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Developing Bulls To Meet Customer’s Specifications

published: September 15th 2009
by: Martha Hollida Garrett

Bull buyers are the lifeblood of purebred operations and developing bulls to an end point that works for this profit-minded customer base is critical. While there are many aspects to producing bulls, the development stage between weaning and breeding is one of major concern and one that requires quality control.
    Developing a bull that will take the pressures of covering country, breeding a set of cows and repeat the process year-after-year is key to both the purebred and commercial cowman’s survival.
    In years past, bulls have been placed on high concentrate diets with the emphasis on pushing bulls to their limits in terms of gain. Today the strategy is to develop bulls on forage based diets, and do it in a no-nonsense way.
    Preparing bulls is time consuming, and many seedstock producers have realized the benefits of having a “specialist” do it for them. This frees up pastures and often provides marketing advantages, plus most find the costs of outside development equal to or less than what they can allocate money and manpower for at home.
    Donald Parrish, with the Central Texas Bull Test in Evant, Texas begins developing a new group of bulls every 60 days and has been doing so for the past 10 years.
    “We were in the dairy business for almost 40 years and we have been able to convert our facilities. We operate our bull test as well as a feedlot. A neighbor asked us to develop some bulls for him in 1998 and our program evolved from there,” he says.
    Parrish, who is joined in the operation by his wife, Dionitia, son, John and daughter, Gayla feed a high fiber ration to the bulls placed in their facility.
    “We are very flexible with our customers on what they want done, except when it comes to the ration. We have a set ration that we have developed and know it works. Our goal is to develop a bull that will not fall apart once they are turned out and that is one thing we are very proud of—the bulls fed here, work,” says Parrish.
    Central Texas has the capacity to separate bulls by customers and/or with the exception of the summer start period, keeps bulls separated by breeds. They work with large and small breeders to produce a sound, breeding bull.
    The Parrish’s start accepting bulls right after weaning. They require all bulls be vaccinated before arriving and have a registration paper. At arrival bulls are weighed, given another round of vaccinations and tagged with an electronic identification tag. They are placed on a warm-up ration for 45 days and then weighed again.
    The bulls will then continue development for 120 days, with a weight taken at 60 days. They are placed in traps that require a lot of exercise between feed and water, so that they can handle large pastures once in a breeding herd.
    At the end of the 120 days, the bulls are weighed, ultrasounded  and measured for hip height and scrotal circumference.
    The Parrish’s handle all the details during the development period, which is a time saving tool for their customers. In addition, all the data is supplied to the bull owners and their respective breed associations.
    Another service, the Parrish family offers is private treaty merchandising.
    “We have two marketing agents, Teddy Eldridge in New Mexico and Donnie Robertson in Texas. Donnie does all our ultrasounding and markets bulls for us in Texas and across the southeast, particularly Florida. This is optional for our customers, but we do market a lot of bulls during the year,” he explains.
    In addition, they also operate a commercial feedlot under the name of PX Feeders and run a heifer development program that coincides with the beginning of each bull test.
    “We want the bulls developed here to work in the pastures they are turned out in and bring repeat bull buyers to the folks who bring us their bulls,” says Parrish.
    Mike Mallett, Mallett Simmentals, Lampasas, Texas has been a customer of the Central Texas Bull Test for five years. Mallett is a member of the Cattleman’s Kind group, five Simmental and SimAngus breeders, who commingle their bulls together and then market them through Jordan’s Cattle Auction in March.
    “We have had no customer complaints on our bulls and I think that speaks highly of the way they are developed by the Parrish family. It is a convenience for us, as the bulls are placed there and the Parrish’s take care of everything. Our bulls are handled exactly alike, which translates to a marketing advantage,” describes Mallettt, who adds that in the past the industry has pushed bulls to have huge average daily gains, but they couldn’t maintain their condition afterwards and this type of management often led to soundness issues.
     Whether you develop your own bulls or send them to a development facility, commercial cowmen are demanding a product that gets the job done. Managing those bulls after weaning can pay big dividends in terms of satisfied and repeat customers.