Farm Insurance: Should You Insure Your Bull?

15 March 2019
 Categories: Insurance, Blog

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While your general farm insurance policy gives you some livestock coverage, this has its restrictions. Your livestock may just have general coverage for injury or death. This may not give you complete protection.

Problem is, some of your animals are more valuable than others. For example, your bull is the breeding pivot of your herd. It has a higher financial value and is more of an asset than the rest of your cattle.

To protect this asset, it may be worth insuring your bull separately. How does this work and what are the benefits?

What Does Bull Insurance Cover?

If you insure your bull on an individual policy, then you get insurance protection for a wider range of potential problems. The coverage you get varies depending on the insurance company you choose; however, policies usually cover some or all of the following:

  • The death of the bull in an accident, like a fire.
  • The death of the bull from an illness or disease.
  • The bull becoming impotent through illness or accident.

Some policies just cover the basics here, such as accidental or disease-related death; others allow you to add on loss-of-use protection to cover problems like impotency as well. The more issues you cover, the more the policy will cost.

Do You Need Bull Insurance?

You can include your bull in your general livestock coverage; however, this means that you may not get back its full value if it dies. Your policy may have an individual dollar limit per animal or an overall livestock limit. These amounts may not meet the costs of replacing your bull, leaving you with out-of-pocket expenses.

Also, the loss of a bull through death isn't the only issue you need to think about. If you breed your own herd from the bull, then you rely on it to impregnate your cows.

If the bull becomes impotent and can't do this for you, then you have to write the animal off as a loss, as it loses its commercial value for your business. As well as preventing you from breeding from your own cows, this may affect any related income you get, say if you hire the bull out to stud.

If you insure your bull separately, then you stand a better chance of recouping your losses if the bull dies or can't work. To find out more about how this coverage works, talk to your insurance company for farm and business insurance.