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Columbia City, Indiana | I was just reading about an operation in Idaho that raises Herefords and Angus and also produces Black Baldies for commercial buyers. I used to be herdsman for a 50-60 cow registered Angus herd here locally, and I know breeding and calving season could get pretty hectic at times when certain cows needed to be AI/ET bred, etc. Then when I started doing my own thing he "rented" my cows for a couple of years and put embryos in, but that got to be too much hassle for me with having to run them through 3x, etc, so I quit doing that. Had to buy my own bull after that because part of that deal was he let me use one of his, which was nice.
I started wondering how the BIG outfits out west do things. Is it all in synchonized AI breeding, then clean-up bulls go in? I guess what I mean is, if they have 500 mama cows out on a 1500 acre or bigger pasture, and say cow #10 is standing, surely they don't call them all in and sort off the one they want to breed as we did. Do they have portable corrals and take the corral to the cow? The outfit I was reading about said 90% of their calves are either AI or ET, so that makes it tough for me to imagine catching that high a percentage with a timed AI program. I'd think 50% would be darn good. Maybe they run the program twice?
Someday I hope to go on a trip out west and visit some of the big feedlots and ranches. The tough part will be convincing my wife that it qualifies as a vacation! | |
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How do the big breeding stock operations do it?
