Do any of you keep 2 bulls in the same herd?

[Dondoyle26]

I am curious do any of you use 2 bulls in the same herd and if you do are there many problems with doing this? We have a small heard of 7 heifers and 2 young bulls. They all range in age from 1-5 years old. The bulls are to young to breed anything I'm just wondering what kind of issues we have to look forward to if any? They are all run together on pasture right now. I know we wont keep both males just curious any feed back would be appreciated.

[katschicks]

You can do it 2 ways. Get rid of the bull you do not want breeding the cows. Or keep both of them. If you keep them both seperate them from the cows and heifers. Turn the one out you want the females bred to. Bulls are fine running togeather if there are no females. Fact of life. Rog

[richbar]

Why would you want two bulls for only 7 heifers. If your intention is to breed the heifers, one bull can do the job. The feed cost of keeping a second bull for such a small herd makes that decision expensive to say the least. The other question you need to consider is the genetics of the bulls and the heifers. Are they related? While inbreeding is done quite commonly in poultry, it is not looked upon favoraby in cattle. Repeated inbreeding in cattle in the 50's and 60's resulted in dwarfism in cattle. If the animals are not related, pick out the best bull and keep him for your herd bull. The other bull could be sold or castrated and used for meat.

[TomNY]

Bulls are able to breed at less than one year old. Separate them if you have anything you don't want bred. It may already be too late. Tom

[Omega Blue Farms]

When we started, we didn't know how to pick the better of two bull calves, so just bought both, intending to eat one and use the other for breeding. They ran with cows for two years. All our early calves were bulls and we tended to wait until their second fall before putting them in the freezer. Therefore, we often had two bulls 2 years and older in with the cows and heifers. Never had any problems.

Now let's be clear, we are not a cattle ranch, we are a poultry farm that simply raises a little beef on the side. We found that seperating the herd caused them to test our fencing and added logistical problems to our rotational grazing. Simply letting them all run together caused the least head aches and allowed us to focus our energy on more important things such as our poultry breeding programs.

good luck!

[richbar]

While you may be making life simpler on one hand, you are also making some things more difficult by running bulls with the herd continuously. For one, calves will come througout the year and not in a set season. Heifers can often be bred earlier than they should resulting in more calving problems and it is less advantageous for the health of the herd to mix varying age calves together. Obviously, if it works for you and you are only dealing with a couple of head of cattle, no big deal but if numbers increase, even to 6 or 8 cows, you could start to see some problems over time. Standard practice in the industry (and I'm talking east coast and south eastern US here) is to breed for about 60 days to consolidate the calving season. Cows are pregnancy checked about 45 days after the bull comes out and any open cows are sold. The calf crop is then close in age and usually marketed as a group.

[prairiechicken]

Wow,

Pick the best bull and get rid of the other. You plan to butcher one of the bulls? Take some advice, sell it. Bull meat is so bad you won't be able to eat it.