Using an 18 month old bull

There has been a movement of people selling 18 month old bulls instead of yearlings. The theory is that they can cover more females. But.....cattle loose some teeth at 18 months. Do these bulls get real thin breeding cows because of teeth problems. I bought such a bull who got very thin and I was a little disapointed. But he had 35 cows. I got to wondering if it is a teeth deal.

Ive seen a number of young bulls get run hard like that-some come back some get stunted. There are myriad older bulls that are EZ keeping and must not have all their teeth maybe linebred for vigor. Sandy ground could also have something to do with it in terms of mature cattle losing alot of teeth  O0

We like older bulls because of their increased size we don't have a lot of luck turning yearlings out with big groups of cows 200+/- in big pastures with a bunch of old bulls. I don't know about if the teeth losing has an effect but the bulls do come in thin. Always have chalked that up to the miles covered.

aj said:

There has been a movement of people selling 18 month old bulls instead of yearlings. The theory is that they can cover more females. But.....cattle loose some teeth at 18 months. Do these bulls get real thin breeding cows because of teeth problems. I bought such a bull who got very thin and I was a little disapointed. But he had 35 cows. I got to wondering if it is a teeth deal.

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I’d say he just walked himself thin. In my experience a cow coming in to heat likes to walk a lot. Make the bull follow. I’ve seen a vet on YouTube claim a cow can walk 10-15 miles just leading the bull around before she stands.

Down here, nobody sells 2yr-old bulls unless they are going to stud breeders in 'soft' conditions. We use our 18-month and 2yr-old bulls and sell them as 3yr-olds. Been on the receiving end of criticism about 2yr-old bulls that "fall apart" after being put out to breeding and it is not great for me or the breed!

E6 Durhams said:

aj said:

There has been a movement of people selling 18 month old bulls instead of yearlings. The theory is that they can cover more females. But.....cattle loose some teeth at 18 months. Do these bulls get real thin breeding cows because of teeth problems. I bought such a bull who got very thin and I was a little disapointed. But he had 35 cows. I got to wondering if it is a teeth deal.

Click to expand...

I’d say he just walked himself thin. In my experience a cow coming in to heat likes to walk a lot. Make the bull follow. I’ve seen a vet on YouTube claim a cow can walk 10-15 miles just leading the bull around before she stands.

Click to expand...

I was always told that the number of cows a bull could manage was equal to the number of months of age of the bull. So for an 18 month old bull that would be 18 cows. Also I find that an older bull won't walk those 10-15 miles after a cow. He'll wait until she's ready, jump once and not bother again.  Don't know how it would work in a situation where several bulls are with a large number of cows.

I probably used him to hard.

Give him a little TLC and he'll get back in shape. Using these higher performance cattle is going to take more feed. They have to eat more feed to grow more. Feed intake reduction and high growth are antagonistic traits for sure. Take a look at the Angus $EN values for the high growth bulls. You can't find a high growth bull hardly with a good $EN number IMO.