North Coast Local Land Services senior livestock officer Nathan Jennings.
There are many ways to improve beef herd productivity and profitability, and one of the most obvious is to select better bulls.
North Coast Local Land Services senior livestock officer Nathan Jennings shared these tips on buying better bulls at an MLA-sponsored Casino Beef Week beef information day.
Nathan said the four areas to consider when buying bulls were:
- reproductive fitness
- temperament and structural soundness
- conformation and muscling
- estimated breeding values (EBVs).
“Other people may change the order of importance of these factors, but this is the order I like to consider them in,” he said.
Nathan’s top tips for buying better bulls are:
1) Reproductive fitness
The bull has to be reproductively sound so he can produce an adequate quantity of good quality semen and also have the willingness to serve cows.
A good way to ensure this is through a Bull Breeding Soundness Evaluation (BBSE). This is not a genetic evaluation, but is a physical assessment of the bull’s reproductive performance. A lot of sale catalogues present their bulls as ‘vet checked’. Clarify what ‘vet checked’ means, i.e. does it just mean their health status is okay, or does it mean both their health status and reproductive fitness have been assessed?
2) Temperament and structural soundness
The bull has to be of good temperament and structurally sound. Temperament is a no-brainer – if a bull is of poor temperament, he will be a problem on-farm and it’s likely his progeny will follow in his footsteps.
A bull must be structurally sound because, as he gets older, he needs to remain fit enough to walk and trot across distances and not become sore, which may prevent him from wanting to serve cows.
As most producers know, the most important structural areas to be aware of are around the hind legs. Look out for post legs, or straight legs, as that exposes a bull to hock problems and arthritis in the hip and stifle joints as he gets older.
A sickle hock bull also tends to be a little clumsy when mounting or dismounting from a cow, especially as they get older and heavier. Swollen hocks indicate leg problems. Excessive grain feeding or injuries from fighting can be a cause of swollen hocks.
Producers also need to be mindful of any extremes in shoulder thickness, which may lead to calving difficulties. In Bos indicus bulls the length of the sheath is important – bulls with extremely long sheaths have a higher chance of injury to the prepuce, which can result in them being unable to serve cows.