Ai in the field??

[6891tmc]

Evening all.
Just a crazy thought but has anyone out there ever tried to ai there cow in the field?
Idea being to bring the ai man to the cow. Is there such a contraption that fits on the 3 point linkage could lure some cows to a feeding trough and have several locking heads on it to control cow needing served?
If it worked, it could mean no hassle having to bring in all the cows for 1 to be served. The main reason behind it would be to reduce stress on the animal thus better chances of holding to the ai
The more animals around the headlocking feeding trough device the more at ease the target animal would be ??

 

[serf]

Did it on Clarksons farm.

None of them held.

I kept shouting at the telly from the start ! "Put the bull in "
Three AI s later and no holds he puts the bull in 🫣

 

[M-J-G]

AI bulls aren’t likely to try to kill you
Don’t need feeding for the rest of the year,
Don’t need to be separated from their daughters,
Won’t jump the fence after the neighbours cows,
Won’t fight with the other bulls in the tank.
Won’t go lame at a critical point in the season.

Most bulls won't do any of those things apart from need fed and breed daughters of they are managed, and you can sell the bull after you're done with him if you're business cannot afford to feed

If you have a small herd or have plenty of time on your hands it's fine, but most don't have that luxury.

 

[Hesstondriver]

Credit to Fabb herefords

 

[M-J-G]

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Credit to Fabb herefords

Dan's a mean dude with a welder

 

[6891tmc]

In what way are AI bulls good?
They are usually bought on a pretty limited budget and I've yet to see many that are any better than a fairly average bull within their breed.

Il be honest any bulls we got were never registered, probably because its to costly, buy the were average enough but any cow that did get ai, the calf was head and shoulders above the bulls offspring.

 

[Hesstondriver]

Dan's a mean dude with a welder

He’s a perfectionist too

 

[som farmer]

Yes, we used to dabble in AI many years ago for various reasons, none of which was convenience.
And I can truthfully say some of the worst looking cows we ever had were AI bred.
Had some great ones too, but some of them - Jesus

there's some pretty cheap beef semen out there £3-£4 straw, don't expect their breeding is that good.

there's reasonable semen at £7-£8,

but if you buy cheap, what do you expect ? Bulls only produce so much semen, that has to be reflected in the price. The 'better' the bull, the dearer the semen.

in the dairy side, Picston Shottle produced something like 1,000,000 straws
excellent bull, and the semen was expensive, you got what you paid for.

 

[som farmer]

No but Kamars will provided the cow in season is not on her own.

we use estrumate strips, slight problem this year, only 1 side changes colour,
we have absolutely no idea why, but it makes judgement harder, are they or aren't they.

with a big bunch of dairy hfrs, with strips, a jersey hfr, took a liking to the taste, and the whole lot had changed colour, that was a bugger.

but just goes to show, glue sniffing isn't only a human problem.

Bulls in with our cows now, following them well, seen him jump, but those half strips worry me.

 

[Henarar]

Do you have any pictures?

We AI'd this heifer in the cow catcher, ideally it would be handy to have a door on the side of the catcher behind the cow for AI,ing but we just open the catcher once the cow is in the yoke and there is room behind or the job.

A lot of our cows I can catch in a couple of mins by just dropping the catcher over them without opening it but some are not keen on it over their head and so I open it and take my time till they are in the right place, I soon found out there is no point in chasing them.

 

[M-J-G]

there's some pretty cheap beef semen out there £3-£4 straw, don't expect their breeding is that good.

there's reasonable semen at £7-£8,

but if you buy cheap, what do you expect ? Bulls only produce so much semen, that has to be reflected in the price. The 'better' the bull, the dearer the semen.

in the dairy side, Picston Shottle produced something like 1,000,000 straws
excellent bull, and the semen was expensive, you got what you paid for.

In the dairy sector bulls tend to have more of a scale in cost being indicative of quality based on proofs.
The beef job is a lot more cloudy on that front.
I know when I buy semen for retail the top dairy bulls can be double the price of lesser ones, but beef bulls are all in and around the same price.

 

[David1968]

there's some pretty cheap beef semen out there £3-£4 straw, don't expect their breeding is that good.

there's reasonable semen at £7-£8,

but if you buy cheap, what do you expect ? Bulls only produce so much semen, that has to be reflected in the price. The 'better' the bull, the dearer the semen.

in the dairy side, Picston Shottle produced something like 1,000,000 straws
excellent bull, and the semen was expensive, you got what you paid for.

