My last 7 calves = bulls.

[GLZ]

In case you are counting at home there is a 1 in a 128 chance of that happening.

It is hard to develop a herd when you don't raise any replacements. 

 

[justme]

Tell me about it.  Last calf crop we had 26 bulls and 3 heifers...thank goodness this year was a better ratio. 

 

[Stihlpro]

I'll trade luck with you!  The last 3 years (with the goal of selling show steers).............. 10 out of 13 calves each year have been heifers!

 

[oakbar]

What are the chances of the next calf being a heifer?

 

[GLZ]

quote author=oakbar link=topic=6717.msg75315#msg75315 date=1224536760]
What are the chances of the next calf being a heifer?
[/quote]

Still 50% luckily.

 

[jason]

You were probably thinking lucky 7 was a heifer....well maybe on the 8th.

 

[oakbar]

yes, it still is a 50% chance.  I always laugh at this because it was a test question in my genetics class in college and, surprisingly, quite a few people got it wrong.

 

[ATOZ]

Are these calves A.I. or from your herd bull?? The reason I ask is with the sexed semen do they throw away the bull semen and only keep the heifer semen?? I don't understand the sexed semen completely so don't jump on me to hard when I say ......  Are they keeping the heifer semen and selling the bull?

 

[red]

we went almost 3 years without a bull. Had 3 this year.

Red

 

[GLZ]

Are these calves A.I. or from your herd bull?? The reason I ask is with the sexed semen do they throw away the bull semen and only keep the heifer semen?? I don't understand the sexed semen completely so don't jump on me to hard when I say ......  Are they keeping the heifer semen and selling the bull?

They are all AI calves.  I am starting to wonder this as well.  Not that I think that is my problem, just more a run of dumb luck.  What do they do with the semen after they pull out the heifer sexed semen.  They certainly don't throw it away, and you rarely see bull sexed semen advertised. 

 

[showsteerdlux]

Sexed bull semen could sure come in handy for people wanting steers out of HW and such. I sure would be buying it just so I wouldnt have to worry about carrier females.

 

[oakview]

20 years ago, before sexed semen I presume, I synchronized seven 3 year old cows, all were AId the same day to GR Exclusive and GR Dreamboat.  All stuck and all had bull calves from 4 days early to 10 days late.  In 45 years of raising Shorthorns, this is the first year I can remember having more heifers than bulls and the ratio is better than 3 to 1.  I've had 12 year old cows that have never had a heifer calf.  The general rule of thumb is the more you want a heifer, the greater the odds you'll get a bull.  (and in Shorthorns, you'll probably get a white, horned one at that!)

 

[Davis Shorthorns]

my donor cow has only thrown bulls.  So I got her ultrasounded and guess what is commin for this year?  A bull.

 

[Rocky Hill Simmental]

In our commercial herd, the first couple of years we used our current bull he only produced one bull calf and everything else was heifers. We sell our crossbreds as feeders and they sell about 10 cents cheaper than a bull/steer so we were missing our bull calves. This year bulls and heifers from this particular bull were about even, so it was nice.  ;D

 

[farmboy]

we were right at 50 percent this year, not bad

 

[oakbar]

We were exactly 50:50 this year on heifer and bull calves.

 

[justintime]

Last year, on our purebred cows we were over 70 % heifers. This year we ended up at 67% heifers, with only 3 bulls in the first 32 calves and a higher number of bulls in the last 20 cows to calve. We were actually hoping for more male calves as we are trying to start a bull sale ( along with uluru.... he ended up with mostly heifers this year as well).

The worse I can remember was when our first calf crop from IDS Duke of Dublin arrived. In our first calf crop by Duke we had 31 bulls and 1 heifer. The geneticists say that this is by chance, but I am thinking there has to be more to it than chance.

 

[Reinken Cattle Co.]

This is the first calving season using our new bull, and we have had all heifers out of him we are up to 10 now that the fall cows are calving.