Half a beef

[Southside]

I actually strive for that yellow tinted fat, it's a sign of good chlorophyll intake and CLA development. Personally I find it does impact the taste in a positive way. 

[Raider Bill]

Publix has Rib Roasts on sale for 5.99 lb. In their Christmas ad.
I'll be turning them into steaks.  

Hard to beat that price which is down from $6.99 last year.
As always we will be picking up several of those roasts to be cut into steaks and vacuum bagged.

[mike_belben]

I ask everyone i know with cattle experience and have gotten a consensus that a jersey, holstein or hereford cross will make an excellent family meat animal, just won't grow as fast which is fine since i will have to sell atleast half of it.  I'm told to go with a pair but really don't want to at first in case its too much to handle, some weeks its hard to feed ourselves!  i understand they are social and one cow can get basically depressed.  my plan was a bottle calf and 2 or 3 piglets on forage.  about 3 acres of woods being slowly converted to savannah pasture. planted in proteins and rotated frequently is what I'm thinking.

thoughts?  bad idea?  pitfalls?  


i can buy in dry hay or feed but would try to minimize that.  we just ate kale last night that i harvested yesterday after 2 days below freezing.  my food plot is still growing minus the chicory.  will continue to experiment with various plantings to see what other feeds will go through winter.  i am okay with animals not putting on winter weight as long as they live.   well.. pigs would go down in the fall but I'm guessing a dairy breed is gonna need 2 seasons to hit a decent slaughter weight.  again.. bad idea?

[mike_belben]

sidenote.  i think i recently mentioned here that the co-op everyone i know goes to about an hour away had bulk 14% feed at $2.15 a ton which was ridiculous but i asked the girl on the phone 3x and even spoke out the decimal point.  she assured me it was $2.15 a ton.  i got to thinking that can't be possible and called to speak to someone else.  $215 a ton.  $238 for pelletized.  much more sense.  


anyways, how does that price compare to what you guys are seeing, and would you say that feeds are in a historic high low or in-between?   how much feed per head per day ?  

4x5 round bales of dry hay are $30ish.  

[Southside]

My $0.02 worth, this will probably get long so I am going to try to organize it in a fashion that you can use to draw a conclusion.

First why do you want to raise the beef?  If it's to save money then you have to eliminate buying inputs (feed) - there is no way to beat the grocery store price when you have to purchase animal feed and convert it to an edible product.  Economy of scale has you whooped by the commodity crowd, they are efficient, established, and most importantly subsidized.  Based on what you said we need to eliminate purchased inputs - not a problem, just need to adjust so you grow your own feed, which means not feeding in the winter.  Winter is expensive, your $30 ish dollar bale of hay will not result in $30 ish dollars worth of feed.  If it was left out in the open, or subjected to ground moisture then you can easily loose 30%-40% of the bale to rot.  Animal waste is usually another 10% under good circumstances - so that bale actually costs you in the neighborhood of $45.  Lets assume that bale weighs 700 lbs, you are now paying $128 per ton for likely barely maintenance quality feed that might actually cause your animal to loose weight.  Add in mud, soil pugging, destroying the grass you have established, pneumonia, ice storms and yea - winter is expensive, don't carry over your family beef.  Plan to harvest in the late fall.  If you put your effort into having good feed in front of your beef during every day of the growing season you should be able to have a 400 lb live weight animal by the time the grass goes dormant and is gone for the year.  Even in the worst case that will yield you 100 lbs of tender boneless beef.  Yes the steaks and roasts will be small - but so what - since we have minimized expenses you can raise two or three during the growing season on the ground you have and be very economical about it.  That takes care of the single animal issue too.  300 lbs of boneless beef is about what I will get off of each of those two finished steers that went this week FYI, gives you 6 lbs of meat per week all year this way - and you didn't have to buy hay or grain.  

Ok - are you doing this to have better or healthier food for your family?  I am willing to bet that $215 feed is basically GMO corn and roasted soybeans with some added minerals, feed that to your home grown beef and you basically have expensive grocery store beef, really no difference.  The GMO issue is for you to decide on - just pointing out that there is no discernible difference here.  Now if they put in some "Rumensin" mixed into that feed - assuming that is still being done (to promote gain they will say) - then forget about having a "healthier" home grown beef in my opinion.  Maybe that's not done any more - it's been a while since I hung around the commodity crowd so I really don't know.  

