Bull Turn In and Removal
Turn in Bulls
Probably the easiest and best way to create "group" breedings by natural service is to use the Turn in Bulls and Remove Bulls feature in CattleMax. The procedure would go like this:
Move the cows into a pasture. After moving the cows into the pasture, go to Pastures tab, and select the pasture in which the cows reside. When that pasture is opened, you will see the timeline for that particular pasture. You will want to click on the green circle with + to access the Add New Activity Menu and then you will want select Turn in Bulls.
After a bull or bulls have been Turned In to a pasture, all of the cows in the pasture prior to the Turn In bull action will have a natural service breeding record created for each bull with the specified turn-in date.
Note: It is important to note that the cows are already in the pasture before the bull(s) are turned in - no breeding record will be created for cows moved into the pasture after the bull. However, if a cow is added to that pasture later, you can manually start a breeding record for her. Also, take notice - today's date defaults to the turn-in date - you should correct that if needed.
Remove Bulls
When a bull is removed from the pasture through the Remove Bulls process, the breeding end date will be recorded for all those cows.
***Please note: If a cow is previously called Pregnant from a positive preg check and a bull is later turned in, a new active breeding will be added to her breeding tab/timeline. This is to show all exposures in case the pregnancy is lost or the preg check was accidentally incorrect.
Using a Composite Bull
When you turn a bull into a pasture, all of the cows in the pasture will have a breeding record created, with a current breeding status of Exposed. If you turn in 2 bulls each cow will have 2 breeding records created, one for each bull.
Some customers who turn multiple bulls into a pasture will create a "composite" bull in order to have only one breeding record per cow. The composite bull will have the IDs of the bulls as the ID of the composite bull or put the IDs in the Comments section of the composite bull’s record. Each of the cows will have only one breeding record and it will show the ID of the composite bull as the "exposed to" bull.
When a calf is born, the sire will be the composite bull, but users will be able to identify the bulls represented and change the sire to one of the actual bulls represented by the composite bull, if desired.
After the composite bull is removed from the pasture, set it's status to reference so it will no longer be included in the active herd count.
One drawback to this method is the active bulls will not have a movement history showing they were turned into the pasture. You can get around this by ‘Moving’ the bulls into the pasture individually or by using Group Update actions then ‘Moving’ them out when you pull the Composite bull. Since you have to use the Turn In Bulls feature in CattleMax to generate breeding records within a pasture, moving the bulls into the pasture will not create additional breeding records.
