Buying a Bull: How to Judge, Price and Keep One Safely

Buying a bull is the biggest single decision most cattle farmers make in a year. His calves carry his stamp for a long time, he costs real money, and unlike a bad batch of feed you cannot quietly get rid of the mistake next week. On top of that, he is the one animal on the place that can seriously hurt you.

Judging one is hard too. You are usually looking at a young animal in a strange pen, holding a catalogue full of numbers, standing next to a seller who wants a sale. And if you have been scrolling listings online, you may have landed on a "bull for sale in Ghana" advert and wondered how much of it applies to your operation here in the United States. Some of it travels fine — a bull is a bull, and the checks you make in the flesh work anywhere. The rest, from paperwork to price, is local. Where that is the case, this post will tell you who to ask instead of handing you a number that does not fit your farm.

First, be sure what you are looking at

A bull is an intact — not castrated — adult male of Bos taurus. The female is a cow. A castrated male is a steer, an ox or a bullock, and which of those words a person uses varies a lot with area and dialect. "Bull" is also used for the males of bison, yaks, water buffalo and plenty of other large animals, so read a listing title properly before you get your hopes up.

What a bull looks like in the flesh

• Much more muscular than a cow, with thicker bones and larger feet.
• A very muscular neck, and a large, bony head with protective ridges over the eyes — built for fighting over herd dominance.
• Shorter hair over the body, but often a "mane" of curlier, woolly hair on the neck and head.
• Most of the time, a hump on the shoulders.
• Usually about the same height as your cows, or a little taller, but often far heavier.

Castrated males are built much more like females, with similar horn shape. But a steer allowed to reach maturity can end up considerably taller than either bulls or cows, with heavily muscled shoulders and neck. So height and bulk on their own do not prove what you are buying.

Horns tell you about breed, not sex

It is not true that bulls have horns and cows do not. Horns depend on the breed — and in horned breeds, on whether they were disbudded. Cattle that are naturally hornless are called polled, or muleys. Where cattle do carry horns, a bull's tend to be thicker and somewhat shorter than a cow's, and in many breeds they curve outwards in a flat arc rather than rising in a lyre shape.

Judging a bull before you pay

The fertility check you can do with a tape measure

A bull that cannot get cows in calf is an expensive pet. Bulls become fertile around seven months of age, and fertility is closely related to testicle size. That gives you one simple, honest test: scrotal circumference.

• A young bull is likely to be fertile once his scrotal circumference reaches 28 centimetres (11 in).
• A fully adult bull's may be over 40 centimetres (16 in).

Bulls are also occasionally affected by a condition known as "corkscrew penis". For reference, the penis of a mature bull is about 3–4 cm (1+1/4–1+1/2 inches) in diameter and 80–100 cm (30–40 inches) long. That is not something to be examining yourself in a sale pen — it is a vet's job.

What other checks are usual or worth paying for before a sale varies from place to place and vet to vet. Call a vet you trust near you and ask what they would want done before you hand over money.

What the sale catalogue numbers mean

Frame score describes the skeletal size of a bull. It is calculated from hip height and age, and it is used to predict mature cattle size and to help select beef bulls. In sale catalogues it is frequently printed alongside weight and other performance data such as estimated breed value.

Two things worth keeping in mind. First, how much weight to put on any one figure — and exactly how the breed value numbers on that page were worked out — is something to have the seller or your own adviser explain to you, because the detail differs from sale to sale. Second, no number in a catalogue tells you about temperament. For that you have to watch the animal and ask about him.

Entire or castrated? The trade-off in plain terms

Only a few bulls are ever needed for breeding. The vast majority of male cattle are castrated and slaughtered for meat before the age of three years — the exceptions being animals kept, castrated, as work oxen for haulage, or used as guard animals.

Most beef animals are castrated as calves for two practical reasons: it reduces aggressive behaviour, and it prevents unwanted mating. But some farmers go the other way and rear males uncastrated as bull beef. A bull is typically ready for slaughter one or two months sooner than a castrated male or a female, and produces proportionately more and leaner muscle.

So some castrate for an easier, safer life, and others keep males entire for the quicker, leaner carcass. Either way, if you castrate, do it properly and do it on time. Improper or late castration produces what is called a coarse steer — known as a stag in Australia, Canada and New Zealand — and an incompletely castrated male is called a rig or a ridgling in some countries. Neither is a label you want attached to an animal you are trying to sell.

What price data can and cannot tell you

Be careful here, because it is easy to grab the wrong number. The price records we hold for the United States are commodity prices in USD per tonne. They are not per-head prices, not lot prices and not auction prices, so they cannot tell you what a bull sells for. What they do show is the value of what his calves eventually become.

