Breeding season is underway! Decisions, decisions, decisions! It is time to make babies! Lots of things go into breeding cattle around here. We don’t use a lot of natural service bull breeding on our farm. We attempt to design our babies by artificial insemination (AI). We take a lot of time choosing genetics, from a variety of bulls, and match them up to our cows to determine which characteristics we are trying to bring out, diminish, or get rid of in our calves.
Breeding by artificial insemination gives us a greater variety of bulls to choose from rather than keeping one bull for breeding. The hopes are also that this translates into better profits. If you make good decisions, and the breeding matches have the expected outcomes, that should bring us better calves.
Great cattle do not normally just happen. Great cattle are made.
Continue reading “Making Babies”