All Things Livestock...

[texasjohn]

EasyEd... I couldn't agree with you more re post legged, pasterns, etc... I call this STRUCTURE..... it's not determined by bone size/density, but rather by ligaments and how they are put together and these defects are fatal flaws and should be removed from any breed, immediately.

 

[Spiveyman]

Well guys, she's on the trailer. She'll spend the day there tomorrow and then about 6:00 Monday morning we'll work on getting her in the gate at the slaughter house, but we sure had an interesting day today...

Wen't over first thing in the morning to get that cow loaded up, and then we planned to "break ground" on the corral system. Aparently my partner forgot to brief the cow on our plans. We tried to lead/entise/drive her into the barn. Used a little grain and a little pressure, but she would have none of that. So, plan B.

Since we don't have any horses broke good enough to rope from, my partner jumped in the Gator, and I grabbed a rope and stood in the bed. I was smart enough to go ahead and tie the rope off to the roll bar. I roped her calf, then we drug it to the barn and put it in a stall. Sure enough, it started bawling and Jumpy went right up to the gate, but she wouldn't go in. We waited and waited and waited. Finally we tried putting some pressure on her, but she wouldn't have it. I'm sure if we'd camped out, eventually she would have gone in, but we had stuff we needed to get done. So plan C.

There was no way we could do the same with this cow that we did with her calf. She'd have probably drug that Gator all over the place. So tied two ropes together (so we'd have some rope to work with if we needed it) and my partner roped that cow right around the horns. She took off and he looked like he was water skiing across the pasture. Somehow he managed to get the end of the rope around a tree to make her stop. I got the other John Deere, and we drug her sorry hide to the barn. Once we got there we tied her up to a post, then ran the rope through the trailer and used the tractor again to pull her right up on the trailer. She was none too happy about it, and there was no finess in this approach, but she's where we needed her to be - cowboys allways win! (So far.) She'll have a day to calm down before we transfer her to the slaughter house.

After that we measured out that area beside the barn for the corral system and are going to have to change the desing. Not as much room as I thought. I'm still working on a couple things, but will post something when I have it down.

 

[texasjohn]

Thanks for the detailed story I enjoyed every item of it... and can see, in my mind's eye, exactly how it all went down Just one problem... us TBN駻s expected you to get photos of the whole thing and post them Nothing to do except let her go and do it all again, this time with photos

Glad she's trailered now... yep, there was one time when I let a critter stand in a trailer overnight awaiting it's final trip.

I think you and your partner are earning your spurs and will soon be able to give lessons in "pasture skiing"... come to think of it, this could be quite the extra income producer you are looking for... I can see the ad and photos now.... "longhorn roping and skiing every Friday night.. bring the family and watch the fun" Could become a new PRCA event! Then, you could raise professional longhorns for the purpose, just like they do with bull riding.

I'll be interested to see if she turns out to be a "dark cutter." I give it a 50% chance since she is so jumpy all the time. Another reason to move her on.

 

[Spiveyman]

Ha! I actually thought about the pictures after I left the house and forgot my camera. There wouldn't have been anyone there to take them though. We were both very busy the whole time. Let me tell you, standing in the back of a gator, trying to swing a loop while also holding the extra coils so that they don't wind up around your leg, and holding on to the roll bar while your partner has the thing floored over some crazy terrain trying to keep up with a psycho cow - now that's the kind of fun that money can't buy and a simple picture wouldn't do justice. Once we got her on there I asked my buddy to at least get a picture of her on the trailer. We'll enjoy those memories for years.

I do like the pasture skiing idea... that still wasn't as good as the first time he roped a bull calf from the gator and forgot to dally off the rope, AND forgot to let go. Yanked him right over the roll bar like a Pete Rose dive. Kind of like pasture luge!

By the way, what do you mean by "dark cutter?"

 

[texasjohn]

You boys be careful how you dally the rope... you can find cowboys missing a finger that got caught between a hard place and critter on the other end of a rope You have described, well, why I put disposition as the first of the Six Essentials!

From this site Dark cutter

[SIZE=+3]Dark Cutter
[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1] Dark-cutting beef is a condition in cattle that makes muscles of cattle appear very dark. This condition is caused by a decrease in the amount of glycogen in the muscle prior to slaughter. Glycogen is the product in the muscle that is converted to lactic acid, which decreases the pH of the muscle. This decrease in pH causes the muscle to be bright cherry-red.

