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price of jersey bull calves, and raising them

D

Dave from MN

Well-known Member
Just wondering if any one can tell me why jersey bull calves are so cheap. Watchig ad"s around here I see alot asking just $30-$70. Alot of Angus/ holstien as well. I realize the angus usually are from heiers for calving ease, but is there something witht he Jerseys that they are so cheap? I have heard they are a tender tasty beef when finished. I will have alot of low TW corn so thinking of getting a bunch to ad to the feeder group. I have raised many holstien and swiss, and swedish red 2-4 weeks calves and have only lost 1 over they years. Can soe one fill me in on the jerseys?
 
They have a slow rate of gain. The plus is they finish out at a lower rate if you want one for the freezer and don't care if you used more corn to get it there. A local dairy takes some of the newborn bull calves out and shoots them. Makes me sick. I really hope G0D really makes them squirm someday on the seat of judgement for doing this to his creations.
 
We sell all our feeders as freezer beef. Most people like them in that 150-175# hanging weight to a 1/4. Most cant afford or have freezer storage for more. 80% of my corn will be <50#TW so marketing may be an issue with it anyway
 
They don't get very big very fast but they are usually hardy and more parasite resistant than Holsteins therefore they do better on pasture. I buy every one that I see run through the sale barn as long as they are cheap and look fairly healthy, cut them, worm them and turn them out and forget about them, a couple years later they are worth a little over cull cow price as long as they weigh 800 lbs or so. The key is to raise them as cheaply as possible, if you have pasture, cheap hay and fall fields to graze you will make a few bucks, I personnaly would not feed much grain as in trying to produce a fat Jersey steer unless I was going to eat him myself.
 
This is the time to ask yourself if it's worth the cost in the end to save $50 a head right now. It'll be like growing corn without fertilizer because it's cheaper that way.
 
What the others have said. My brother has raised a few and he thought it was better to butcher them at 600 pounds for freezer meat. They run small and really stall out in growth beyond the 600/700 pound mark.

I know a guy in the KC area that now breeds all his jerseys to Red Simmental bulls, his cows are 1/4 or so Simmental too. The calves start small and grow to beat the band - they go through the sale ring and are usually called red angus. They make pretty good beef calves.

Until I talked to him I had no idea that Simmentals started out as milk cows.
 
The Jersey bull calves just are not worth much because they finish so SLOW. They will never be very big and they get there slowly. If I get anything with Jersey in it I sell them right then. I am not going to waste feed on a calf that will NEVER finish out very well.

Some guys claim they have a sweeter tasting meat. I have eat them and could not tell any difference. I think they need to think the meat is sweeter/better to justify the extra feed cost to themselves.

If you have low test weight corn then just find a livestock feeder and sell it to him directly.

Too many guys are getting stupid on feeder calves right now. 500-600 LBS calves bringing $2 a pound. Just stupid. They are giving away any profit right from the get go.
 
They also have yellow fat, which looks just wrong to many people- they think there's something wrong with the meat.
 
They end up as dog food over here! Real bad conversion rate, Yellow fat, Everything everyone else has said....even Holstein bulls are not good sellers here. Thye need to stand with their head in the meal bin to make anything of them! But at least they grow fast. We normally try to kill them at 18 months.
Sam
 
one summer I bought a half a dozen to clean up around the buildings on a place I used to live on, I grained them and got 2.5 pounds a day, I was complaining about that and someone told me I was lucky to get that, one plus is that they were like goats and ate the weeds and everything, I bought them cheap and sold them cheap
 
I have raised them for most of my life and love the little darlings they are great on grazing set ups use little grain but it depends where you get them and how well they are started
when i first started doing them i had a hard sell but as more people found out about the meat and raising them cant keep up with demand its a niche market .by the way the reason people milk jerseys to poor for holstien to proud for goats
 
i raised 2 for beef . no grain just grass pasture. my kids say it was the best beef they ever had. better than the 2 black angus i had and not nearly as flighty.
 
They go for cheap or free around here. They never get much meat on them but they sell decent if you have nothing much in them. Just make sure you cut them right. I've seen a 6 month old Jersey bull calf put a man in the hospital. Those who don't cut their Dairy bulls are looking for trouble.
 
My 78 year old neighbor has 8 Angus and about 30 chickens. I asked him if he makes any money with his cows and chickens. His reply, NO, not at $75 a bail, it's just something to do, hobby.

His chickens are in to recycling what the cows leave behind. If you are what you eat, guess what's in those brown eggs? I won't eat any of his eggs, too dark inside.
George
 
Aw come on George, you can't be serious! Chickens everywhere eat stuff any human would find objectionable at best. But I suppose it's like the old saying, "Those who enjoy sausage should not watch it being made!"

Where do you draw the line? That grass the beef eats is fertilized with crap and decaying plant and animal material. The grass will "eat" dead human remains, the cow eats the grass, we eat the cow. Circle of life and all that.
 

Fellow had a doz. holstein male calves, and couldn't sell them except at a loss so he figured he would try giving one away. He put it in a hutch out by the road with a "Free" sign on the hutch. He went back in the evening and found he had three.
 
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