Your thoughts on a beef cow
 

I'm going to have about 8-9 acres of fresh pasture that will need to be grazed in the spring. Although I have a four to five goats on it, I don't think they will be able to keep up with the growth. I want to raise me a beefing steer or two just for my wife and I and the close family to eat on. I'm not, I repeat I am not willing to spend a truck load of money on a beef breed. I do have the chance to buy week old holstein calves for 20-25 bucks a piece from a friend of mine who runs a dairy. The calves weight somewhere around 75-100 pounds, and he has told me that he will pick out the best of the best for me to have if i would like them. I thought this would be a good way to get my pastures mowed for free, and I would grain feed them some. I don't care about the bone to meat ratio, etc. I just would like to know would the meat be good. I won't have very much money tied up in them because I'm acquiring them for $20-$25 and the pasture is free.

What are your thoughts?

In my opinion:

If you buy the holstein steer, do NOT try to save money in your milk replacer. This will set the foundation of what your calf will become.

You say that you have free pasture. What about winter feed? Can you pasture year round? It will take quite awhile to get a steer to market weight on grass alone.

Holsteins are not as efficient as converting grass to beef as the "beef" breeds. You will find that holsteins will develop a "hay belly" more than overall body growth.

You do not have to buy a regestered beef breed. Many many crosses are great for freezer beef.

Overall I would not be happy with a grass fed holstein steer. You will hear many others say how great grass fed is.

I have raised holstein steers in the past. They were GREAT beef, but I had them on 95% grain after they were weaned.

Get 2 calves now and raise them to around 300 lbs and send both to the sale. Have a knowing person to buy you a beef steer weighing 600 plus lbs at the sale with the proceeds from the calves and put this steer on the pasture in the spring. You will have a steer big enough to process come fall.

Your plan sounds just fine to me. My family has been eating dairy steers(Holstiens, Ayrshires, Normandys, crosses, even a Brown Swiss )for 25 years. The meat will be leaner when you cook it, but plenty good just the same.
We generally feed thru one bag of milk replacer per calf, start them on grain by 2 weeks of age, keep them eating grain until they reach 400 pounds, then go the rest of the way on grass/hay and minerals right thru harvest.
You could possibly minimize your winter hay feeding expense by utilizing some of Agman's stockpiling feed for winter technique, as you are in a similar climate, yes?
Also, any level of rotational grazing you can employ will stretch your grazing land resources farther and result in better gains for your steers.
Click on Topside1's post ":Midwinter Humor" and you will see what a good Holstien Steer looks like. Yum, Yum. Looks good enough to eat. :)

You do realise don't you that at that weight you are going to have to invest some money in milk replacer so your investment is going to be a bit more than
$20-25?

Cheers,
Ronnie

I will be bottle feeding them the milk from my goats. Would that work better?

Yes, much better. Goat milk raises wonderful calves. But there again, its not free......but the results will be much better than on replacer.

As Up North said, I have also been raising dairy calves for meat for several years. I have in fact been told by the family I give the meat to that it is better tasting and leaner than regular beef meat. One piece of advice that was given to me from an older dairyman was this: If you don't want the steer to become "pot-bellied", get him to drink the milk from a bucket rather than suck it from a bottle as soon as you can. It is difficult for a couple of days getting the calf to drink milk from a bucket. I've had the best luck by letting the "hungry" calf suck on my finger and slowly lowering it down into the milk (then slipping my finger out). Once it realizes it isn't sucking, it will usually quit and then look up at you with sad, begging eyes. After a couple of days doing this, things usually come around.
I have found this "drinking" method of milk raising a calf to be more efficient and there is less cleaning of bottles. I do however wash the milk trough out thoroughly between uses.
I've also decided that it is financially better for me to not raise the steer up to normal beef slaughter weight. I get a better return (in my opinion) by getting the steer up to five or six hundred pounds and sending him to the packer rather than trying to finish him as heavy as a beef steer. I've noticed that a dairy steer tends to "stall" out on growth at this weight.
Once again, this is only my opinion. I'm sure there are several more about it in the forum. Good Luck!

How much meat should I expect to get off a Holstein steer that's around 700 pounds?

bump

The usual answer is 50% 60% depending on it's age at slaughter. A 700lb steer may yield only 40% just because it's far from full grown, and is holding alot of bone, guts, and less edible meat.

At the top of this forum open the List of Sticky Threads and look at the one on cuts of beef.

For a 1,000 pound steel you would expect to get about 465 pounds of retail cuts, with lots of hamburger. Of those only about 75 will be steaks. Some roasts, some stew meat and lots of hamburger. Thus, half would yield you about 232 pounds for your freezer, with maybe 35 of steak grade.

Now the above is likely a good beef breed. In AZ you might end up with something like a Texas Longhorn of long and lanky rather than short and fat.