If there is not enough glycogen to decrease the pH in the muscle, then the muscle will have a dark appearance to the lean surface. Consumers are not willing to buy dark beef and thus the value is decreased. Producers and feeders can help to decrease this loss to the beef industry by decreasing the amount of stress that they apply to cattle. In the 2000 audit 2.3% of the cattle produced were dark cutters. Dark Cutters cost the beef industry an estimated $5.81 per head produced in the United States in the year 2000.[/SIZE]

 

[Spiveyman]

Interesting. I'll let you know if there is any noticeable difference. We always keep retains from every animal "just in case." We already discussed sampling a steak and some grind before we deliver the meat. If it's not up to our standards we'll just split the meat between ourselves, then have a party and serve it to some of the friends we don't like that much! Ha! I'm hoping that between Saturday 2:00-ish and Monday morning she'll have time to calm down and get that out of her system. We'll see. We've had some stressed out animals before, but didn't notice any problems with the meat. Also we have our stuff packaged in very thick plastic on a roll stock machine, so our meat is always darker than the competition, especially when they use styrofoam and celephane. I think Longhorn has a bit darker shade than what I'm used to from the grocery anyways. It took a bit of education, but we seem to be doing very well with the customers. There were three other brands of beef in the grocery when we started selling there. Now there are only two, and both of them have significantly less sales/shelf space than we do. Once people try our stuff they are hooked and keep coming back for the taste.

 

[Spiveyman]

It's a done deal now. Also found out our slaughter house is a full service deal. They probably think we're nuts, but my partner asked if he could do the honors. The USDA guy said sure as long as he does it right. So they marked the spot and my buddy finally got the satisfaction he'd been wanting for a few weeks now.

Another interesting observation from Saturday. I think a sign of a cood cow is how they treat their calves. First of all this cow jumped the fence all the time, so she was not in a position to protect or nurish her calf. Strike 1.

When we started hazing the calf with the gator so that we could rope it, the momma cow (ole' Jumpy) didn't really stick with her calf. We were able to separate that calf fairly easily. The really interesting thing is that both Maggie and Lucie (our star cow and the alpha female of the herd respectively) came over to that calf, and started bawling towards Jumpy. Only when they did that did Jumpy come over to "assist" her calf, and then left it again. Strike 2.

After we'd roped the calf and put it in a stall in the barn, Jumpy would not even go in the barn to check on it. Maggie and Lucie probably would have torn the gate down to get in there to their calves. I don't know for sure, but they seem like better momma's. Strike 3. She's out!

Maggie and Lucie both have calves on them right now, about 1 month old. When we went back to rope Jumpy at one point both of Maggie and Lucie's calves got separated out with Jumpy and M&L were right on it doing what they had to do to protect their calves. Nothing ever aggressive towards us, but they didn't ever leave their calves.

 

[motepoc]

I don't have any cows, but did help my FIL when he was alive. And what you just decribed I have seen many times. And also, what you just described also sounds like a lot of Human traits that we have seen in the news lately. If we could ever find a chemical that caused the good or bad behavior and either put it in or take it out, we might have a better world.

 

[Spiveyman]

Well, the good thing about dealing with cows is what we just did - remove her from the gene pool. Granted she had a little bull calf that we'll keep a very close eye on, but that's the idea, mold your herd to have the traits you want. The solution's not that simple with folk. Maybe that's why I prefer dealing with cattle than people. (TBN'ers excepted)

 

[texasjohn]

Told you that Maggie was GOLD to you.... you are beginning to build your list of reasons... stars in her crown.. that cow will die and be burried on your place.. and you will shed a tear when it happens...

Glad your buddy was able to get satisfaction... amazing how quickly they drop, isn't it!

It is possible that you have TWO such wonderful cows.. assuming Lucie continues to behave properly in all ways. Certainly, you describe what I call superlative mothering behaviour to both of them. I think if you look back at my description of the 6 ESSENTIALS you will find mothering ability listed.. the story below illustrates what I mean regarding

Once I had a heifer calve overnight in 9 degree weather with 10 mph winds..COLD... and no shelter. I looked out and that little booger was dried off, standing and nursing just fine. I checked the forecast... going to stay below 20 all day and drop into single digits again that night. I decided to give the new pair a hand... but she was about 3 pastures and over 1/2 mile from the barn and shelter from the wind. Ever try to drive a single new mother cow and hours old calf? Don't bother. Do what I did.. get wife to drive pickup... gather calf in arms and get into back of pickup, tailgage down... make sure mother knows where calf is (in my case she was sniffing the calf constantly, so no problem) then drive slowly to the barn. The cow dang near crawled into the back of the pickup.. but followed all the way as if on a string...