How to start.  Assuming these are healthy calves that got good colostrum.  First - I really dread having bottle babies.  We keep our dairy calves with the mommas - for at least 60 days, and share milk them, you could get away with less, but I can't tell you how much easier it is this way.  Milk replacer is expensive and a royal pain to deal with.  It clumps, it bumps, it sticks, it spoils, it causes scours - did I mention that it's expensive?  

If you are going to bottle feed then feed raw milk.  There has to be a homesteading family or dairy that you can make a deal with and get raw milk in trade to feed a couple of calves.  Even if it's withdrawl milk - it's still better than the powder.  

So far these obstacles are relatively easy to overcome.  Cattle socialization is so much more than just companionship.  There is a teaching and learning that goes on and is downright amazing to observe.  Without a momma cow to show the calves what to eat you are going to have to teach your calf that maple buds, poplar leaves, and poison ivy growing in your savanna is actually all good food.  You want them to love Doc Weed, honeysuckle, and about every other green plant that is in front of them.  It can be done, there are actually folks out there who charge a pretty penny to teach cattle how to eat weeds and they pass it onto their off spring - well Mike - you will be Big Momma!!  

So yes I think you can achieve what you desire, just evaluate what you can do and work within those parameters.   

[mike_belben]

Wow great info.  


Yes, there is a menonnite dairy about 10 mins away that i could probably do some trading with somehow or just purchase.  They get a mint for that glass bottle milk tho.


So my reasons arent "save money" but instead "have meat."  We dont buy meat at all.  Either i shoot it, its given to me as a gift or for helping butcher.. Or we dont have it.  So its more a case of if i grow it i will have it and having real things, not paper money, is a stability i insist upon.  


Gmo this or that.. Not too concerned.  I will probably die from splenda poisoning. Cost is more important to me than GMO. My back 3 or 4 acres grows greener the more i extract wood.  That cow should convert the wasted green to red meat value.  Make the land feed you.    



The idea of not overwintering was always my original plan but i kept getting shot down on it by my peers, saying youll get a pile of bone with no meat.  I figured theres gonna be plenty meat in a year old cow and im butchering myself so why learn on one that cost me twice as much to grow and mess up?  so i am glad to hear you say that.  100lbs of steak would take 2 years for us to eat.  I gotta wash all these dishes by hand..  Let them eat sandwich!  Paper plates ftw.


What does a weened calf typically weigh and what breed and gender would you go for?  What cross breeding is not allowed?


A lot of this is also to teach my kids more than just scavenging, being cheap and machinery.  Im an industrial dad raising kids in a 4H world.  Theyre also pretty lazy, daughter especially.. Shes high function autistic.  Maybe the chore she needs. 

[Southside]

Yes your yield ratio from live weight to finished will be lower than what a feedlot finished animal will be, but so what?  Like you said, this is for you and your family, you are not trying to sell the beef in a store and compete with others who do and have all the costs associated with that.  

So my dairy calves will wean at 150-200 lbs, I try for a 50 ish pound birth weight.  I don't weigh them, as long as they are eating good and are in great body condition by 60-90 days then they are done.  I go more by how much other forage the calf is eating than number of days.  By the end the calf is only with the momma for a few hours a day anyway and before then they have usually established their own groups that spend most of the day with a single cow or a "baby sitter" heifer so it's pretty apparent they don't need the milk.  Now a 9 month old on the momma will go 500 lbs, and that's on a 1000 lb cow so they know how to grow 'em if you know what I mean.  

Jerseys get fat just looking at grass.  The Angus breeding folks have done a great job of advertising their way to the top, but that has come with a price, massive cows.  Have a neighbor that was showing me his scale slips one day and he had cows that were 1,700 lbs.  Of course he got something like $0.50 per lb for those so what is the point?  I want my beef mommas to look like a 55 gallon drum on toothpicks.  You can't eat bone, so tall, long legs don't do it for me.  Also, I want them to be short in the back, not these long, stretched out looking things - those have a lot more frame to keep maintained so they need more feed just to stay alive.  Basically low lines is what I am after, without paying for the name.  The good news is the frame size I prefer is the size the feed lots least prefer so when buying them the price is in my favor.  Holsteins are another one that have way too much frame and mature late in the game.  The Fresians that Ian mentions are a much better way to get more milk into a cross.  Holsteins just don't do as well on grass as the others.  Now if it's a 1/3 mix or less than that seems to be OK, but get to 50/50 and the bone / frame growth slows things way down.  

