[Food] Production - Cattle/Grass Farming

PrairieMule

I did my first castration last April. The instructor showed us how it's done with a set of pliers and a straight razor. Pretty shocking the 1st time, the 2nd time I took good notes. Banding seems to be less traumatic.

Great pics Pops!
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Ludi

Our sheep were castrated at adulthood under sedation. Pretty gory to watch and uncomfortable for them. Shocked

If we have any ram lambs I'll probably castrate them by band at a young age.

Pops

I watched cutting done as a kid, after the scrotum was opened the old guys yanked the testicles down quick and hard. It seems if you stretch the artery hard and fast it constricts on breaking and minimizes bleeding. I had a hard time doing that my first few times. The result was lots of bleeding but no long-term harm.
I would like some more experienced opinions here.

I like banding because there is no open wound. As long as you are sure to pull the testicles way down to the bottom of the scrotum and place the elastic as far as possible from the belly to reduce pinching they don’t seem to be uncomfortable for long. My first couple I didn’t get the testicles and band far enough down and they weren’t happy for a week or more.

Of course I also burn the horn buds at the same time now so maybe they can’t figure which end is bothering them more…
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Ludi

Our vet chose cutting because the rams were too large to fit in the banding thingy. He prefers banding ordinarily, but these rams were left intact by the breeder, I guess because they are purebred and maybe someone would want to keep them as studs. We only wanted one ram, so had to choose to castrate two of the three ram lambs we bought.

We were quite worried about flystrike so tried to wait until cooler and drier weather to do the surgery.

skyemoor

I've tried both cutting and banding our ram lambs, normally in the first week. The cutting then results in very little blood; the banding has none, though is much less reliable and can possibly lead to infection (even tetanus, though we've been spared).

The steers we've purchased were banded and they had no issues.
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Pops

Yea I thought it interesting that a tetnus vaccine should accompany banding but I haven’t read that it is recommended with cutting even though the open wound will invariably be in contact with some nasty stuff; we use it in a combination vaccine as a rule though.

What did your instructor say Mule?

The biggest problem I have had with either is small or undescended testicles or getting the band to tight to the belly. One guy bleed so much I put a band on as a tourniquet for a couple of hours and then cut it off.

BTW, when I cut I use one of the break-off type of utility knifes – they are long, really sharp and most of all quickly retractable in case someone gets fidgety.
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PhebaAndThePilgrim

