What is the most calves you have heard of from a single sire?

I received an Angus bull sale catalog yesterday, and I happened to see that this outfit had 56 calves born from one sire in a one week period. They were all pasture bred with no AI breedings in this group.  This was a new herd sire they had purchased at Schaff Angus Valley a couple years ago. I find that there is a big difference between what certain herd bulls can settle.

Last spring after spring break up, we had some serious mud in the pens where we sort our cattle to go to our various pastures. I finally turned all the cows out in a pasture at home, and thought I would bring them back in after it had dried up some and sort them then. I turned one of our herd bulls, Wolf Willow Major Leroy, out with the entire group for two weeks. It appears like he must have settled close to 50 cows in that two weeks as I have no idea which cow is going to calve next. I knew he was a good semen producer, as when we sold the world semen rights to Semex, part of our agreement was that we would get paid when he had collected 1000 doses of semen. He produced 1023 straws of semen in his first collection, so I phoned Semex and told them they could write the cheque. They were somewhat surprised, as they said they had only seen a couple of dairy bulls ever do that.

Some bulls seem to be able to produce high quality and high volumes of semen, but can't maintain this for very long time periods. There seems to be major differences, and it doesn't seem to be associated with just testicle size. Our first Irish import, Highfield Irish Mist was also a sire that could settle large numbers of cows. He was owned by three breeders, and we all tried to use him each breeding season. He saw 12 breeding seasons and in many of these years there were over 100 natural calves born from him. In that time, one of his owners moved 1000 miles away, to Northern British Columbia, and we would meet in Edmonton which was about half way, and when he arrived at the next owners place, he would go directly from the trailer to the pasture. Many bulls quite producing semen after being trucked even minor distances. That was never the case with Irish Mist. He was also a bull that would come home from pasture in better shape than when he went out. He always did better out eating grass, than he did receiving hay and grain.

I am always amused by some people who are running 30-35 cows that think they will need to buy two herd bulls. I have mixed emotions about telling them that we always run at least 35 cows with our herd bulls ( sometimes more) depending on the herd bull. When you are selling bulls, and you have a person wanting to buy two herd bulls for their 30 cows, it is hard to tell them  they could probably get by with just one. If these 30 cows are going to be split into two pastures, that is a different deal, and they will need two bulls.

Carvin Guy always claimed his old Lancer bull bred lots of cows in a short period of time.  Seems like he had an ad once that said nearly 100.

Had a neighbor that ran about a hundred angus cows on one big pasture. He had an old herf bull and bought a couple yearling angus bulls to throw in. Story goes that Lloyd would see the yearlings chasing cows all over the place and the old Herf just hung out under a tree by the pond all by himself. Lloyd had come to the conclusion that the old boy was spent and that when he got done in the field he might as well ship him. One night as it started to get dark and Lloyd was coming in from the field he stopped and watched the old herf get up, stretch, mosey over and cover a cow. Then stretch. Go over and cover a cow. Stretch. Go cover a cow...

The next spring LLoyd had something like 95 bald faced calves.

Every time I hear the joke of the old bull and the young bull at the top of the hill, I think of  Lloyds herf.

Similar story to yuppie, we put a yearling Charolais bull in with a mature solid black bull. We figured we'd get a few out of the Char, see what they looked like and go from there the next year. Turns out, Charlie didn't mind the heat of the day, and we had 90% white/smoke calves from that pasture . . . Still can't figure out how our mature guy allowed it to happen, but it gave us a great idea of what the Charolais was stamping on his offspring. You can still watch the big guy covering cows at any time during the day, it's like watching a teenager at the prom!
100 cows to a bull seems like a lot of risk, but if one will do, why feed two?

Not a record but have a story on a yearling bull.  Farwest and I owned and promoted Ice Chest together.  After displaying him @ NCC and Ohio Beef Expo we had him at stud for sometime to collect semen that first year.  Farwest turned him out in the Sandhills with a little over 50 cows for April calves.  He had around 50 natural calves the next Spring.

Tony

Had a yearling simmi had 52 one year, 95 cows in that pasture, other two bulls fought and fought and the young fella took care of business!!

You sure that's not turned around. After all the young bull said let's run over there n service some of those hfrs n the old bull said let's walk over n service em all.

The young bull got really good at "getting in and getting gone", before the older bulls kicked his butt, he had the love 'em and leave 'em attitude!
they can cover alot of cows with that mentality.

Excellent topic.

Lloyd's herfy was just a night rider  8)

Dr. Wayne Singleton said he knew of a bull that settled 18 cows in 24 hours, if I recall correctly.  56 in a week might be possible.  So much for moderation. 

this is small compared to some places in texas and south america, but our neighboring ranch three years ago AI'd 1500 replacement heifers to 6I6.  The Vermillion ranch AI boatloads to their sire battery including Danny Boy, Nebraska and others.  I think they have co-operator sales on the order of like 22,000 head.

I was referring to the most natural service females settled to one bull. In regards to AI breeding, Brazil has more beef cows than the US and Canada combined. There are also more that 5 Xs more cows bred AI in Brazil than there are in US and Canada as well. That is why, some of the beef sires you see in semen catalogs were selected for South Amercian markets rather than for domestic use.

Excellent point.

well, my story did not have a happy ending...this guy leased a bull off my uncle to supposedly use for clean up on a small group of heifers...it was a 15 month old  bull....about two weeks after my uncle had delivered him, the guy called my uncle and said you need to come get this bull, he's not breeding my cows and there is something wrong with him and he wanted his money back or another bull....so my uncle went up to get him and was taking him another older bull...when he got there and started talking to the guy, apparently the guy had synced up his WHOLE herd, 30+ head, and then didnt ai them after he saw how nice my uncles bull was....just turned him out...my uncles yearling bull, according to the vet,  had "blew a gasket"....he was furious needless to say!  oh...and then something happened to my uncle's older bull while he was at this guys place...took him 6 months and many dr. visits to get straightened upfrom that...needless to say, my uncle does not do business with this guy anymore!  the guy "promised" my uncle that he would pay for the vet bills and give him a calf out of both bulls for all his trouble.....needless to say, 5 years later, that still hasnt happened....

  It was interesting that Justintime mentioned that with his experiences testicle size did not seem to matter.I remember when the dual cattle were first used there were a lot of reports of a phenominal # of cows being bred and  on the avg.they were pretty small in the testical dept.

I do think that testicle size is important for many things. I am just saying that it oftentimes is not just the bulls with the biggest testicles that settle the most cows in a short period of time. I do believe that bulls with larger testicles produce more productive and more fertile daughters. It kinda goes with the masculinity thing. Some of  the best breeding bulls I can remember in the past, had huge crests on their shoulders and necks and had lots of curly hair on their heads. There seems to be too many bulls today that look more like steers.

  I like the buffalo look myself,always wondered why they shave the bulls heads at the sales.

Had a Limousin breeder tell me about one of the first Limi bulls they used, as a mature bull they turned him loose with 80 cows.  He bred them all, not sure about the how long a calving season they would have had.  That discussion arose while discussing the whole testicle development business, especially within the Limousin breed.  If I remember that discussion right the bull only carried around about a 34cm set.  Put that into perspective nowadays and that bull wouldn't hardly pass a BSE as a yearling. 
I do remember an article from a breed magazine a few years back that made the point that testicle shape also played a part in fertility not just the overall size.  Bulls with a smaller size and the bell shaped, long sack, could be just as fertile as a larger sized, held closer to the body sack.  The smaller, bell shaped bull would be able to keep his boys cooler, and more productive thus being just as fertile as the bigger testicled bull.

wilt chamberlain? O0