The first thing you think about when you hear somebody say Estrus Sync, is probably something about hormones and cycles and medical jargon you don't really understand. You might also think about it being expensive, by the end of this, hopefully you are at least willing to look at the possibility of use in your herd.
The funny thing is in the beef business, is that most people don't AI to begin with, the dairy farmers, it's estimated that over 85% of the breeding done is AI,  now when you start talking beefalo specifically, a lot of people AI due to the limited availability of beefalo bulls. So the question becomes  how do you best utilize what semen you have? With AI, heat detection is the biggest problem, because not everybody has several hours a day to watch their cattle for weeks on end. With the best AI tech, and good heat detection, a 65% AI . How can you decrease your breeding seasons or rather, condense your calving season? Estrus Sync, there are many different protocols out there, and I'd suggest talking to your veterinarian as to which they would recommend, because some might work well for you, others might not. 
Here are some of the advantages to Estrus Sync

• Reduced time and labor
• Increased efficiency of semen use
• More condensed calving

Basically, the concept is to force the cows to ovulate and with one of three methods, to breed them. Either straight heat detection, or heat detection, and then time AI any that weren't caught in heat, or to just time AI. Say you have 100 heifers, with a good protocol and good heat detection, you should be able to catch about 85% in heat, and with a 65% AI success rate, you would have about 55 of those heifers successfully bred. That is over half of the herd, within a time span of maybe 2 weeks. and all bred within about a 3 day time-span. Maybe it would be worth looking into for use in your herd!

My last comment, is please do not attempt to use estrus sync on cows that are less than 50 days post-calving, because you will have a very low success rate, and it will cost you money unnecessarily. 

Well, we have 5 calves so far out of Magnum Gold, 2 bulls and 3 heifers. They are fast growers! that's for sure. We are trying to get weening weights and an estimated weight gain. I'll be updating the website with some pictures and numbers as soon as I get some more pictures and some numbers to work with. 

On a sad note, we have lost one of our great bulls to an unknown disease while on a client's farm. Valiant was a great bull, and we were sad to lose him. So he is now unavailable and we do not have any semen from him.  

On another note, we are going to be butchering two of our steers and will be evaluating the meet for ourselves, comparing both our black steers and some of our colored steers to see if there is any appreciable difference in the meet quality. 

Have a GREAT thanksgiving!
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Last year we came up with a crazy idea after finding some 3/4 Bison bull Semen from Magnum Gold. What better way to get registered 3/8 Calves than breed our cows to a 3/4 Bull. So we decided to go ahead and try it, in the process of buying the semen, we found out there were only 30 odd straws left so we went ahead and decided to purchase the last remaining straws of Magnum Gold. There are of course risks to breeding cows to such a high percentage bull, there are potential issues during pregnancy and possible infertility of the offspring.  

Some of the risks include (taken from http://www.flightpathfarms.com/beefalo-library/utilizing-high-percentage-bison-hybrids-in-your-breeding-program/ , by Paul Butler)

• "Lower conception rates
• Higher levels of early embryonic loss. This is characterized by cows that conceive, miss one to four heat cycles, then show heat again. Higher levels of later-term abortions (often seen around the 5 th or 6 th month of pregnancy). 
• Possible development of polyhydrominos condition. Commonly called “hydrops”, this is basically a partial rejection of the fetus by the mother, resulting in excess buildup of amniotic fluid in the uterus. This condition can range from mild to severe. In severe cases, the result can be the loss of both the fetus and the cow. 
• Possible development of a type of protein poisoning. Here again, this is the result of a genetic disparity between the fetus and its mother. This condition usually results in one of three scenarios: 1. The cow aborts the fetus. 2. The cow aborts the fetus and subsequently dies (usually a few days after the abortion). 3. The cow dies.
•  Possible severe calving problems. Sometimes a mating results in extreme levels of hybrid vigor in the unborn calf. The calf can become very large before the cow is signaled to give birth. This can happen even with normal gestation lengths. 
• Possible non-viable calves. These are calves which are stillborn or which seem very weak when they are born. These very weak calves almost never survive. 
• Problems with the cows rebreeding after delivering a calf from this type of mating. 
• Problems with male fertility in the offspring of a high-percentage bison hybrid mating. Many times, the bull calves that do result from breeding a 75% bison bull to domestic cows never develop fertility."
  

In spite of these many risks, we decided we'd go ahead and try it! so far we have 3 calves from Magnum Gold on the ground! All three are heifers and are beautiful. We may have had a few that had embryonic loss. but all in all, we have had good success thus far with breeding to a high percentage Bison bull!