That's quite a leap there to assume we were just buying cheap. Tbh I can't remember what we were paying, but we were trying to build up a closed herd from a very small base without having to run multiple bulls for very small numbers. We were buying on appearance and maternal traits.
The point was more the variation. We were getting some very good calves, and some very poor ones, from the same calving batch, and the same bull, allegedly...

However, that was 35 years ago. I'm sure things have moved on somewhat since then.

 

[som farmer]

That's quite a leap there to assume we were just buying cheap. Tbh I can't remember what we were paying, but we were trying to build up a closed herd from a very small base without having to run multiple bulls for very small numbers. We were buying on appearance and maternal traits.
The point was more the variation. We were getting some very good calves, and some very poor ones, from the same calving batch, and the same bull, allegedly...

However, that was 35 years ago. I'm sure things have moved on somewhat since then.

we can buy beef semen, BB AA, for around £3/4 straw, and a huge amount sells at that price, in the dairy mkt, because it's the cheapest, couple of £ more, meadow quality assured, better bulls.

in the dairy mkt, using better beef bulls, going forward, will increase in importance, as the ban on euthanasia of calves at birth, spreads.

but all bulls, can throw some bad calves, whether dairy or beef. For beef bulls, more attention needs to be applied to the 'production' figures, rather than price.

 

[M-J-G]

we can buy beef semen, BB AA, for around £3/4 straw, and a huge amount sells at that price, in the dairy mkt, because it's the cheapest, couple of £ more, meadow quality assured, better bulls.

in the dairy mkt, using better beef bulls, going forward, will increase in importance, as the ban on euthanasia of calves at birth, spreads.

but all bulls, can throw some bad calves, whether dairy or beef. For beef bulls, more attention needs to be applied to the 'production' figures, rather than price.

Beef EBV's in UK cattle aren't really very reliable due to the very low levels of input data and are usually based on information from a handful of animals kept in a pedigree situation.

Calf surveys are a bit more reliable, but are carried out and advertised by those selling the semen, so not really unbiased.

 

[David1968]

but all bulls, can throw some bad calves, whether dairy or beef.

Well yes, I appreciate that. But I found the variation much greater from the AI bull than the actual bull we had on the ground.

However, it was a long time ago.

 

[som farmer]

Well yes, I appreciate that. But I found the variation much greater from the AI bull than the actual bull we had on the ground.

However, it was a long time ago.

in the world of dairy breeding, so much is done by genomic computer matching, it's nearly a case of 'here today, gone tomorrow', with bulls.

we can but hope, it's the right way to go !

 

[ringi]

Ireland is now requiring DNA testing of all calfs, I expect the "kill out" data will feed into their EBV database for all their beef bulls.

 

[unlacedgecko]

Beef EBV's in UK cattle aren't really very reliable due to the very low levels of input data and are usually based on information from a handful of animals kept in a pedigree situation.

Calf surveys are a bit more reliable, but are carried out and advertised by those selling the semen, so not really unbiased.

Importing beef semen from US/Southern Hemisphere may be worthwhile then?

 

[M-J-G]

Importing beef semen from US/Southern Hemisphere may be worthwhile then?

Possibly, but many traits are weighted differently and if selling stores you may be breeding a pretty undesirable animal, particularly since we don't have many of the finishing options that they do, like using hormones, blanket feeding ABs etc.

 

[Nenuphar]

Ireland is now requiring DNA testing of all calfs, I expect the "kill out" data will feed into their EBV database for all their beef bulls.

The incoming suckler development scheme will have genomic testing of 70% newborn calves. Things are moving forward white quickly with the star system and reliability should go through the roof in the next few years with enough participation.

 

[Agriclegend]

I AI in the field and move the handling set up around the paddocks as I go although it takes time to set it up and then take it down. It works but I could do with a quicker approach. I quite like the mobile locking head yoke idea, I had considered that previously although only on a feed trailer type approach and thought cattle would shake it about, the one which gets the cows to step onto a platform seems much better but it would be an issue moving it about I would think, particularly if you wanted a longer one to hold more cattle at a time. I also considered a trailer based crush type approach with minimal metal and hydraulic lowering but it is expensive to get something fabricated and the mobile crush systems on the market are overkill for what I need and not conducive to cattle to run through each day. This has now got me thinking about this again.