That's what you want.. a heifer that has an uncomplicated calving, quickly dries it off, encourages it to stand, positions it to nurse, particuilarly under adverse conditions, stands while it nurses, then stays with and pays attention to it and protects it to her best ability.

 

[Spiveyman]

It is really neat when you see it done right by a momma cow that is worth more than her weight in beef. I love to see the herd come together. There is a story inside "Texas Longhorn Cookbook & Campfire Stories" about a matriarchal cow who was on her last legs. The rancher checked on her all day, and later that night she died. When the rancher got up the next morning the entire herd was laying down around her in a circle, with horns pointed out "as if to say, no coyote is going to get this one." We bought these cows in lots. Maggie and Lucie were our first two. They've been great. They came together and had pretty much grown up together. With just the two of them they each knew their place. Then we bought 8 more and stuck them in the field. Jumpy was the matriarch of that lot. She and Lucie fought it out a bit trying to see who would run the herd, Lucie kicked her tail. I think maybe that's why Jumpy started to raom. There are some pony's in the neighbor's field. Maybe they let Jumpy have control, so that's where she wanted to be. Here's a shot of Lucie:



Do you have any pictures of your bull(s) or cows? I'd like to see then as I'm not familiar with beefmaster cattle. (I think that's what you called them.)

 

[texasjohn]

Here's my web site, but I haven't maintained it in a long time.. has a few photos.

And, this is the breed web site.

 

[Spiveyman]

Thanks, at least now I know what you are talking about. That's a heafty looking bull there. Do you know what his weight topped out at?

Very interesting that the breed has brahman blood in it, yet disposition is one of the 6 essentials. Brahman's seem like the pit bulls of the cattle world. My uncle had some brahman in his herd, and they were always the cattle that seemed to want to kill you. I guess with the right selective breeding you can take advantage of the brahman traits you want and get rid of the bad stuff. I've heard that brahman cattle don't have the troubles with flies that most other cattle do (pink eye) because they can twitch their skin and keep them away better than the other breeds.

 

[texasjohn]

I have never had a case of pink eye, nor has anyone I know of, and that covers several thousand cattle.

When we had been in the business a few years, we had the vet over to vaccinate our heifers for brucelosis (mandatory to have vet..live vaccine, records). As we ran all animals thru the chute, he kept looking in the ears of each animal and sorta shaking his head. After watching this for about 10 animals, I asked him what he was doing. Seems he was looking for ticks. My immediate neighbor with black baldies had had him out only a couple of days before for all day. They had to put every one of his cattle in a chute, immobalize the head, dig into each ear and remove dozens of ticks from each. There were so many that they were filling up, dropping off and down into the ear canal, festering in there and causing all sorts of problems, including the staggers because they were losing their equilibrium from the problems. He had not found a single tick on any of my animals. We continued to watch, including all over each animal. Finally, we found one tick crawling on the hind quarters of one cow, but not latched on. I firmly believe that there is an oil in the hide of Beefmasters, likely from the Bramaha influence and hardiness trait, that is a repellent/inhibitor to ticks and biting insects.

Some years later, I sold a Beefmaster bull to an uncle. He used Beefmasters for several years. One time I assisted him working the herd and observed that the number of ticks attached to his animals was directly related to the amount of Beefmaster blood. His Charloais/Angus cross cows had quite a few, first cross heifers/cows had less, 2nd cross heifers would have 1 or two. That's my unscientific analysis.

Dispisition is, IMHO, highly heritable..either good or bad. I can see it's result in the calves of our bulls. Yes, there are bramaha cattle that will only show you their tail as they vanish into the brush.. and those that will stomp you in a pen. As you can see from my photos, it is easy to get close to my cattle. I have to be careful to not make petting pets of them... they are too big to hold in your lap. Bad disposition has been removed from the Beefmaster breed... except for the animals spoiled by bad handling, which happens in every breed.

The bull in the picture was about 1950 lbs, pasture condition in the photo.
Bull we are currently using is about 2200 lbs pasture condition.
Note: I don't believe in feeding bulls lots of grain/feed ... yes, they should be in good shape and stay that way on grass, but if you put fat on them, IMHO, it is solely for the purpose of impressing people, not for furthing their breeding capability. In fact, too much fat will cause problems regarding breeding.

