Showing posts with label bulls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bulls. Show all posts

Monday, 11 July 2011

Bull Pulling!

Well, it has been an extremely busy last few days! The big thing this weekend was that the breeding season at our place is officially over, except for the commercial heifers. So, the better part of Friday and Saturday in between baling hay was spent pulling bulls and moving cows. The way we do this is by pulling the bulls from each place separately and then locking them up in a pen of some sort alone also. Once we have all of them rounded up from the pastures, which was done over a two day time span this year we chase them out to a field separately too. We have this one fairly large pasture that is just across the road from our house, it has a slue in the middle, and it gives the bulls lots of room to spread out. We chase them out separately so that they aren't fighting in the process of chasing them out!

We send them all out separately but at the same time so that they can all get used to each other at once. If you have a group of bulls and then you just add another one sometime later sometimes they will gang up on the bull that is new. So, our herd bulls spent the first day or so fighting to see who would be the boss of them all, it's just what they do and is quite natural. But, after a while they do settle down and that is why they are also in a big field so they can spread out if they have to and close to home so that we can check on the regularly to make sure no one gets injured or sick in the chaos. We also moved some cows together, as it is a whole lot easier to check eight or nine bunches of cows rather than seventeen of them, and now with the bulls gone we can put more of them together.

 So, that was the big deal this weekend, another breeding season is over and new life's are growing. Sunday was spent with the extended family celebrating a Birthday and Graduation but he rest of the weekend and Monday was mostly spent haying and getting ready for the big Summer Synergy Show. It's been a busy couple of days but not as busy as the rest of the week is going to be!

Sunday, 22 May 2011

A perfect Sunday afternoon

We spent the afternoon tying up the bulls that we have entered for Bonanza and Summer Synergy shows this summer. The shows are still quite along way away but it was a test to make sure that we would be able to handle him as we expected that he would have a little bit of a temper!
When we tie up our animals for the first few times we use these metal ring halters! It is just a simple metal ring with a chain that goes around the ears. We find that the rings work really well, when they pull the ring digs into their skin and it hurts so as a result it does not take them very long before they stop pulling. Whereas we find with the rope halters they pull for a lot longer, a whole afternoon at least compared to the hour or so with the metal halter.

It was a lovely afternoon to tie up bulls and it went very well with the one bull entered and the spare that we may have to sub in for the high tempered one, only time will tell if he will be good enough to go, although after this afternoon it doesn't look very promising!