If you tell lies you'll get caught out eventually

[Pistonbroke]

And when other family members come round for dinner, those involved in the business can have a sirloin steak, but other family members are only allowed a nut roast.

And they must be cooked in separate pans.

One way to get rid of mother in law

 

[Henarar]

He bloody well should remember, or his medicine book is a work of fiction too, which is a whole new kettle of fish.

I don’t know, we have just finished calving pedigree heifers here (lim and Charolais) not one vet assist in the lim and only one in the Charolais. One assist from us with lims for a calf coming backwards. Only two calves have weighed over 40kgs. But it will be doubtful if any of these cattle would get a second glance at a society sale. It seems the job is so far gone that you almost need to be half on the fiddle to get a decent bull to the sales

Best stay away from the sales then.
Thank goodness there are buyers for bulls that seem to be able see past all the bull sh1t.

 

[som farmer]

cow nutrition pre calving, has a lot to do with calf size, to good = big calves. But showing potential customers, plainer cows, is not conducive to price.
Calved 75ish dairy since mid oct, 3 really bad calvings, big BB's, but plenty calved to same bull, with no trouble, all on the same 'precalver' ration, so why ?

 

[egbert]

cow nutrition pre calving, has a lot to do with calf size, to good = big calves. But showing potential customers, plainer cows, is not conducive to price.
Calved 75ish dairy since mid oct, 3 really bad calvings, big BB's, but plenty calved to same bull, with no trouble, all on the same 'precalver' ration, so why ?

Nail / head.^^^^^^^

cows body condition is a far bigger factor in my experience.

I sent a pal a South Devon bull I'd used for 3 years, having hardly seen a calf born.
He farms cows of my breeding, on much better ground, and was less stocked... he had enormous calves by it.

Another time..... I restocked after FMD, bringing Belt/mixed Galloways onto an empty farm.
I then had a number of very tight assists to a belt bull from another trusted pal. He and I were bemused.
Next year, once the surplus grass was eaten off...hey presto...no assists.


I daresay it might be feasible to select away from that variation....but whose doing the recording?

 

[som farmer]

sold a bull to my uncle, a MRI, with me saying, once he had finished with it, l would buy it back.
Pleased as punch with it, 2 yrs of calves from it, no problems. Went in one day to, 'that bloody bull wasn't any good, lost a cow calving, he's gone'. Wasn't to impressed, to say the least, probably had a 100 calves, no problem, 1 bad, my fault.

 

[M-J-G]

I’m a bit confused about animals own input into EBV’s as well.
Bought a bull in October 2020 sale and happened to look him up on Sim database a few weeks ago. Saw that he had one registered progeny so looked it up.

Has 200/400/600 day weights and all the rest recorded already the latter 2 weights a good 20kg more that my bull has.
This calf was only born in May this year so hasn’t reached any of these milestones yet so is it all based on parentage/bloodlines rather than anything from the actual animal themselves?

Other thing that has me puzzled is it’s tag number is UKherdnumber/DEAD92 so presumably is no longer alive but must have been long enough to be worth registering with society.

Calving ease is a -6 whereas my bull’s a -1. Would that be real figure based on its actual birth?

I know the clue will be in the estimated bit of EBV but would like to understand a bit more on how it’s all worked out.

The one thing I do know is that the 23 autumn calves we’ve had from him so far are all alive and well. Calved 2 of them.

Your bull's data doesn't make much difference to his EBV, particularly since he's so young when you buy him and many of those figures are going off one measurement and the likes of his 600 day weight probably won't even be varified as he was unlikely to be old enough to even have that weight fed into the system.
And rightly so, if he were a dairy bull he'd be classed as having it all to prove at that stage.

The calf that was sired by him will have automatically been allocated figures from him at birth, but it will also have been allocated figures from it's mother who may have had poor calving and high growth figures.

Have a look at the calf's mother to see how her figures look, she may have better reliability on her figures meaning that her stats may factor more heavily on the calf's figures (depending on trait heritability) than the bulls would.