 

[Spiveyman]

Wow, you are making a believer out of me in the Beefmaster breed. That is great. Thankfully Longhorns posses many of the same traits, but more out of necessity of survival than engineering. There wasn't anyone to take the tics out of their ears as they roamed across Mexico and the southwestern US. We've not been doing this very long, but so far we have not had any problems with pink eye or tics. I don't know if I can say that categorically we won't have problems, just haven't yet.

Man... if only Beefmasters had horns!

By the way, totally agree about bulls being on pasture only. All of our animals are that way though.

 

[EasyEd]

Hey All,

Spivey I enjoyed the story about catchin jumpy. I've done some pasture skiing too only in a corral. Had 6 steers and 5 heifers that I had to teach to wear fecal collection bags (don't ask you can if you want) and esophageal collection bags and a couple were rumen cannulated - so they had to be tame so I could change their "diapers" - believe me changin diapers on a real kid ain't bad after changin diapers on steers! So I do know my sh_t!

I put them in a squeeze put on a cow halter and let em go and hung on to the end of the rope till I got them to mind me. One steer - I named him Boxcar Willie - was real stubborn about learning. I actually drug him around behind an experiment station chevy luv a bit! Darn near burn't out the clutch - I know I shortened it's life! I'll have to dig out some slides and see if I can convert to pics.

All this was before I knew of Temple Grandin so I would do it different today but I admit it was fun!

TexasJ Great site - you should update it. It was fascinating reading. Now I admit I'm always a bit nervous about people who ask folks to click on a link so that we can see them in their kilts but y'all look good! I have an uncle from Scotland! Beefmasters are good cattle especially for the country your in. Being so much further north we don't need the heat adaption of "eared" cattle and so more british and continental breeds are what we go for. I used to raise shorthorns.

Spivey how goes the drought?

-Ed-

 

[texasjohn]

EasyEd, just get a donkey to teach those critters how to lead!

Facinating story about your s***** work!! I can tell that you're one of them fellers that got his PhD by walking behind a cow, watching her poop, then observing and testing the plop for the next 4 years as it returns to the earth... oh, so much more facinating than watching paint dry How can I get a copy of that work??

True story: I purchased years ago a bull from Florida... top end bull with great EPD's... gentle as a puppy when we got him... couple of years later he got sick, can't recall exactly what the illness was, but vet gave us something for it. I walked up to him in the pen, pinched his neck skin and gave him a shot right there.. didn't even shake his head. Later, I followed his progress by walking up to him in pen or pasture and depositing rectal thermometer (long string required so you don't loose it) for the appropriate time then removed it. It's SO nice to have gentle cattle!

This morning, alone, I went to the barn and gathered every cow and calf into the pen...over 50 head in all. I didn't even put out any cubes until 3/4 of them were in the pen.. then shut gates and moved stuff around to make an empty pen for the more shy ones so they could come in and not be bullied away. Was extremely pleased... I don't have any calves this year that are going to be a disposition problem. This is actually the 2nd time the cows have been in the pen in over 6 months... first time for a bunch of the calves. Once trained, they have long memories!

Put one cow in squeeze chute and tipped her horns with very long handled hedge trimmer..they were rotating down and touching but not yet penetrating the skin on her jaw...

Spiveyman... beefmasters DO have horns... I'll have to take a photo and show you... For a long time I used electronic dehorner at about 3 weeks to dehorn the calves, then, other life events came along and I no longer am able to provide that level of management attention. Agreed, many of the cattle in the photos don't have horns.. but only a couple of mine are natural polled.

 

[Spiveyman]

Ed, Glad you enjoyed the stories. That's funny about the Chevy Luv. You're right there are certainly better ways to do things when you get your act together. Unfortunately, as we're just getting into this business, we weren't as discerning with some of our initial purchases as we would be now. We got some great cows and some that will be hanging in coolers in the weeks to come. Some for disposition, some more for confimation. We will cash out the purchases we aren't pleased with and use that money for better stock. We'll make very good money on the one's we bought, so as a business decision it will still be good, but for the sake of the herd we will be culling some.

Now then, that being said, we have a blast everytime we get to "cowboy" a bit. I'm sure there will come a day soon when our age will necessitate that we do things smarter, and I'm also sure the novelty will wear off very quickly, but we have so much fun just messing around with them. We're both still young enough at this point to enjoy a challenge.