• Cattle meat: average USD3448 per tonne, from a low of USD2425 per tonne to a high of USD4387 per tonne, across 49 rows, most recent 2025-01-31.
• Turkey meat: average USD1860 per tonne, range USD1038–USD2800.
• Chicken meat: average USD1581 per tonne, range USD919–USD2357.
• Pig meat: average USD1451 per tonne, range USD1107–USD1892.
• Cow milk: average USD499 per tonne, range USD381 to USD600, across 38 rows, most recent 2025-01-31.

Cattle meat carries the highest average of the meats in that United States set, comfortably above turkey, chicken and pig meat. For a wider view, hen eggs average USD3363 per tonne over 38 rows with a very wide range of USD1374 to USD8789, and honey averages USD5947 per tonne, though on only 4 rows (USD5600–USD6636, most recent 2024-12-31). Altogether we hold 254 rows for the United States, with sample and manually entered rows left out.

Read the spread, not just the average. Cattle meat has ranged from USD2425 to USD4387 per tonne. A bull bought when the market is at the top still has to earn his keep when it is at the bottom. For what a live bull actually costs near you, you need a nearby dealer, a sale report, or a farmer who has just bought one — that figure is local and it moves.

Keeping a bull safely is the part people skimp on

An adult bull weighs between 500 and 1,000 kg (1,100 and 2,200 lb). Most bulls are capable of aggressive behaviour and need careful handling, for your safety and for the safety of your other animals.

Breed matters, but not as neatly as people hope. Beef breeds are somewhat less aggressive than dairy breeds. Even so, some beef breeds — the Spanish Fighting Bull and related animals — are known for aggressive tendencies that selective breeding has deliberately encouraged. Dairy breed bulls are particularly dangerous and unpredictable, and the hazards of bull handling are a significant cause of injury and death for dairy farmers in some parts of the United States. In Canada, an estimated 42% of all livestock-related fatalities are put down to bull attacks.

The moment that keeps coming up is an ordinary one: moving a bull in and out of his pen to cover cows. That is where the handler is badly exposed. Being trampled, jammed against a wall or gored by a bull has been among the most frequent causes of death.

Two habits worth building

• Never trust a quiet day. Most bulls are capable of aggression, so treat every move in and out of the pen as the dangerous part of the job, every time.
• Forget the red rag. The idea that red angers a bull is a myth. Like most mammals, cattle are red–green colour blind. In bull-fighting it is the movement of the matador's cape that provokes the animal, not the colour. Your shirt is not the risk — sudden movement and standing in the wrong place are.

Pens, gates, fencing and a way out are worth sorting before the bull arrives rather than after. What that needs to look like depends on your ground, your stock and how you work alone or with help, so have an experienced neighbour or your vet walk it with you.

If the bull you have found is in another country

A listing for a bull for sale in Ghana, or anywhere else overseas, raises a completely different set of questions from a bull two counties away. Health testing, certificates, quarantine, permits and who may move what across a border are all set by rule, they differ by country, and they change. That is not something to guess at from an advert. Before you spend anything on an animal from abroad, talk to your vet and to the office that handles livestock imports where you are, and get the requirements in writing.

Two smaller things travel badly as well. Price is one: what a bull is worth in one market tells you very little about another, so treat any figure you see from overseas as local to that place. Language is the other. "Steer", "ox" and "bullock" all mean a castrated male, but usage shifts with area and dialect. "Stag" is Australian, Canadian and New Zealand usage for a coarse steer, and "micky" is Australian for a wild, young, unmarked bull — you would not expect either in a US sale ring. If a listing uses a word you do not use, ask the seller plainly what he means by it before you bid.

Before you hand over the money

Keep it simple. Confirm the animal is what the listing says he is, using the build, the neck and head, and the horns as breed information rather than proof of sex. Put a tape around the scrotum and check it against 28 centimetres (11 in) for a young bull, or over 40 centimetres (16 in) for a fully mature one. Read the frame score, weight and performance figures, then ask the seller to explain anything you cannot follow. Decide up front whether this male is a breeding bull or bull beef, because that changes what you are willing to pay for. And plan the pen, the gates and the moving-day routine before he is standing in your yard.

Anything the numbers cannot answer — a live price near you, what tests are worth doing, what paperwork applies — comes from a nearby vet, a dealer you trust, or the relevant office in your area. Ask them before you buy, not after. A good bull is worth the trouble of buying carefully, and a dangerous one is far cheaper to walk away from.