Health - continued from pg. 26 achieve this, and also make sure they have enough water in cold weather (not frozen). If they are not drinking enough they will not be eating enough. “Most herds here are looking at the end of June as the start of breeding season, so we are looking at bull condition coming out of winter and through the spring to make sure they have that extra bit of condition and adequate weight by breeding time. For a young bull at the start of his first breeding season, he needs to be about 75 to 80% of his mature body weight, so you build the winter diet to meet those target points,” he says.
Some producers are taking a little longer to grow these bulls, so they don’t have to push them so hard to be big enough to breed as yearlings, and are selling bulls at about 1.5 years of age. This can be a good compromise between selling yearlings (which often means overfeeding young bulls) and having to wait and sell 2-year-olds. This works nicely if a producer wants to calve in late spring or early summer, or fall calve, rather than having to calve in January/February in order to have yearling bulls old enough to sell in an early spring sale. “That extra 6 months of age is certainly a benefit when purchasing a young bull; this enables the bull go grow out some more and become more mature and ready to breed,” says Lardner. When managing bulls it also helps to keep the younger ones together as a group, separate from the older ones, and this holds true in breeding groups, as well. This enables the younger ones to gain confidence and not be so beat up or intimidated by the older bulls. You can help those younger bulls a lot by managing them separately.
Take care to supply adequate nutrition without creating excessive body fat that can hinder fertility. “Also make sure that wherever the bulls are wintered they have adequate shelter and bedding, to prevent scrotal frostbite,” he says. Adequate windbreaks can also help reduce cold stress and reduce the need for so much extra feed to generate body heat. Over the years we’ve also learned about the detrimental effects of too much fat, and how it can create soundness problems and hinder fertility. “You don’t want to overfeed bulls, but you do want to meet their requirements for energy and protein—and this will vary depending on whether they are weanlings, yearlings, or 6-year-olds. Always pay attention to body condition coming out of winter, and also continued on pg. 30 28 | February 2019
TEXAS LONGHORN TRAILS