Bull services required

Hi fellow lifestylers
My husband Stu and me (Rae) have owned our 7 acres since January 13, and although we have experience of breeding cows previously by leasing a local farmers bull before he is destined for the works, we are finding it difficult to find the same opportunity within our new comunity. We are surrounded by serious bull breeders/owners but the bulls are too valuable to let us graze/use them for a while. AI just seems too difficult to get the timing right for only 2 cows. Is there anyone in the Rissington area (between Napier & Hastings) who can help us by leasing the services of a mixed beefy breed bull for a couple of months? We don't want a large bull, best would be fresian/hereford/angus X type, around 2 years old.

Sue from Levin, I have read your threads and you seem to offer a good bull service but you may be a bit far away from us.
Cheers, Rae

Hi rissington, yes we are probably too far away, our furthest customer towards you was at Norsewood, but he has since retired.
As the person who leases also has to pay for the transport, this restricts to locals, sorry! Actually you may have left it a bit late for many folks, as their lease bulls have already gone out (like ours!) or they have gone to the works-but good luck

try contacting some stock agents... they may know of people who have bulls free for a few weeks while they do AI. We sold our surplus 2 year old jersey bulls at the start of the month, some are in the stock agents paddocks with his heifers until the farmer buying them needs them mid November

The bulls on our place went out on the 1st & 28 of the 2 year olds head to the dairy farms mid November then off to the works around xmas.... they are no kept any longer than that here as there are about 46 calves kept each year so no point in keeping them...especially jerseys that can get stroppy

they may request your cows are BVD & TB tested prior to the bulls arriving if they are to go elsewhere afterwards.

you could also see if they agents know of anyone who may graze your cows for a few weeks with theirs?
...grow your grass during this time & make hay or baleage for winter or to sell

And the usual questions of good fencing, yards and loading race come into it as well.

Your local rag should have ads in place for businesses that lease bulls out.

We used to try to borrow a bull for our 8 or 10 cows, and were successful a few times. And a few times we had disasters. Then we found a breeder of Red Devons and the crosses, and so bought these. We buy them as 1 year olds, so just old enough to do the job in November. We keep him for another November, during which time I assess how dangerous he is getting. If he is getting too friendly/stroppy/unafraid of me he gets sent on his OE in March after the second mating. If he is still behaving himself he gets another year. I usually get $1000 to $1400 at 30 months old, plus 2 sets of calves, for that $600 or so yearling.

you can also get the cows syncronised to the both come on together hopefully

we did embryo transfer work 2 years ago with the carroy over cows... 2 times a week we would get a mob of cows from the main mob...glue a scratchy heat pad to the cow & jab her then 2 days later I think it was & the follwoing 2 days we would bring them in & record any that had been rubbed...these rubbed ones would then have an embryo inserted in the next week. Cows cycles can be changed based on the stage they are at