WHAT IS A BULL WORTH? From Newsletter 146 - October 2025
with your vet on herd health protocol, and talk to a nutri- tionist about your winter feeding strategy? All of those im- pact how profitable you will be. I do want to bore you with a couple of quick illustrations. A bull will give you 100 calves in a lifetime (4 years x 25 calves) in a single season herd, and 200 if you run fall and spring both. What is the impact of a bull if you are retaining 10 daughters each year? The bull gives you 40 daughters. It is not a stretch to say one bred heifer is worth $100 more than the next. Heifer sales across the state will surely show that leading into spring calving. Just on the value of the bred heifer, one bull can easily be worth $4,000 more than the next if you are using him right. Accounting for those that fall out of the herd early, a bred heifer would average 5 calves in her lifetime. That is 200 calves out of daughters by your bull. We offer many bulls in a year that are $50 more profitable per calf than the average Angus bull based on economic selection indexes. That is $10,000. Double those two examples if you run both fall and spring. Keep in mind that those examples illustrate the difference in the value of bull A versus bull B and not the price for the bull. A bull is an investment whose rate of return depends on how you use him. That is my one-sentence answer, which I think is much better than the standard “Well, a bull is half your calves.”
What is a bull worth? While the standard canned answer is always, “Well, a bull is half your calves,” I hate that re- sponse. A bull’s value lies in the value you place on your cow herd and the management practices you employ. I am not talking about the monetary value to you. The monetary value of a bull I sold in our fall sale was $100 more than the other guy was willing to spend on that given bull on that given day. Bulls I sell privately, we attempt to establish a similar equilibrium when there is no contending bidder. The value of the bull is the value he brings you. That isn’t necessarily the price. The more best management practices you implement, the more a bull is worth to your operation. If you are calving 365 and not retaining heifers, you need a cow freshener that won’t kill cows with a birthweight or kill you when handling them. The vast amount of inefficiencies in your herd makes a good bull “worth” little more than pound price plus a semen check to you. Now, if that is your level of management, you may want a better bull and actual- ly invest in one, but he won’t make you any more money. Every concept in the following words is null if you are not in a structured calving season. Much like how genetics are expressed in the environment they are given, the profitabil- ity of the genetics is expressed based on the level of man- agement of your cow herd. Whether you are calving in a tight calving season, backgrounding your calves, retaining heifers, retaining ownership, or direct marketing all impact the potential profitability of your bull. Do you engage in rotational grazing, have a good mineral program, consult
47 TH “FIRST CHOICE” BULL SALE | SMITHS GROVE, KY | MARCH 30, 2026 4
Made with FlippingBook - Share PDF online