Calves for $1?

[secuono]

If their just young small calves use your wisdom and figure out what their illnes is , club foot tape the foot up till the calf puts enough weight on it to straihhten it out, twigs and popcicle sticks make great spints. Theres always a way to heal with the smarts we're given snd a prayer and not especially in that order.

Sure, if that's what you're after. If you just want cheap meat n bones for a pack of dogs...

 

[Ron Bequeath]

We are raising feeder pigs, mostly because they are easier to maintain...we don’t have to put up near the fencing that we would need for cows. That’s the main reason my hubby doesn’t want to make the leap...at least $5,000-$6,000 in fencing and we wouldn’t recoup tha5 for at least three years. But...not sure why we’re watching these auctions if he’s not interested...

One of the other things we need to do is find other products and ways to sell our product. People around me don't like 200 to 250 pounds of meat in the freezer for two, three years so I'm breeding an asian heritage hog cross to meet their wants, all the cuts but not the years in the freezer.

 

[farmerjan]

Nice @farmerjan me and a few guys have been talking lately about what u just wrote. Right now the butcher shops around here sell steaks for around 30$ a lb. And when we sell beef halves most people have 4-6$ a lb in the same quality steaks. So why is that? The butchers market their products? The farmers over produce? I think both what does a farmer do on a good year? Raise more cows what does a farmer do on a bad year try to produce more cows. Same with the milk market. I have a good thing going I can sell beef and pork at live weights and I make enough where the meat in my freezer is around a dollar a pound. But u have to market what u got. So u ask why not raise to beef a year. Or six hogs? Know ur market and don't flood it

Part of it is that the steaks are more desired..... and they are "limited" and everyone wants steak, not as much the less tender cuts. It is some marketing, but for the most part, there are alot of people that don't want roasts or stew meat or very much ground beef.

Anyone that I know that sells meat by the lb or the piece, USDA inspected and processed, will tell you that ground beef is always the last to be sold. Plus, proportionately, there is alot more ground beef than there are steaks. Hey, I would love it if hogs could be half bacon, instead of all the other cuts they are. I am not a big sausage eater, so would love to have the proportion of bacon to be greater than it is.... so I get it, for people that don't want to get a half with all that ground beef.

Most of the beef that I put in the freezer, is just the cost of the butchering, and if I sell half then it is basically free. But if you figure the VALUE of the beef, it is more likely to be $5-8.00 lb. I try to sell a half or 2 a year although we have a guy who has a small country store, and he has been selling more beef than he thought so has gotten a couple of steers from us that we were going to try to market as beef, and just bought them and put them on grain/feed for 60 days then had them processed at the USDA plant. We did okay on them and saved the cost of butchering since we didn't need the meat. Plus he came and picked them up so no trips to town.
I eat 99.9999% jersey beef. I have several jersey nurse cows and breed a few AI and always get a bull calf or 2. I do use some sexed semen, but mostly don't due to the cost. Plus, I do breed some of them to beef bulls, so those calves are either kept as replacement heifers, or the bulls to make into steers for future beef sales.

I don't think that saying that beef people over produce in general is totally correct. Nearly all the farmers I know around here can run a certain number head of cattle. That is all their land will handle. We vary some due to what pastures/land we have rented. Some will increase, but it takes a little longer to increase the number of beef you have unless you are buying animals. Then it will be determined by the amount of land/pasture.... or the amount of stored feed you have.
Dairy farmers can increase their milk production faster since there are many selling out and prices of replacements are way down due to the low milk prices the farmers have been getting. Yes, they will milk more to try to keep their bills paid, especially the fixed monthly ones. And they will continue to milk more cows when the prices come up to try to make back some of what they weren't making, and get bills caught up , and get a little put by for the next downturn in the milk prices. It has little to do with the "surplus" because the companies that buy the milk are pushing the farmers to get bigger. They don't want to buy from small farms anymore, and are penalizing them. The ones that refused to get bigger, and some talked about not wanting to add to the surplus, got it stuck to them with an increase in hauling fees.... and the bigger dairies are getting a "bonus" if they produce at least a half tanker load of milk for pickup which means getting bigger. After 30 years of being a milk tester, and nearly 45 in and around the dairy industry, it is a crime what the milk companies have done and the monopoly they have on the prices and such. Right now the milk companies are begging farmers to produce more because we are in a deficit area for fluid milk.

