The "Cause" of Heifer vs Bull Calf Crops

We’re only about 40% through our calving season but so far we’re having one of those heifer years that anybody attempting to raise show steers has.  There are people worse off than us in that regard but what hurts us the most is that of the good ones, the heifer ratio is significantly higher than the 65% of the rest of the crop so far.

Any time this subject comes up, the subject of how the sex of a calf happens does as well.

What did we do wrong?

Was it the bull?

Was it the time of day?

Forget that silliness.

I’ve talked about this before but after running Showcattle.com for over ten years now, I will never in my life believe anything short of a gargantuan university study regarding any of these old farmers tales.

It’s pretty basic psychology.  You are naturally prone to think something you do has control over the sex of a calf just like you’re naturally prone to think your actions influence everything.  You can’t see the actual sperm contacting the actual egg so your mind jumps to conclusions that you had some sort of influence on the sex of the calf.

For example, here’s the actual VB code used to generate the sex of a calf on Showcattle.com…

That’s it.

All it does is generate a random number between 0.00000 and 1.00000 and then assign the sex of the virtual calf to “bull” if it’s under 0.50000 and “heifer” if it’s over that number.

No fancy time of day or heat cycle type algorithm that considers whether the moon is high.  No first year bull bias toward heifers.  No “put the ai gun in this far for a heifer and that far for a bull”.

Nope, just a purely random 50/50 shot at a bull or heifer.

But do you think that prevented people from coming up with b.s. theories on what impact all of that had on the sex ratio of their calf crops?  Not one bit.

It happened with such regularity that at one time I just let the stories go because I couldn't control them.

After getting fed up with it, I’ve gone so far as to ban people and send their money back because they kept misleading other users on the site about how the sex algorithm works.

You are doing the same thing as those guys when you see a heavy bull or heifer concentration in your calves and jump to the conclusion that buying a bacon and egg taco the morning you put the CIDRs in is what caused it. 

But it happens in real life ALL THE TIME as well.  I don’t even waste time arguing that in person, I just nod and say “yep, lots of folks have those theories”. 

Do you want to influence the sex ratio of your calf crop?  Buy sexed semen.

Otherwise, pray.

If that’s not your style, go buy some of that Heifer Plus snake oil that was going around half a decade ago while you wonder why so few of your cows stuck to their AI service.