Management
He used timed AI and then turned in the bull
for 65 days in both breeding seasons. cost); average weaning weight, 525 pounds;
calf price = $150 per cwt; 93% calf crop.
At fall preg check, the spring calvers were
95% pregnant as usual. The following spring
preg-check of the fall calvers revealed 55%
pregnant, and all appeared to be bred to
the AI date. A BSE the following day on
the cleanup bull revealed zero sperm. Approximately 10% of all bulls that undergo
a BSE fail the examination, so in the example
above we look at the impact of moving from
a 93% calf crop to an 83% calf crop.
In both of the cases above, the owner could have
paid for BSEs in their bulls for the next 50 years and
still been money ahead by investing in the BSE.
If your herd health veterinarian is a
member of the American Association of
Bovine Practitioners (AABP), he or she can
download a spreadsheet to examine the cost-
effectiveness of a BSE for your specific herd.
I ran the numbers for a typical herd in my area:
Bull purchase price = $5,000; bull useful life =
five years; bull averaged 25 cows per season;
BSE cost = $75 (includes owner labor and DVM
166 | JUNE/JULY 2019
This would be what could happen in a large herd
that has 10 bulls with 250 cows, and one of the
bulls was infertile and got zero cows pregnant.
In the example above, the return on investment is
25:1. That means that for every dollar you invested
in the BSE, you received around $25 in return.
To use an investing analogy, it’s like buying
an acre of land for $5,000 and selling it
for $125,000 the following year!
Remember, EVERY bull gets a BSE before
EVERY breeding season. LT
This article was reprinted with permission
from the BEEF Magazine.