I would say the above offer is outstanding. You can pretty well ramp up from 1,000 to 1,500 on the pounds of freezer beef - about 700 pounds. So half would be about 350. (Corrected: This isn't correct, see below - And you would only be paying about 60% of typical retail (excluding your transportation costs)). You can likely specify thickness of steaks and the amount of beef per package (e.g., a family of two would likely go for half the package amount of a family of four). If you like fatty hamburger a butcher likely has extra fat available from other carcasses they can mix in.

(Added: If you end up with 700 pounds of beef from a 1,500 liveweight at $1.60 per, you would pay about $3.43 for all cuts vs some $2.65 at the supermarket. However, knowing what you are getting should be worth a premium. Also, you might find two others and each takes 1/4th of all cuts.)

How to haul? Can you borrow a large chest freezer for the back of a pickup? If frozen at pick up and the freezer weren't open enroute it should stay frozen for a couple of days.

Beware of Tennesse though. Once you've seen it you won't want to leave.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last edited by Ken Scharabok : 01-01-2007 at 08:54 AM.

My last post was just a quick way for you to understand the outcome of butchered beef or dairy steers. Ken is a lot more knowledgeable on the subject than I am. Just buy two calves, raise them and enjoy the yummy outcome.

Thanks Up North, you have always enjoyed my simple humor. Plus your a great critic of animals...John

TSYork, in my recommendation above I was attempting to get you an animal to harvest weighing 1000+ pounds before next winter commences so that you would not have to feed hay or overwinter the animal.

Another outstanding explaination of the slaughter/butcher process by Ken our moderator...thanks Ken, hope you don't mind the cut and paste....John

Liveweight is on the hoof.

Hanging weight is after the head, hide, guts, organs, etc. has been removed from the carcass. Remember Rocky where he was using a side of beef for a punching bag. That was hanging weight. A general rule of thumb is for cattle hanging weight should be about 60% of liveweight. Varies some by breed, such as a Holstein likely won't produce the same hanging weight of an Angus.

Next term is somewhat subjective, so I'll use dressed weight. It is the hanging carcass after it has been prepared into 'retail cuts' - essentially from steaks to hamburger. There will be a weight loss from deboning and the cutting off of excess fat. Here a general rule of thumb is 45-47% of livesweight. A kicker is some folks want the bones for pets and some like excess fat ground up with the burger. Sometimes the heart and tongue are ground up with the regular hamburger. Here breed doesn't have as much of a difference as between liveweight and hanging weight.

Thus, if they took in a 1,000 pound steer each side should weigh roughly 300 pounds. When cut and wrapped you should end up with about 235 pounds of beef from each side. For how that should end up as particular cuts and quantity see the sticky thread mentioned earlier.

To find your cost per pound simply divide your payment by the weight of the packaged beef.

As a comparison to supermarket you can roughly use $2.65 per pound. Sometimes more, some times less depending on the supply of and demand for cattle as beef.

thanks agman i appreciate you looking out for me..... that's what i want is to slaughter befor next winter hits.

If you buy a Holstein bull calf in the spring, March lets say, the animal should weigh approx. 500-600lbs. by fall, let's say October. With that in mind Agmantoo has a given all of us a great way to get meat in the freezer fast. Bottom line in one year's time a properly raised Holstein steer will on average amount to 1000lbs live weight by years ends. Excellent beef with minimal wait....

Do you posters know how much the processor gleans from his efforts above the price he charges to the individual having the beef killed, skinned, cut and packaged?

The processer we use charges 25 dollars to slaughter and 33 cents a pound (processed weight). (they keep and sell the hides and heads... if you want to buy the hide back, it costs another 25 dollars)

We average a little better than the 40 - 50 percent back, but we also get the soup bones, heart, liver etc. returned (and used!).

Pat

Shannon,

We have raised three Holstein day old calves with success. Bottle feeding them with quality milk replacer or better yet goats milk will work fine. Pasture them over the summer. We sent 2 smaller ones (600 lbs) in the fall and kept the last one until the next year. Very lean meat and we decided to have most of the meat ground.

We used Mays Meats in Taylorsville.

I would be interested in getting a young dairy bull calf next spring. Our Elsie will calve in April and we expect she can feed her calf, a foster calf and still give us plenty of milk.

Rick

Rickydink,

Aren't you the gentleman I got "Willow" from? I may be thinking of someone else, but I thought is was you.

That would be me except the gentleman part. I talked to my father today and he agreed with what I posted about raising dairy bull calfs to eat.

How are the girl goats doing? I would be interested in getting any weaned bucklings from you next spring. Also a few pullets.

I am trying meat rabbits again as well. Isn't this fun??

Rick

I just got Willow back from the breeders last Saturday. She was bred to a very very very nice reg. fb USBGA Boer Buck.

I'll keep ya posted on the kids.

TYSYORK,
Glad to hear you have goats, as the calves will not mow the pasture completely and if you are able to turn goats in they will eat a lot of the "weeds". It's an amazing difference to see a field goats are in and one with just cows or horses.

The cheapest gain you will ever get is the weight above 700 lbs. I'd pasture it with a little grain and when it hits 700 lbs put it on full grain (work up slowly) for 60 to 90 days.