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| I've been kicking around the idea about buying a ultrasound machine to preg. all of our cattle. I have vet do all preg. checking, but I'm getting tired of them pushing name brand wormers on me at preg. checking time. At one point in time, it was a deal vet would have gone home if we didn't use his name brand wormers.
The only things I use a vet for are preg. checking, breeding testing of bulls, and bangs vac of heifers. I hate to cut vet out of preg. checking, but I'm getting tired of the blackmail thing, especially with Pfizer products. They have great products, but just too high priced.
Can you preg. faster with ultrasound? We usually run can run cows in under less than a minute or just a little more, would it slow us down? One good thing, it would save on preg. checkers arm.
Also thinking if I could sex calf in fall with machine, then I could group cows into calving pastures as to sex of calfs. Then in turn those cattle would run sperate the rest of the year. It would save a lot of labor in fall in weaning/marketing of calves, I could truck all cows with heifers calves to higher mountain pastures, leave them there till snow drives us out ( about the end of Nov. ). It sure would help save on feed bills, as this grass goes to waste.
Here I'm charged $ 100 per hour to preg. check dairy cattle and $ 2.50 per head on beef cattle, plus farm call fee. We preg. dairy cattle down alley, not lockups. So it works out just about the same price per head for beef as dairy for me.
I'm going to have a talk with the vet's, and see their thoughts. They only use ultrasound on sheep and horses. Plus as a side note for a little humor, thinking any of the women in the valley could run up to the ranch, and we could ultrasound them and save them a trip to town! | |
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Anybody use a Ultrasound for preg. checking?
