How's your rain?

[SADIE]

Now time from a large animal vet's perspective:

Poor bull power during the breeding season showed up every late summer and early fall. Witnessed many sad & unhappy producers at that time of year.

Accidents will always happen, Broken leg, stifle, shoulder, lacerated penis, broken penis, lightning, visiting neighbors, sudden deaths.

The worst cases were in those herds that showed up with high percentage of opens and late pregnancies.

Weak breeding bulls----with testicles undersized were the most frequent.

Allfarmer you can check those 4 "good bulls yourself" if you haven't turned them out yet.

2 years olds--strive for 38cms minimum.
tecture of those testicles "hard and firm" not soft and spongy.

The scrotal circum measurement makes up 40% of the breeding score. It is a good start that a producer can do on his own to evaluate a satisfactory breeding animal.

[grassfarmer]

Did you ever semen test any longhorns Sadie?

[SADIE]

Yes I did. Longhorn bulls, Limousin bulls and at one time Blonde D Aquataine bulls fit into a catagory all of their own.

I remember on the Longhorns ---treat them like a bison. They got to be pushed up tight with a pole right behind. They are kickers.

Smaller measured nuts---those sometimes never got measured but fertile samples on ejaculation.

I posted the old data that is on all THERIOGENIOLOGY FORMS FOR SEMEN TESTING.

&lt;a href=&quot;http://s1138.photobucket.com/albums/n523/kphaber/?action=view&amp;amp;current=img405.jpg&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;<img src="http://i1138.photobucket.com/albums/n523/kphaber/img405.jpg"/>&lt;/a&gt;

[T.N.T.]

I'm sick of it!!! All it ever does is rain,and it is raining again now,and all we had to do was take the balers out of the qounset this time.

[gcreekrch]

I would gladly take a bit of rain, we are at 1 1/4" since May 1. Most of that in the last week. Oats & peas were seeded last Friday. Just enough moisture to get them started but the last 2 days of sun and wind is drying things up fast.

Forecast is rain on Saturday.

[grassfarmer]

We are at 3.5 in June, 6.5 since April 1st and will take
as much more as we can get. I think when the heat
sets in July/August things are going to dry up pretty
quick in a lot of Alberta.
I'm greedy when it comes to moisture, I'd rather have
excess than shortage every time.

[T.N.T.]

We had 37 inchs in 2010,44 inchs last year,and thank god it was dry in april and we got nothing,and since may 1st 2012 we have had 16 inchs.Is that enough rain for you grassfarmer,or should it keep on raining???Do you consider that a excess???

[kato]

Where about are you? We haven't been keeping such good track of the rain, but I do know we had 2 1/2 inches in the last week. We're not drowning out yet, but our land rolls, so the low spots all around are starting to go under water.

Flood warnings are up again in Manitoba, which is really off the wall at this time of year. And I don't even want to think about what mosquitoes are lurking around waiting to attack...

[grassfarmer]

TNT, I wouldn't count that as excessive by any means.
I grew up in a 56 inch annual precip. area, a relatively
dry area of Scotland. Further up the west coast there
were 120-130 inch rainfall areas. A benefit you have
in Canada is that much of the precip comes during
the growing season - when most of your precip is
falling during the winter/non-growth period and you
can still get growing season droughts I think you get
the worst of both worlds. Growing grass on my sandy
soil I'd be quite happy with 30 inches of growing
season precip. Instead we get a long term annual
average of around 26 inches which is quite a bit by
AB standards. Like I say I'm greedy when it comes to
precipitation.

[T.N.T.]

Were in central sask,the eastern side and se sask is even worse.