For what you are doing a heifer would be the one to raise.  Steers are the slowest class to finish on grass, bulls are a pain in the you know what.  Heifers fill the niche nicely and will still be focused on growing flesh at the ages we are talking about and not reaching sexual maturity and putting energy into that .  

So if I had the luxury of choice I would look for a small framed Angus, likely a first calf heifer, that was bred to a Jersey bull and hope for a heifer calf or even a Freemartin.  One the same line I would take  the same heifer calf from a Jersey momma bred to an Angus bull.  I would stay away from the $200 Craigslist weaned Holstein steers that guys try to sell, that's the pile of bones your buddies are warning you about.       

[mike_belben]

Thanks for taking the time to share all that.  Im glad its typed out cuz id never remember it all otherwise!

No thoughts on herefords?


What about fermenting feeds, silage haylage etc?


Gonna store this link here ive been reading articles from. 

Harvest & Storage ? Team Forage

[Southside]

I like Herefords, had some years back and would get more tomorrow without hesitation.  Honestly I am not a big fan of black hide cows in the south due to heat stress, confession is that I have too much black in my own herd but am breeding it out.  Hojo's (Holstein / Jersey cross) almost always end up with black on them, so I am mixing in Ayrshire to get some white hide in there.  Three way crosses are great - but get complicated when trying to keep the desirable traits in line.    

I guess I said Angus because you mentioned they were all over the place there, so I should modify my suggestion to a small framed beef x Jersey cross.  Hereford, South Poll, Simmental, even a Dexter or Shorthorn will get you what you are looking for.  Just stay away from the monster frames, the abattoirs love them because it makes them more money per knife cut, but at the expense of your production.  

Same concept of me putting 20" logs on the 70 - easier and faster for me to make money vs a 12" log, but the landowner had to tie up that land for twice as long - if not longer- to grow that 20" log for me, yet I don't pay more per BF for it....  Just saying.    

As far as fermented feed - be it sileage or baleage - best stored forage you can have.  Not hard to produce, but you have to get it right.  I have not put up corn sileage since the '80s, it was all in a pit then, never filled a stave or Harvestor personally, so I can't give you anything of value there.  But we do put up baleage.  I like it, like it a lot.  Aim for 55% moisture content and its like the cows are on spring grass - which it basically is.  If you can get quality baleage I would take that over dry hay any day.  You still need some dry hay to keep the cows DM intake in line but the good thing also is that the issues surrounding K31 are a lot less likely to be present in baleage since you can't make quality baleage by the time the seed heads are on the Fescue.   

Yea - I have a pile of big marshmallows sitting around the farm.  

[mike_belben]

Black cows definitely dominate this landscape.  


You lost me on "stave" and i dont know what DM stands for. 


I got to thinking this morning.  My front lawn has to get seeded soon, its raw dirt that im letting settle from a large stump removal.  I also mow quite a bit of road frontage on both sides of the street.  This all grows like wildfire from full sun and constant watering from drainage ditching.  I mow it with a bagger into a wheelbarrow and make it into garden compost with sawdust.  Takes 3 barrows sawdust for 1 of grass and i cant saw enough when the grass is growing.  



Why dont i just seed a hay variety and put this in 6 or 10 mil contractor bags, aired out, tied good and inside a shed to block light?  Or in 55g drums with a plywood circle lid and blocks until its really full and compressed?  I have vacuum pumps, could easily draw a vacuum to stop the composting process.  I understand the jist of silage but have no direct experience. 

[Southside]

Stave silos are the old stone ones with the metal top.  DM = Dry Matter, or Dry Matter Intake, it's the measure of food intake a cow needs and can do.  Dry grass has a higher DM content as a % than April pasture which at times is mostly water and can cause cows to loose weight - think lettuce.  

