HEIFER CALVES?

Anonymous-0 · Mar 21, 2011

GOT a cow question,, we had 12 HEiFERS born IN A ROW over last 6 weeks .. starting in august got 4 bulls and 3 heifers last fall .. then the rest of herd freshened and not a bull in the bunch ? does that seem odd ?

Mike (WA) · Mar 21, 2011

Very odd.

I would suspect some of those "heifers" are actually bulls in drag. Do any of them have deeper voices than you would expect, and effeminite gestures? Any of them seem to always want to listen to Liberace? Do they watch the Ellen Degeneres show every day?

Enquiring minds want to know...

Tyler Jackson · Mar 21, 2011

The last year or two we've been having a ratio of about 1 to 5. 1 heifer to 5 bulls. Its just the luck of the draw. 12 heifers is a good thing though, they're worth more. Just from woundering, did you use embrios or natural with a bull? The reason I ask is because I heard if you use embrios and freeze em there would be a higher chance that it's a bull.

rrlund · Mar 21, 2011

No odder than what we had last year I guess. A full two thirds bulls and one third heifers.
How old is your bull by the way? Another guy and I here had a theory at one time. Seemed like a young bull tended to throw mostly bulls,but I kinda disproved that last year since those bulls I had used were five and six years old.

Anonymous-0 · Mar 21, 2011

Sounds good to me, herd replacement without buying.

DBAF · Mar 21, 2011

Who knows I have had 6 heifers in a row this past week. I bought ten bred cows from a guy once and he keep one that was his wifes pet anyway all ten had bulls and the one his wife kept had a heifer.

JayinNY · Mar 21, 2011

If I were u I'd be glad, a gift, no bulls. Count your blessings. How would you like 12 bulls instead? LOL. J

Fordfarmer · Mar 21, 2011

I've had 9 born so far this year - 1 heifer, 8 bulls. (dairy herd) Averaged less than 40% heifers for 3 years now. NOT happy about it.

bison · Mar 21, 2011

Blame it on Al Gore.

Anonymous-0 · Mar 21, 2011

natural bull ,,, and i am not complaining ,,

Pair-a-dice farm · Mar 21, 2011

A couple of years ago I bought 16 cows off of a neighbor. They had 14 bulls and 2 heifers, that was fine with me, Steers bring more than heifers.

Anonymous-0 · Mar 21, 2011

my bull is 7 years old

GeneMO · Mar 21, 2011

Is your bull queer?

Gene

tjdub · Mar 22, 2011

It's just weird sometimes. One year I had about 75% heifers. The next year, I retired my bull and was planning on keeping all his heifers as replacements. Of course almost every early calf was a bull! It all seems to balance out over time, but rarely when you want it to

Jerry/MT · Mar 22, 2011

back in the late 70"s and early 80"s, I went for about 15 years with the heifer to bull ratio of 10:1 using AI. Never got a good explanation from the university folks or the vet. I always thought it had something to do with AI.

Last year it was 2:1 in favor of the heifers. It"s gotta be the bulls as the semen determines the wether it"s aheifer or a bull.

TMo · Mar 22, 2011

Normally, 50% of a bull's sperm are an X chromosome and the other 50% are the Y chromosome. The heifer or cow produces eggs with X chromosomes. So the Bull is the deciding factor of wether the offspring is male or female. So I guess you could say it is a 50-50 chance of either maile or female. It is interesting that a study shows that frozen semen yields more bulls. I don't know why. Sexed liquid and sexed frozen semen yields a heifer rate of 94-100%.

This is not any particular answer to other posts but just some comments.

mkirsch · Mar 22, 2011

We'd have "streaks" of bulls or heifers, going months without one or the other.

Every one of those tubes has a serial number, which makes them easy to track.

I've always wondered if the AI companies were experimenting with separating the material into X and Y batches. Perfecting the technology.

TMo · Mar 22, 2011

It is commercially available. It is done by flow cytometry cell sorting. USDA started experimenting about 15+ years ago.

JDseller · Mar 22, 2011

Read several years ago that you need to breed earlier in the heat cycle to get more heifers. The study showed that how most dairies where AIing the cow the next day after a standing heat was throwing twice as many bulls as heifers. So they did a study breeding AI as soon as first heat detected. Got 60-70 percent heifers.
Reason stated was that the egg started to harden after ovulation. The male sperm where stronger longer. So older eggs got male sperm younger eggs female.

Fordfarmer · Mar 23, 2011

Standard practice for AI is to breed 12 hours after first noticed standing heat. Supposed to give best conception. That's what I was taught in tech school anyway.
Started using Genchoice 75 semen for heifers. (supposed to throw 75% heifers and give better conception rate than the 90% stuff - cheaper than the 90% stuff too) Only 1 calf born from that so far... a bull. Also used a few units of the 90% stuff - got one calf - a bull.

HEIFER CALVES?

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