It's 50 deg outside, sunny, and I got a good idea grenade...

Don't beat me up folks, just set me straight..... You don't see a lot of cattle on pasture here in my area unless they have their bellies full and have a little space to enjoy the sun. Just got offered a couple bull calves for next to nothing and have access to hay, silo hay, corn silage, and corn within a half mile. Horses will be vacating the stalls in a couple weeks until about November. Trying to find the breed, but these are dairy cattle but big hefty ones not like jerseys or holsteins. Could I take a couple calves and have them ready to butcher/sell by say October?

Don't care that muck for the beef here, but if I fed it like you folks do, I'd have some good stuff I think.

If I can have them gone by October, I could do 3 or 4 and maybe pay for feed/pasture rent for all including horses. At least, I'd be shoveling sh!t for something that was paying for itself.


Thoughts????

If you have a market for the beef, yes. Maybe organic is popular there?

12 to 18 months to have a calf to butcher weight.

Maybe I didn't point out that I'm a little thick headed.....
Could I have them outa here by fall or sooner? Neighbor has an organic operation. No fertilizer other than manure, and the beef gets only hay and haylage. Doesn't taste any different than deer and wild boar........

Marketing would be no problem, just have to have them out of here before the horses come home.

Dave

What do you have to lose,nothing. But you need to ask your self are these calves healthy. I have all ways done skin test on them, pinch the hide on the neck and let it go if snap's back, thats good do they have the sh**s,if not thats good.
cheap meat.They must be brown swiss:
Go for it:
JR.Frye

I don't know what they are, but here's one..

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Wilhelma_Hinterw%C3%A4lder.jpg

Calves look real good and monthly vet visits are mandatory here. Health is not an issue, just time. If I had to keep them a full year, I'd have to use a stall in the barn (no direct sunlight). Very common here, but I said I'd never do that to an animal.

Dave

You can butcher a calf at any size. They call the smaller ones Veal.

Feb to Oct = 8 months
A 8 month old Holstein or Brown Swiss that is WELL FED should weigh around 508 lbs.

If you are looking for beef 8 months is just not going to cut it.

If they are baby calves, no Dave. They are not going to be very big by October.

They are a few days old. How long do you think before they can be butchered?

Having them out by October shouldn't be a problem as long as you don't have any funny rules regarding butchering age. You could have them butchered at day one if you wanted. 8 months is not going to get them looking like the one in your link. That takes a couple years.

As far as paying for themselves. Feed cost depend on feed source(s). If you have to buy everything it could be up to a couple bucks a day each. If you have your own hay and only buying grains it may be under a buck. Your going to have to do some math here. At a min (depending on the age of the animal) I would figure (on average) about 30 lbs good hay and a gallon of grains (7-8lbs) per day per animal. Lesser quality hay I bump that by half (45lbs). Basicly all they can eat. If not using any grain I make sure that hay is something like alfalfa. This is a guess as there are may variables (breed, age, goals, beef prices, etc..).

Now if you can put an average of a pound, pound and a half per day your looking to add around 300 lbs on them (8x30=240 x1=240, x1.5=360). If you up the grain and really hit them hard you might get to 4-450 lbs. So your starting point is going to mean a lot. Being they are practically free I guessing their going to start off small, as in a few months old, so you might get them to 600 lbs if starting around 250-300lbs. But there's nothing wrong with young beef. Just do not expect dinner plate sized steaks.

Only real concern I would have with your plan is the stall sharing. It would really suck to have the horses come down with something the cows left behind or vis-versa. But I have no experience with it (horses and cows). My problem was with rotation. I learned real quick you have to do one heck of a good cleaning job between sets of calves to keep the previous ones from making the next sick. But I was starting with week old calves. I sure the older they get the less of a problem it would be.

(reply to post at 06:01:26 02/24/10)

Click to expand...

Looking at a few days old. Keep i coming folks.............Rabbits are looking better and better...........Like the meat better anyway. It's just the tire kickers when you have rabbits for sale...........
Can get more for less on rabbits, just wife gets attached to them and I end up eating all myself.


Dave

Dave;
Raising calves from a few days old can be a big challange for someone that has never done it before. You can get good healthy calves and still have problems.
You will need to bottle feed these calves twice a day at a set time each day for 6 to 8 weeks. I do not know what milk replacer is going for but I do know it is not cheap.
Once weaned you will need to feed them grain because they can not survive for the first few months on hay alone.
At about 9 months old they can do well on good quality hay and very little if any grain. You can up the grain just before butchering to finish them out.
Since it takes about 21 months to get this type of cow in the 1000 lb live weight range you are looking at some time next year before you can butcher it.

It would be better for you to start a calf around the first of the yera or even in the fall to take advantage of grass in the summer at a age they can use it; and you need to stall the calf for the first 2 months anyway to bottle feed it.

Never heard of that Breed,Dave Iv seen pictures
and thats all. Good luck:
JR.Frye

Dave, when I was at Hahn, I lived off base in a little town called Biebern. The house with the Apartment I lived in was on the edge of town next to a large field. Someone had their calves get out and they were running loose all over the place.

There had been an article in the Stars and Stripes about Oklahoma, New Mexico, and the Texas Pahandle and the shortage of available ranchhands and they were trying to hire people to work out there.

It was shop's joke for quite awhile about how Texas, and New Mexico were short cow hands and how "Tex" was out rounding up cattle all over West Germany for free.

Good Luck with those calves. I always enjoyed the pork, but the beef they raise there in Germany is all grass fed. If you get a recipe to make schwenkbraten please share it. Haven't had that in many years.

Not with those feeds. Lotsa roughage puts on frame, corn and protein pellets alone put on meat in 13-14 months. Grass fed can run up to three years, tough meat. Silage and grain will still take a couple years to finish.

Crusader,

I'm not dave2, but here is you a recipe for schwenkbraten that I found. There is a link to that one , but here are a few more to cut and paste . You got my curosity up about what it was.

Whizkid


Here are a few more recipes for it. Just click and paste .


http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/German-Schwenkbraten/Detail.aspx

http://www.kitchenproject.com/german/recipes/Schwenkbraten/index.htm

http://www.discusscooking.com/forums/f38/schwenkbraten-grilled-german-pork-steaks-20274.html
schwenkbraten