Sileage is about getting the oxygen out and having tight, compressed, packaging.  Baleage balers make a very dense bale to keep from trapping oxygen and to get it right you need to wrap the bale within 2 hours at most of dropping it out of the baler.  So in theory if your bag was full, compressed, and had no oxygen it should be able to make baleage, in theory.  Might do just as well to feed the cow the fresh clippings and give the pasture a bit of relief so it can grow more.  

[Tacotodd]

I've heard that fresh clippings, if left to sit at all and "ferment, for lack of knowledge" is poisonous to horses. Isn't it bad for cattle as well?

[mike_belben]

Horses cant handle moldy hay.  


Great pet.  Feed it the best stuff you can find and never get to eat the darn thing. 

[Southside]

Moldy feed is bad for any animal.  I can't stand the "cow hay" idea.  Ensiled feed is basically pickled, the pH is down in the 4 ish range and it will keep for a very long time when done right.  Also - you can feed horses baleage, I have a team of draft mares that live with the cows and eat the same stuff they do.  

Mules and alpacas got nothing on a dinner plate sized foot coming at you with 1800 lbs worth of "don't you be messin' my little buddies" behind it.   

[mike_belben]

I did the shopping the other day and actually looked at steak prices.  $22 for two walmart ribeyes.   For that kinda money i expect it on a plate with a potato.  I guess ill hafta grow my own afterall. 


:D

[Rhodemont]

I have never visited this topic , the 1/2 beef caught my eye.  We raise grass fed Black Angus beef at our farm in Vermont. I personally like Hereford/ Shorthorn cross the most but Angus marketing rules. It is USDA inspected under our label "Rhodemont Farm" and sold here in Rhode Island.  No advertising, just word of mouth, mostly return customers.  We could sell a lot more but 20 head /year is all we can handle with our pasture and hay fields. 

We purchase spring bull calves meeting our required protocol from nearby farms as soon as they are weaned and can be put out on pasture.  They graze that first season then winter over on our hay and silage.  They go back out to rotationally graze the following season and are ready to process in fall when the pastures are depleted.  10 are sent out to process, 2 at a time as our slaughter house is small scale.  They are reserved with a down payment before we send them out.  These fall steer weigh in pretty consistently around 1200 lbs on the hoof with a 750 lb hang weight.  The other 10 winter over again to be sold in the late spring after a month or so back on pasture.  They weigh and hang a little more but not much as they typically loose a little weight over the winter. We never go past 24 months of age since the USDA inspector will require the spine to be stripped if the 26 month molars have come in...some crap about mad cow disease.  That means you loose all the bone for porterhouse and T bone steaks.

We get charged a kill fee and a butchering fee.  The carcass is aged for two weeks before being butchered to our standard cut sheet.  We offer customers a cut sheet to modify if they want.  Different size families often want different weight roasts, hamburger packs, and thickness steaks.  The meat is sealed and quick frozen. The yield is very dependent of the skill of the butcher.  We sell 1/2 and 1/4 with a 1/4 typically coming in around 110 lbs with about 40% being ground beef.  Have tried various slaughter houses and have had mixed yield results.  The frozen meat comes down to RI by Freezer truck where our customers pick it up from us.  When selling a 1/4 we take a 1/2 and evenly divided it so both 1/4 have equal quality cuts not a front 1/4 and a hind 1/4. Organ meat is not included and sold separately if you request it and yes people still want liver and tongue.  People also buy suet for the birds.

We are currently selling at $9.50/lb.  First time inquiries typical response " I only pay $4.50/lb at the grocery store"  Standard response "yeah that is for feedlot hamburger and by the way you are getting roasts and steaks for well under what the grocery store charges so it averages out pretty close."  Most who have bought call back like clock work every six months for a 1/4 or 1/2.

[LeeB]

I personally like Hereford/ Shorthorn cross

What is you like about this cross? The next one of ours going to slaughter is Hereford/Shorthorn. 

[Rhodemont]

First of all they were much easier going to handle.  The Angus can be pushy and tough to load if they do not want to.  The first couple years we tried a couple different breeds and crosses.  I found the H/SH to be the easiest to cook and best tasting.  They had some marbling without finishing with any grain.  The guy we got the claves from was retiring so that was the end of that.  Angus can match them if we use a bit of feed for a month or so but strictly grass fed is what sells and people know Angus.  We did not keep yield data back then as we do now, they were pretty stocky so probably had good yield although the Angus lines we use have gotta be tough to beat.