Good day, from Pheba from the farm:
My husband and I have been raising Simmental cattle for 40 years.
I would disagree with some of the information posted here, agree with some, and I have learned from some.
The one piece of information that had me doing wild-eyed duck fits was the desire for cattle with wide shoulders.
Cattle breeders have spent the last 50 years trying to breed for cattle that do not have wide shoulders.
Our Simmental cattle are not very popular because the bulls tend to have wide shoulders.
Wide shoulders are not an asset. Also, barrel/lung capacity is not linked to lung capacity as I see it from 40 years of raising cattle.
We have worked for four decades to breed wide shoulders out of our Simmental cattle.
Simmental cattle are a dual purpose milk/meat breed from Europe. Specifically Switzerland. There is also a German variant called a Gelbvieh. We have the blood of both. We also have some Canadian blood that has some Angus bred into it. We have bred in a bit of Shorthorn, and a bit of Hereford. But our cattle are mostly purebred Simmental. We have 30 to 35 mamas on 160 acres.
A bull with broad shoulders will pass the trait on. You can just about guarantee that you are going to have to pull the calf, especially if the mother is a heifer, and the calf is a bull. Pulling calves raises the calf mortality rate by at least 10%.
Since we bred some Shorthorn into our herd, and switched to the Canadian Simmental, we have not had to pull a calf in several years. We have had calves so badly stuck, the vet had to saw the calf into pieces to save the mother.
We refuse to go back to that barbarism.
We breed for specific traits because we have worked with these animals every single day for 40 years. Farmers as a whole are not so greedy or shortsighted that they will breed traits that only make money, especially small farmers like us that have a close relationship with our animals.
We breed for the following traits:
Mothering instinct. milk production, temperment. (crazy cows don't hang around long). Body build. When we look at the animal we want to see a straight back, nice back end. long torso, (lung capacity, higher end cuts of meat) carrying capacity (a big gut, can hold and consume larger amounts of forage, called "a good keeper"), a nice set of teats. Teats that are too large or too long make nursing difficult for the calf, and the mother doesn't last long as each successive gestation makes the condition worse. Nice shoulders that are not overlarge, and are in line with the rest of the body. A good animal should look like a straight cylinder, round and consistent, with a nice big belly. We breed for polled animals. We no longer perform dehorning as the procedure is totally barbaric, and can cause weight loss, and even the death of the animal. We breed for colored hair around the eyes. With Simmental the trait is called goggle eyes. In our experience, white pigment around the eyes makes the cow more prone to Pinkeye.
The shape of the face around the eyes is important. Eyes that protrude too far are more exposed to high grass stems, and exposure to Pinkeye. Oddly enough, we have found that bad feet, and a tendency to fescue foot seems to be passed on from mother to calf. If the mother has a tendency to bad feet, she seem to pass the trait along.
Simmental are noted for their lean meat. The cattle went out of style with the popularity of Angus. Still, we love them, and refuse to switch. Every farmer in our area has switched to red or black Angus. We refuse to cave in to social pressure. For a good explanation of the real reason for the switch to Angus, read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. We have some very good genetic stock that we refuse to get rid of. We get 10 to 15 cents per pound less for our Simmental at the sale barn.
We have 160 acres, mostly a mix of fescue, clover, and other grasses and do a lot of intensive grazing management. We have 22 acres of warm season grass, specifically Gamma grass, a Missouri native. The plot was planted in 1992, and is available for the cattle during the highest heat of summer when the fescue is at its worst. The gamma is divided into 5 rotational pastures. During high heat the cattle are moved every two days.
Lately, the fescue has been invading the gamma grass. We burn the plot, and do not use synthetic weed killer. We have needed a good burn on it for the past few years. February/March is when we burn.
Fescue is endemic in Missouri, and it is almost impossible to get away from it. We know many farmers who have used synthetic high duty weed killer, Paraquat, etc. to kill fescue, only to have it encroach back.
Fescue can be managed, and is a good winter forage. Fescue is at its best in the very late fall to early winter.
We do not do high nitrogen on our fescue. First of all, since the increase in the price of natural gas (used to make nitrogen fertilizer), nitrogen has skyrocketed in price. Second, nitrogen just feeds fescue, when what we want to feed are the other grasses, the legumes. clover, lespedeza. We do a low nitrogen, high phosphate, potash, and then check ph to see what we need to add for that.
This past spring we spent $4,500.00 (we do this every year) on fertilizer for our farm. That was for about 100 acres. With fertilizer we can raise about 30 to 35 head of mama cows on grass. Without fertilizer that number would be about 15.
Since the ethanol madness began acreage in our area has skyrocketed. In 1971 we paid 350.00 per acre for our farm. Now good farm land around here is between 2500 to 4000 per acre.
Hay costs money. Big bales are running 45 to 55 dollars each around here. We have had a horrible spring and summer for hay.
Raising a cow on hay cost money. As production costs rise I am wondering if we will even be able to raise cattle on grass.
The thought of raising cattle just on grass is a nice ideal. But, there are many factors that are not being figured into this equation.
How much beef can be raised on grass to feed the population?
How much arable grassland is truly available for grassland for beef? Just because a field is green does not mean it can support a cow. A cow can starve in a field of green grass. It is not the color, it is the nutritive content that is vital. As natural gas prices rise synthetic nitrogen will also rise. This is an important factor to figure into this equation.
Raising a cow on grass leave the farmer exposed to the variabilities of nature.
This spring we had an extreme early warmup followed by an extreme cold snap. I have never seen anything like it. The fescue had turned green, then the cold snap actually turned the fescue white. I have never seen fescue that badly damaged. Needless to say our hay crop was dismal. We rotated constantly to keep the mamas fed, and began feeding hay in August. Even the warm season gamma grass was damaged. I shudder to think what hay is going to cost this winter. The hay situation here is very bad.
We began feeding our mothers corn gluten to sustain them. They are in bad shape right now. We weaned the calves 6 weeks early to relieve the mothers, and will sell the calves as soon as their vaccinations kick in (3 weeks). We will also sell 1/3 of our herd.
Farmers are at the mercy of nature. If it weren't for the corn gluten we would have to sell 2/3 of our herd.
By the way, corn gluten is a byproduct of ethanol production. The protein rate is higher than corn, and the cattle will knock you down to get to it.
My belief from what I see is that grass raised cattle, while a great ideal, can not be sustained in numbers large enough to feed the general population. We try to raise our cattle on as little grain as possible, but find some grain necessary to feed our animals properly. With rising land prices, soil depletion, competition with ethanol production, global warming, population increase (increased beef consumption), water depletion (we pay high water bills to water our cattle in spite of 3 ponds. (ponds dry this summer) skyrocketing fertilizer cost, and other factors, I just don't see grass fed cattle making a large impact on beef production.
Personally, we will always try to avoid feeding grain to our cattle as much as possible. We do this for 2 reasons; it is expensive, and it is bad for the environment. But with feedlots across America that are finishing 500 thousand head of cattle on grain everyday to supply America with beef, I don't see grass fed cattle making much impact.
Pheba, from the farm.