 

[farmerjan]

Yes, you can feed goats milk to baby calves. One of the other milk testers in this area does that. She starts calves and raises heifers for one of her dairies and she has several goats that she milks for that express purpose. I have seen where the goats have been trained to get on the stand and the calves can nurse directly off them. She milks hers then feeds the calves. I have both milked my cows and fed calves, and gotten calves grafted on the cows. You do what works best for you.

 

[Ron Bequeath]

Oh..you mentioned goat milk...once my goats are being milked...could I use their milk for a calf to get it big enough to butcher?

Why not? A while back 25 years in the dairy goat journal there was an article where the auther of the article was raising a calf or calves from the auction and showed a picture of a goat on a milk stand and a calf nursing from the goat. Once its weaned then its put on grain and pasture. And raised just like any other beef animal til its between 18 to 24 months. Matter of fact when i was making cheese from my milk i would take the kids and put them on replacer, they would always get diarrhea. So since whey is 13% protein and replacer of atleast 13% protein instead of using water i mixed the whey with the reolacer and the kids stool firmed ul and the made weight gain faster.

 

[Ron Bequeath]

Sure, if that's what you're after. If you just want cheap meat n bones for a pack of dogs...

Sorry i guess you havent read more of my posts. I have raised unwanted calfs to 600 or 750 pounds. Just off of goats milk, keopectate, Gatorade, aspirin. And never used anything from a vet. Once they where weaned they where turned out on pasture and supplimented good ground grain and boy the cuts where great. Ate the best meat even after the steaks where gone and I'd handle any of those burgers the taste was scrumptious. The problem with to many people is they like to leave their footpri ts all over creatio . I believe in just the opposite, the smaller the footprint the more you consume and the less waste there is. Of course i have had loss and death nut that gets composted or consumed but other partakers on my farmette. We try to waste nothing even to the point of composting humanure and liquids. You aught to read the book Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins one of the best world acclaimed texts on the subject. Everything is recycled, butchered, shared, and used in all the most useable methods possible. Doesn't always work out but i make a pretty good stab at it.

 

[secuono]

Sorry i guess you havent read more of my posts. I have raised unwanted calfs to 600 or 750 pounds. Just off of goats milk, keopectate, Gatorade, aspirin. And never used anything from a vet. Once they where weaned they where turned out on pasture and supplimented good ground grain and boy the cuts where great. Ate the best meat even after the steaks where gone and I'd handle any of those burgers the taste was scrumptious. The problem with to many people is they like to leave their footpri ts all over creatio . I believe in just the opposite, the smaller the footprint the more you consume and the less waste there is. Of course i have had loss and death nut that gets composted or consumed but other partakers on my farmette. We try to waste nothing even to the point of composting humanure and liquids. You aught to read the book Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins one of the best world acclaimed texts on the subject. Everything is recycled, butchered, shared, and used in all the most useable methods possible. Doesn't always work out but i make a pretty good stab at it.

?
I'm, originally, replying to OP, not you. So, no, I didn't read any of your posts.
I'm not particularly for or against what you do, if it works for you, more power to ya.

 

[Duckfarmerpa1]

I was just curious why on earth these ani were being sold so cheap...and how much it would cost...but how you would even go about raising a week old chalk to be big enough to butcher at a realistic size...600lbs?

 

[Ron Bequeath]

I was just curious why on earth these ani were being sold so cheap...and how much it would cost...but how you would even go about raising a week old chalk to be big enough to butcher at a realistic size...600lbs?

Of course it takes 18 to 20 months, but I figure if you have an extra teat on that cow or an extra goat in milk and some sort of pasture or a source of good hay it can be done. In 18 months, I butchered a jersey steer and the 300 lbs of marbled meat we got from it was not only tasty but great to the last cut, even the hamburger was great on the barbecue bun, in chili, spaghetti, strohanoff, or hm pizza rolls. Yes Jersey fat is yellow but that just means there's more carotene in it. Raise one and enjoy.

 

[Duckfarmerpa1]

Ohhh, ok, we were thinking milk cows didn’t taste as good..thanks for the tip!