No Bull

Today Jared and I, along with the two cutest boys, took our bulls into the vet to be semen tested!  It was quite an interesting process, one that made me a little uncomfortable to watch!  Jared and Myrna and I did joke about how it was done, I jokingly wondered if they had a little room for the bull to go in full of "reading" material!  Jared answered with his usual quick wit, "Yeah, they have 'Bovine Weekly' for them to "look" at!"  So in actuality what they do is put a probe into the bulls bum that sends little electric shocks to stimulate their prostate.  Then the vet would hold a little cup with a bag attached to it to collect the sample.  He would then take the sample over to the microscope to see if the sample was viable and if it was the assistant would take the probe out.  Once the probe was out the bull would regain his composure!  I felt uncomfortable watching because it just seemed like a personal moment and we were standing there gawking at him.  How intruding!!

Anyway, last year about 19 of our cows were open, but we decided to keep them another year and give them a second chance.  We were pretty sure it was because of the quality of the grass they were on the year before, and nutrition can play a big role in fertility.  Thankfully we gave them that second chance because all but one were pregnant this year.  Only 18 other ones were open:(  We bought two bulls last year, a more mature one and then a brand new guy, last year was his first year with any cows.  Since we had so many open again this year, but much better grass we were sure it was the new bull.  They had never been tested so we thought it would be a good way to determine what the problem was.

Well, they both tested good.  There could have been many different factors to make an unbred cow...poor nutrition, lack of water and mineral, disease in the cow, sterile bull, this being the younger bulls first time out...We were able to rule out sterile bull, and poor nutrition, but there were a few days when the water co-op was down and we had to haul water to the cows, they always had water but not enough to give them what they needed in a day.  The tank we use to haul the water is not quite big enough to supply all the cows with water for a full day.  The younger bull is much bigger this year and will probably perform quite well.  And like the vet said, it doesn't help to play the "what if" game, but now we know what we can do differently.

This cattle venture has been an interesting one.  Jared and I have enjoyed it, obstacles and all.  We hope it will start to slow down a bit this summer so we can see each other for more than the time it takes us to eat dinner.  This past week Jared has been out until eleven every night getting posts pounded and wires strung so we can move the cows down to the quarter in the sand we are renting.  The guys got a good deal on this quarter bordering our quarter, all they had to do for rent was build a four wire barbed wire fence, which was a bit of money but less than it would be to rent it for the time the cows are on it.  The grass is well established and will be good for the cows for a while.  I can't wait to see the cows come off the trailer tomorrow, they are going to be kicking and running, so excited for some green food, no more dry old hay!