srsu99 said:
Oh spivy BTW toss the longhorn junk unless you are in the correinte cattle business and get some black cows.......cost the same to raise and you will get alot more for your calves. And the neighbors, if you have any that make their living ranching, will stop making fun of you. Cattle buyers for the feedlots hate brown, stringy looking, longhorns. Keep one on the place if you have to but really get rid of the rest of them. They eat the same amount of grass and cost the same to raise as a good calf and then you get nothing for it.
Thanks for the advice, however.... I'm right smack dab in the middle of angus-world. Everyone around me, including my family raise either angus or charlois or a mix of them. Lot's of angus bulls breeding charlois cows, the ruddy looking calves do very well at the stock yard here. We do get made fun of a bunch! And not just by neighbors, but by pretty much everyone we come in contact with and especially family. My uncle thinks I'm an idiot. He says he's spent the last decade breeding all the horn out of his herd, and there I go gunning for it. Also, we don't do correinte, we are nothing but pure bred registered or registerable Texas Longhorns. (It's funny that I guy from TX is telling a guy from KY to dump the Longhorns - that's irony for you.)
Just curious, but have you ever raised Texas Longhorns? Your comment that they eat the same amount of grass made me wonder. I am NOT an expert by any stretch of the imagination, however, from my limited experience and doing lots of research before getting into it, the Longhorns seem to eat a greater variety of stuff than the angus or other breeds. I'll be able to do some direct comparisons soon, as I have a friend helping me on my farm who runs a small herd of angus/charlois/hereford there. All of our animals are on my partner's farm right now, but we'll soon be moving about 40 of them to my place. I'll get to see how they graze compared to the charlois/angus herd, but literature says you can run about 20% more Longhorns per acre because they have better "browse utilization."
You comment that you "get alot more for your calves" if they are black. I assume you mean selling the calves as feeders since you mention feedlots. Very true, cattle buyers for feedlots hate longhorns. They are all wrong for that industry - they have low birth weights, don't put on as fast, and the horns will lame the other animals. However, we're not in that kind of business. We raise the Longhorns and sell the beef under our own label - it's brand named beef. We sell in grocery stores, freezer beef, and will soon be in restaurants all over KY. We're working on some other products as well that we can sell over the internet and in all kinds of stores. I'll agree with you that we would get our clocks cleaned at the sale barn with Longhorns, but we don't sell there. We're also not as susceptible to the changing cattle markets as those who sell to the feed lots. All of those neighbors that have been making fun of us are lamenting the prices their getting for their calves this fall. It's insane how cheap cattle are around here with the drought, everyone is dumping cattle because they have no hay and feed is too expensive. And with the ethanol market going up like crazy, corn costs are up as well so the buyers aren't buying as many calves. We're seeing prices way down from last year and lots of people are really hurting. We're still selling the beef for the same price as we did last year.
The big selling point for us though, since we can't compete with Walmart on price, is the health benefits of Longhorn beef. It is healthier for you than skinless white chicken meat. It has less fat, less cholesterol, and less calories. You can't get that from angus beef no matter how close you trim it. Longhorns produce more fatty acids in their muscles which causes the fat in the muscle to be less saturated. It is just plain ole' good for you! That why we can get a premium price for Longhorn, much more than you can get for certified angus in the grocery stores. Restaurants can offer Longhorn for a premium on the menu as a healthy alternative, and quite honestly, I think it tastes way better. Taste is a personal thing, some like the grain fed angus flavor, we do all natural grass fed Longhorn and I cannot eat a burger in a restaurant now because I'm spoiled on Longhorn beef!
I'm not trying to dog on your operation, you have 1000 times more animals than I do for crying out loud,
and I'm sure are doing quite well. There's a HUGE demand for certified angus beef. It's everywhere! Very easy to sell. I'm not arguing that at all, but with someone like me, with very limited resources, this is a much better way to go. I can only do this part time right now, though I'd like to make a go of it, so that's another reason why Longhorns are perfect for me. You never have to pull a calve, and they are very hearty, so they pretty much can take care of themselves. That's a relief to a someone fairly new to cattle, that I'm not likely to really mess it up. Besides, I wouldn't make enough to cover my expenses selling angus as feeders, but this way I have a viable business model. Good luck, hope to see you around here at TBN.
