What is an athletic bull?
"That phrase comes from a customer of ours. He's an old longtime customer. He's passed away now, giving him a hard time one time about 35 years ago that he needed to take better care of his bulls, joking around. After he got through the breeding season, he just looked at me and said, you've never seen a fat athlete, have you? I have always used that quote. I thought that was a very interesting quote. Bulls need to be developed like athletes. They don't need a lot of fat on them to empower feet and legs and semen production and everything the rest of their lives. That was a quote from Andy Olson and we just kind of stick by that."
So how do you develop your bulls then?
"We're on a higher up each ration. Generally, after we wean them, our bulls are on a two pounds per day gain. So that's quite a bit less than what many folks do developing their bulls. We don't want fat bulls."
Galen Fink, Fink Beef Genetics at Randolph, Kansas.
