The Ranch

A few years ago, we decided we needed to turn ½ of our herd over to fall slowly. This would cut down all the congestion around the barns when it came to breeding season. There has also been high interest from our customers in fall bulls since they’re a bit more mature than a yearling, yet they’re not full-blown two-year-olds. The fact that the fall bulls get to “rough it” all summer and develop at their own pace is also enticing to their longevity. We decided to shorten up the spring breeding season to about 45 days. Then, we took all the later calving cows and ½ of our recips to the fall. This was the start of our fall breeding program. All our fall-born heifers stay in the fall program, as well as, some of the late calving spring heifers.  The only cows that get moved to fall are the ones who barely had a chance to breed back in the spring due to our short spring season. It will take a while to get cows rolled to fall without just keeping them all open in the spring. Depending on how the fall bulls continue to sell, there may be a chance we go to fall 100%. 

“Spring” calving for us is December 23 to January 30. By calving early, we can offer our customers a true yearling bull. These bulls will also be more developed than a March-born bull when the time comes to go to grass with the cows. 

We offer free wintering until March of the fall and yearling bulls only. By keeping the bulls till March, we can gather the yearling data and have them freeze branded before we deliver them. We do ask that you take the 2-year-old bulls home, or we can deliver them for you, usually before the end of December. 

The 2-year-old program is bulls that are born later. After weaning, the bulls held for 2-year-olds are put on a roughage diet and kept up close to the barns until just after the sale. Then we will move them to pasture till the first part of September. We then gather them up and bring them home to add those few extra pounds for the sale in December.