Weighing Bulls

The weather has been brilliant the last few days with largely clear blue skies and warm days, although we have started each day with a frost.  If soil temperatures aren't too low, this should lead into good pasture growth rates.

Yesterday one of our tasks were to weigh a small mob of Friesian Bulls.  They arrived on the property 1st July at 372 kg average and have been on a rotation since then on 2-3 day shifts.  Below are the bulls ... last day in break.  They were shifted this morning.

We had to bring the bulls home via the road.  We have one bike in front (that was me taking the photos) and one behind (my husband), as per the photo below. 

Once at home we run them into the yards, up the race, onto the scales and record their eartag number and weight.  We use Tru-test equipment to do this.  These animals do not have EID (electronic identification) but many of the others we weigh do and in the future it will become compulsory.  We find the EID much easier as we like to weigh individual animals and record their performance as opposed to a mob.  The EID means that with the use of a wand (Gallagher) that we can record numbers without having to read a tag mannually which can often be covered in mud, hidden inside a fluffy ear or just unable to read it.

The end result was that the bulls weighed average of 403.5 kg, which equates to 0.63 kg/hd/day for 50 days.  We had developed a grazing plan (pre and post grazing levels), estimated weight gain and feed demand on a daily basis and the weight predicted and actual was within 1 kg, so this gives us confidence in our planning.

Lamb Update:  both Buttons and Strawberry are doing fine.  Buttons is on her maintenance feeds of 300 mls x 4/day, whilst Strawberry is struggling through 200 mls x 4/day but she is only half the size of Buttons.  They are getting plenty of interactive play time, and spending lots of time sunning themselves in this nice weather.