How to Breed Beef Cattle
Successfully breeding beef cattle is a matter of both art and science. Balancing a solid understanding of genetics with hands-on experience and herd management skills is crucial. The following steps will help you get started.
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Instructions
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Be selective within your own herd. Cull animals that don't gain weight or have calving difficulties. By keeping only the best animals in your herd from the start, you cut feeding costs and have less work to do at breeding time.
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Keep heifer calves that have large pelvises, and remember to choose a bull whose mother also had a large pelvis. These statistics should be available at test stations.
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Check bulls for STDs, scrotum circumference, sperm counts and general physical health before breeding.
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Use bulls that are known to have sired quality calves. Keep only the very best bull for your herd, or don't keep a bull and artificially inseminate your cows. The artificial method lets you choose from a much wider range of bulls, but it's also fairly labor intensive. It requires that you synchronize the female's estrus cycles and that you can detect the very first signs that the cows are in heat.
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Keep your cows and heifers in good condition. An overfed or underfed cow will not only have less chance of conceiving, but it also increases the risks to the calf's health at birth.
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Record breeding dates accurately so that you will be able to palpate for pregnancy signs and determine if a cow has conceived as soon as possible.
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