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Northeast Iowa | From past experience, here's what not to do. I decided that a gomer bull would be best if he was on the low maintenance side. So I bought two units of Texas Longhorn semen and bred two cows. Got lucky and ended up with one bull calf. By yearling time, he was nowhere near big enough for use. By age two, he was surgically prepped and ready to go. The surgery wasn't bad at all and he recovered nicely. We did the whole thing here in my cattle shed with a halter instead of in a chute. A chin ball marker with yellow ink was put on him and he was turned in with some synchronized heifers at the appropriate time. That's when his critical failing showed up. Turns out he was into monogamous long-term relationships, not playing the field. One Angus heifer looked like a bumble bee while the others in standing heat did not have so much as a drop of yellow ink on them. To add insult to injury, he was soooooooo into that particular heifer that he proceeded to nearly jump multiple Sioux gates to get back in with her. Jumping them would be one thing. "Nearly" jumping them meant he left a nice V-pattern in the center of the gate as he got halfway over and lost his Olympic high jump ability. After his third squashed gate in as many days, he was retired. His low maintenance background meant that he didn't eat much, but he didn't generate much of a check as a cull, either.
The next year I tried injecting a cull cow with testosterone to use her as the heat detector. That did an excellent job of turning her into a bull. She got a giant neck like a bull, pawed the ground like a bull, bellered about two octaves lower like a bull, ignored being herded via ATV like a bull, but never mounted a single cow in heat. At least that mistake was only weeks in the making instead of years like the Texas Longhorn gomer.
The whole experience made Kamars and Bovine Beacons look like very good investments, especially in a synchronization system where it's hard to write down tag numbers as fast as they get jumping when everyone's in heat. The dairy breeds usually aren't the best options for gomer bulls simply because of their attitude as they get older. The cost of feeding a gomer for a year ends up being about the same as a mature bull, so he needs to be used a lot during the year to justify his expense. It's hard to say how long a career a gomer could have. Finding the right attitude for a candidate is great, but not always easy to predict. The surgery and recovery were a lot easier than I expected, though.
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I need a good gomer bull...