 

[Pistonbroke]

sold a bull to my uncle, a MRI, with me saying, once he had finished with it, l would buy it back.
Pleased as punch with it, 2 yrs of calves from it, no problems. Went in one day to, 'that bloody bull wasn't any good, lost a cow calving, he's gone'. Wasn't to impressed, to say the least, probably had a 100 calves, no problem, 1 bad, my fault.

Sold a lim bull in Carlisle which we had used on some heifers. Ten months later the bloke who bought him phoned to ask if we had calves by him and what proportion were bulls/ heifers. He'd had twenty calves and sixteen were heifers so he was going to cull him.

 

[egbert]

Sold a lim bull in Carlisle which we had used on some heifers. Ten months later the bloke who bought him phoned to ask if we had calves by him and what proportion were bulls/ heifers. He'd had twenty calves and sixteen were heifers so he was going to cull him.

how did the next calf know it's predeccesor had been one gender, not the other?
It's like a coin being tossed....it can't know how many heads or tails went before.


that said...I was oft told that an old bull will throw more boys than girls....and that's exact;y what's happening just now here.

 

[Masseymad]

It can be kept and bred from. As I understand it, it can also be slaughtered for personal consumption, but that is only for the members of the business not other family members.

Thanks for the advice i had a complete cock up last year with passports it was my first year doing them on my own and ended up missing doing some so ive got a few with rejected passports luckily i can bread off most of them but there is some bullocks that i didnt know what to do with.

 

[Pistonbroke]

how did the next calf know it's predeccesor had been one gender, not the other?
It's like a coin being tossed....it can't know how many heads or tails went before.


that said...I was oft told that an old bull will throw more boys than girls....and that's exact;y what's happening just now here.

I was told years ago that if the cows are fed extra selenium they would bring more heifers but I understood it's the male side that governs it.

 

[Sir loin]

So I had a bull calf born by c section last year only weighed 48kg so not a big calf but the section was done as a result of a torsion declare it ?
I am only a pure lim breeder not pedigree so it will not make a difference and will not be sold as a breeder.

 

[muleman]

So I had a bull calf born by c section last year only weighed 48kg so not a big calf but the section was done as a result of a torsion declare it ?
I am only a pure lim breeder not pedigree so it will not make a difference and will not be sold as a breeder.

Ser nowt

 

[Pistonbroke]

So I had a bull calf born by c section last year only weighed 48kg so not a big calf but the section was done as a result of a torsion declare it ?
I am only a pure lim breeder not pedigree so it will not make a difference and will not be sold as a breeder.

I'm saying that if you don't declare it,you will still get to heaven. There's far bigger things going on than that.

 

[Sir loin]

can you not DNA the cattle and get passports that way?
edit forgot to add quote about failing to get passports

 

[michael N123]

 

[Sir loin]

Thanks for the advice i had a complete cock up last year with passports it was my first year doing them on my own and ended up missing doing some so ive got a few with rejected passports luckily i can bread off most of them but there is some bullocks that i didnt know what to do with.

try again can you not DNA cattle to get passports.

 

[Masseymad]

try again can you not DNA cattle to get passports.

the mums to the bullocks went to the auction not long after the calves were born. Bad teats and high cell count if i recall correctly (dairy heard) although i might try the DNA test is that going to be a vet call out?

 

[Sir loin]

With beef prices as they are still could be cost effective

the mums to the bullocks went to the auction not long after the calves were born. Bad teats and high cell count if i recall correctly (dairy heard) although i might try the DNA test is that going to be a vet call out?

and yes it will need a vets call out but I would talk it through with them (bcms and vets).
How many cattle are we talking about?

 

[Matt]

A lot of lims now will be embryo transplants... makes a lot of figures redundant i would think.

agree with embryo skewing figures.
I know it will show it as a ET somewhere but i also know of some well known herds having nurse cows as their show cows couldnt rear the calves very well.

 

[M-J-G]

Don't get too carried away worrying about ETs and the likes, the animal's own data doesn't contribute very much to it's EBVs, particularly at a pre-sale stage.
It's a guess at how he might breed, not a record of his performance