However, I do not include changing steer diapers in the category of "challenge." That is serious dedication.

Drought - still on. We got a decent rain a couple of weeks ago, but haven't had a drop since. We may get a bit mid week. Still, it's not hurting us as bad as others since our herd isn't that big compared to our land. We got lucky there too and learned a valuable lesson in a bad year, have enough land for the bad ones. I'd rather have extra in a good year than to run out in bad year.

texasjohn, we got the info from BBU Saturday. My partner was cracking up at how much we enjoyed the magazine with all the pictures in it (of course we only got it for the articles ) There are some stout looking bulls, the one on the center page of the magazine made our biggest bulls look pretty puny. We also did notice some horns on some in the pictures. I have to be honest with you, both of us had the same thought. We'll include them in our business plan for now, and then hopefully when we are comfortable financially, we both want to mix the Longhorn and the Beefmaster and try to get a freakishly huge bull like in the picture with massive horns! We'll create our own breed - LongMasters! HA! (That's probably a sacrilege to a Beefmaster man.)

 

[EasyEd]

Hey All,

Spivey maybe you should call them Masterhorns!

Actually drought wise you are fortunate to have more land than cattle - many end up in just the reverse situation. There are a lot of management things one can do to prepare for drought - unfortunately too many people don't prepare well and so get caught sellin into bad markets, buying expensive hay and the like. Probably the best things one can do are to always have a years supply of hay on hand (easy to say hard to have the discipline to do), structure your cowherd so you can do things like early weaning and selling of calves, run some stockers or grassers that you can sell early, know who your culls are and sell. All of this designed to keep your main cowherd in feed during a drought year. In essence you have as the core of your operation a cowherd that requires less than the land you have and you use "temporary" cattle to "top up" your stocking rate during normal and above normal years. With the hay on hand your always ready for at least a year or two-long drought. I see so few producers who even think about this kind of stuff yet drought is absolutely inevitable. In Alberta I saw the effects of the driest year in recorded history and it wasn't pretty for full time producers. It was something I'll never forget. I had research cattle on trials and had to pull them off the pastures and supplement.

TexasJ I never published that stuff but I do have a Ph.D. thesis on file at Oregon State that I can direct you to. I do plan to go through my slides this next weekend and make some digital for you guys to see - and me to see how thin I once was. I've also a number of reports on a number of research projects I did that might be electronic somewhere. If interested I can type out what my dissertation was about.

Now I'm gonna shock you guys. Lately I been thinkin about these.

Breeds of Livestock - Australian Lowline Cattle

I do know that the breed can't supply enough and carcasses command a premium price because their frame size is so small and so the steaks, ribeyes and such are perfect for restaurants - plus they are Angus. I've seen these cows up close and personal even though I've never owned any the possibilities absolutely fascinate me. They are not the result of any dwarfism gene and look like any other cattle only a mature cow is about 750lbs and a bull 900 to 1000lbs. How much additional stocking can one get? Maybe the thing to do is buy semen and AI small cows of I'm not sure what breeds and raise and sell the calves at a premium price. The possibilities for small property owners really intrigue me. If you live near a city you probably have a market that would not be hard to develop. As I'm currently on Vancouver Island they might fit this environment well. Just thinking about it.

-Ed-

 

[Spiveyman]

A couple of things there, keep in mind we're doing cattle differently than most folks. We aren't in the business of selling cattle, we're in the business of selling beef. We buy cattle, and raise cattle, all for the purpose of putting meat on the shelf at the grocery or in folks freezers, and soon in restaurants. This changes the options that we typically have for managing our herds. We can't NOT have the animals when the grocery store makes an order. The good thing for us though is that cattle have been on "sale" all summer and fall. What has really hurt others has actually helped us a bit.

That is a very good point though about the hay deal. If I had the structure to store it in, I'd definitely have set some hay aside last year.

My granny actually told me about those short cattle. She wants me to get some and put on the farm. They are supposed to be a good deal in terms of profit pound for pound, but I haven't really pursued it. We have such a nitch market here with the Longhorn, we can't just put any beef in there. I've heard there are miniature longhorns too though. MY partner's wife runs herds of minature animals and wants some of them. Just doesn't seem manly to me though. It'd be like driving a Chevy Luv (no offense) instead of a Dielsel Dually. HA!!!