Ludi

Perhaps we should consider the option to "Do without" (to quote your sig, Pheba) feedlot beef....

I just placed an order for beef with my friend who is starting a very small grassfed Dexter operation.
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Pops

Hi, Pheba, I was hoping you would chime in here at some point.

As I remember you folks are in the North Central part of the state, down here in the SW corner we experienced the same late frost, on top of a really bad ice storm earlier but we have been fortunate to get lots of rain through the spring and early summer plus some this fall as well, all the ponds down here are full to overflowing, a welcome relief after two droughty years.

Half rotten, 4 or 5 year-old bales standing in a foot of water were going from $65-$80 a bale last winter after the ice storm and snow. At least this year there is more hay - though of mediocre quality due to the big weed growth after the freeze.

I’ll just comment on feeding cattle on grass. I agree that it is not really viable now except as a specialty. The thing is Now is starting to change. I don’t have to tell you what happened to calf prices last fall.

For those that don’t follow such things, the price of every type of feedstuff has at least doubled in the last year. Starting with corn last fall that doubled in price in a few weeks due to ethanol demand, to everything from soybeans to wheat to cottonseed this year as farmers switched to corn to get in on the money.

There are around 80 more ethanol plants scheduled to come on line in the next 12 months and the forecast is with anhydrous ammonia (fertilizer) about double in cost from a year ago, not to mention diesel at $3/gal, some amount of those farmers will be going back to their previous rotations of corn/wheat/beans.

So of course the prices paid by the feedlots for cattle went down as their feed costs went up.

Add in the fact that beef travels many miles on a diesel truck from cow/calf operation to backgrounder to feedlot to market, as well as the miles traveled to get feedstuff to the lot.

Since beef is not brought to market as quickly as say, a chicken, input cost increases take a while to reach the consumer so we ain’t seen nothing yet as far as consumer prices go, not to mention which direction their budgets are bound to go as everything else goes up in price.

So, no, there is no way to raise the amount of beef on grass at the price the consumer pays now. Pork and poultry for that matter are in the same boat except they can't get by exclusivly on grass.

I guess the upshot is, the population will not eat as high on the hog as it does now (like I just noticed Ludi mention). Boneless, skinless chicken breasts, sausage McHeart Attacks and steak every other night will not be the norm and nicely marbled with pretty white fat steaks will become a luxury.

I won’t attempt to guess when that will come about but I hope folks like you can make the transition - And I hope more folks like Ludi will help them.

Write again Pheba, there seem to be a few folks interested in this topic and you certainly have more experience than me!
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PrairieMule

PrairieMule

PhebaAndThePilgrim

Hi Pops. Pheba here, from the farm.
This is the worst drought in my memory. I agree that people live too high off the hog. I have a funny story to share.
We raise beef for friends and family.
We have one good friend who has been buying our beef for 30 years. Simmental beef is already lean. But, when we raise a cow or bull versus a steer the meat is very lean with hamburger that can run up to 95 percent lean.
Recently our friend sold 40 pounds of hamburger (cow) to another friend of his. For the first time in 40 years we have had meat returned to us.
The meat was sold to a family. The husband and kids loved the meat. The wife absolutely hated it. She said that was highly allergic to venison, and she just knew this meat had venison in it.
When our friend asked her why she thought it was venison her only response was that it was just to lean to be hamburger. Also, she said that it tasted funny, it had a meaty flavor.
I told my husband that she was just so used to commercial processed beef that she could not handle the flavor of real meat.
The same thing is true with most of our food. People don't want flavor. They just want something they can cover with salt or sugar and slosh down.
Our friend took home some of the 40 pounds of hamburger to test it. he and his wife ate it and loved it.
We have peaked, and the down hill slide has started. The same people who can't eat lean meat, and think meat comes from styrofoam are in for some very hard times indeed.
We have had bad drought this summer.
Tornadoes whipped just north and west of us yesterday bringing rain, finally.
Tornadoes in October with an expected high this Friday of 90 degrees fahrenheit. Absolutely weird.
Good night,
Pheba.

Zardoz

Ludi