We usually retain 3-5 bulls a year for sale and may keep 1 of the bunch for ourselves and sell the rest but when we evaluate them the #1 criteria is would we use that bull in our own program. There are years we may have a yearling bull that comes out of pasture in rough shape due to a really hot and dry summer but he usually gets at least 8 months of downtime to recover as we typically only have the bull out from May 20ish till about Aug 15th in order to keep our calving season to start late Feb with AI calves and ideally like to be done by May 1st with natural but leave a bit of a safety net leaving the bull out through early August. We try to AI a group of females in advance of turning the bull out so the years we've broken in an new bull we're hoping we had a high conception rate with our AI program so the bull isn't too busy the 3 weeks following our timed/synched AI. We've probably not followed the 1 female per month by the book all the time ourselves.
While you can probably get away with putting a yearling on 20-25 head the rule of thumb should be 1 female per month of age so if you turn him out at 15 months of age then 15 females is more ideal not only for his development but it also increases your odds of a tighter calving window without any open females. Another thing you see some guys do is overwork a yearling bull too. Unfortunately the saying "fat sells" is true as there are guys who say they don't like fat bulls but are the same ones bidding on the fattest bulls on a sale because the extra fat makes them look bigger than they really are.
Too much fat can decrease fertility and once that fat melts off there is no hiding what he is really made of. Ditto the comments about not pushing bulls too hard on feed.
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