“Young bulls should be in compatible groups, keeping an eye on dominance issues, making sure none get beaten up by a pen mate and become too timid to come to the feed. Older bulls generally need more of a maintenance diet, since you don’t want them getting too fat before the next breeding season,” said Kastelic. “Make sure young bulls have adequate protein, as well as energy, since they are still growing. “They can use feed with greater efficiency and restore much of that lost body condition,” Kastelic said, so they should be given that chance by penning them separately from the older bulls that might keep them away from feed.
However, young bulls in that situation will likely have efficient short-term compensatory weight gain. “This is why 18 to 24-month-old bulls usually look like death warmed over after their first breeding season.”
This is a difficult time for her, and a bull of that age is the same in his needs for nutrition,” Olson said.īulls can lose weight if they came from operations where they were fed too much. She’s raising a big calf, still growing, and we’re asking her to rebreed. “It’s no different from a first-calf heifer that lost weight during her first lactation. Bulls are still growing up to the age of three, and need to be fed adequately. Then the feeding becomes a simple matter of calories. “We have one pasture for older bulls (three years and older) and another for the yearlings and two-year-olds. Having a place for the bulls, and an extra pen for the young ones, so they can be fed more than the mature bulls, can make a big difference. “One of the biggest mistakes I see is that some people run their bulls with the cows for the winter if they don’t have a facility for keeping the bulls separate. Younger bulls also have higher demands for energy and protein. This is a challenging stage for young bulls and it may be harder for them to eat normally,” said Olson. The new incisors are coming in, along with the check teeth (molars), at about 24 to 30 months of age. “Also at that age they are losing baby teeth and starting to get their adult teeth.
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