12 NEBRASKA CATTLEMAN January 2025 PRODUCTION Let’s Get B -S Ready KELSEY POPE | CONTRIBUTING WRITER Before those bull sale catalogs start flooding mailboxes, it’s an important business decision to take time to evaluate your cow herd and current bulls so you’re prepared when it’s time to buy your next herd sire. This article outlines key steps to help you assess your cow herd and make informed decisions that will drive your operation’s long-term success. 1. Evaluate your current cow herd performance. The first step any cattle producer should take before adding bulls to their battery is evaluating their current cow herd and last calf crop. Looking at your last weaned calf crop can tell you a lot about your herd and herd sires. Did they grow and perform how you expected under the environmental and management conditions? Along with knowing these constraints for your calves, ask yourself questions about your cow herd: “Do my cows meet my operation criteria?”; “Did I have a good pregnancy rate?”; “Did body condition hold up?”; “Are they nursing well?” The answers to these questions will help determine the priorities for bull-buying decisions that will have a multi-generational impact. If you are building your herd by keeping replacement heifers, then the decisions you made three to seven years ago were impactful in the development of your core cow herd today. If you answered “yes” to all or most of those cow-evaluation questions, and you’re happy with the breed you’re working with, the likely next step is to find similar criteria to your past bull-buying decisions and look for seedstock producers with similar genetics. If you’re not happy with what you see in the pasture, you are probably ready for a change. What areas need some improvement: better maternal traits, carcass traits, feet, milking ability? These decisions will help guide you when those piles of catalogs come in the mail. But where do you start? 2. Understand the di erent breed indexes and how they can help you identify bulls that t your goals. To start making some changes, determine if the breed you’re currently using is working for you or if you’d consider exploring new breeds for traits like growth and maternal ability to add heterosis performance to your herd. You can begin
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