring and cows will be in for another 2-3 weeks unless there is a serious shift in growth. Ideally the bulls would be put out to work around the 25th of this month which is usually after turnout.

Is there any issues with putting bulls to work inside at this time of year, and turning out the groups as and when grass becomes available?
No, crack on.have you any bales of silage left? Could just feed them in a ring feeder till grass comes save on the bedding?
 

Werzle

Member
Location
Midlands
Bulls working inside need a non slip surface and plenty of room to stop calves being stood on etc ideally. Plenty around here have turned out but still filling the feeders up, plenty of fodder about but no straw
 

muleman

Member
When do you house them in the autumn?
Usually try and keep them out as long as possible or they end up inside more tha they are out, its all weather dependant of course but they usually come in mid to late october, sometimes sacrifice a field and leave a few out till 10th nov.
 

Anymulewilldo

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Cheshire
My autumn calvers all get served inside. But they are on loose housing so no cubicles too get caught in. Bull doesn’t go in until everything gets housed as he’s with the spring calvers until housing!
Bolus everything and then they get haylage, bit of straw and chopped carrots/fodder beet whatever I’ve got while they are suckling and taking the bull. No issues as yet. Crack on 👍👍
 

puppet

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
sw scotland
We run 3 bulls with autumn calvers inside in cubicles and seem to do OK. There is room for some to go outside to feed. The bulls lie up in double cubicle spaces which need a scrape daily.
However, I would get all cows out and just give some extra silage -exactly what we are still doing here :mad:
 

shearerlad

Member
Livestock Farmer
Thanks for the replies
The reason I asked was that dad wasn’t keen. He reckons that it’s not good for bulls to work on the dung, even though we have a bull working inside in January/February. Also that any cows served just before and after turnout won’t hold because of the changes in environment and diet.
We are able to give the calves a creep area so they can escape to safely. Even though I’d love to ai the cows it’s not really an option with other things going on just now
 

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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