| If a bull will be turned out on April 1, the semen he produces in the fi rst part of February will be the semen that is mature enough to fertilize an egg.
medium as well, neither straight nor with too much angle. Wells compares the stress on the bull’s front legs at dismount to jumping off a pickup and landing with knees locked rather than bent. Wells recommends the exam be conducted 30 to
45 days prior to turning a bull out with the females, saying that will usually be good enough to get the bull through a defi ned breeding season of 90 days or less, unless the animal has been injured. If an injury is suspected, he recommends pulling the bull back and conducting another soundness exam.
Maximum genetic expression OBI brings spring-born calves in at weaning, around
the second week of October, and feeds them until they are a year old, sometime in February or around the fi rst of March. They are sold at the end of March as yearlings fi t for breeding. Stidham says they grow the bulls under the program
recommended by the Beef Improvement Federation. While they have the animals’ expected progeny dif- ferences (EPDs), which indicate their potential, “we will also use DNA,” he says. “We have done enough research that we can tell what his fi rst 20 offspring would look like and how they would perform.” During that year on feed, the test station manage-
ment strives to grow the bulls to their maximum genetic possibilities. At OBI, they aim for a yearling weight of 1,200 pounds and apply a concentrated diet in hopes of achieving an ADG of 3.5 pounds. “We do not want to push these cattle so hard that
they just melt away when we do sell them and turn them out on cows,” Stidham says. “We work very hard to get the cattle hardened up, but still keep them grow- ing to their max.” The ration changes 8 times from weaning to year-
ling. The station has been using the Purina Accuration diet for 4 years. While the ration sometimes has to be adjusted, Stidham reports, “Both the people who own the bulls and the people who buy the bulls for breed- ing are very happy with how these cattle turn out.”
tscra.org In the fi nal half of the test, the bulls are fed a con-
centrated ration high in roughage that will be around 14 to 14.5 percent protein. Although OBI does not record and submit the bulls’
body condition scores (BCS), Stidham says he notes the condition of every bull at each observation. They try to keep the BCS at 5.5, pushing 6.0, because they are driving the nutrition so hard.
Suit nutrition to age Wells says that nutrition depends on whether the bull
is young and immature, or has already been through 2 or 3 breeding seasons. A good quality pasture should be enough to maintain a mature, experienced bull, with at least as much supplementation during the winter as the cows would receive. A developing bull needs plenty of forage in the form
of grass or high quality hay, as well as supplementa- tion with protein, energy, or both, along with a good mineral source. Wells says that the maintenance program should
also include vaccinations for leptospirosis, vibriosis, blackleg and viral respiratory diseases, and a dewormer. He says, “It is important to know that spermato-
genesis starts occurring 60 days prior to the matura- tion of that sperm cell, so if a bull will be turned out on April 1, the semen he produces in the fi rst part of February will be the semen that is mature enough to fertilize an egg.” With high prices and good grass encouraging expan-
sion, Stidham says OBI has started a program of devel- oping and artifi cially breeding heifers for its clientele. “A lot of my customers bought hundreds of replace-
ment heifers last spring,” he says. “With the higher prices we had in the spring going into the summer, people wanted to send more cattle here because the cattle were worth so much more.” He predicts bull sales will pick up again and be solid until Christmas, saying, “I think prices will be just as good as, or bet- ter than, they were in the spring, because the demand is still there.”
October 2015 The Cattleman 123
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