Some days this cattle farming pays off
 

A 6 year old Jersey BULL....I always eat them ....I just can not give them away ....at the sale



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I need to see the inside, where you cut into it....hope it's med/rare to rare! Looks delicious. Good salad and some French bread with that, the perfect dinner! Oh, and some good wine too.

And the misses is cooking me chicken tonight, boy does that T-bone look yummy...I just showed her the pic, she agrees yummy and juicey....Topside

Black Angus does all the bragging, while Jersey has all the flavor...

Eat well my friend, eat well (as Plowpoint tips his hat to you in complete understanding and respect for Jersey Beef!)

I really can not tell much difference in the steaks of any bred. and starting to cook after steak is at room temp....sure helps them on the juicy side...Yes a very slim line of pink very small I cook steaks done but never t bones the bone seems to make them harder to cook like i want


the Jersey bulls at the sale bring so little at 5 or 6 years old this is always the best way to go for me

Ooh that looks delicious!

Oh Yum! cant wait til I can have my own home grown beef!

I've eaten many a jersey bull but never a six year old! They always get ornery enough at age 1-2 they make it to the stew pot a lot sooner.

Looks pretty good.

Francismilker...I use the fear of JOHN ON THEM...seems to work for me I still have another 6 year old and a 3 year old in the pasture now all have the fear of JOHN in them since I got them off the bottle

Pardon me for being new to the cattle business. What is FEAR OF JOHN? Is it something I can also use? If so can I use it on my teenager as well?

I started this years ago when I bought 2 bull claves from DoESTHOUHAVEMILK... she had just sold a bull that was just over a year old because he was acting mean ..I read how mean a jersey bull was at 2 years old and I figured...the people bottle feed them and they petted them and really made babies out of them reading a 100 head lines on Internet.....tame jersey bull kills owner...that really did not sound like a tame bull to me


realizing that tame did not work...


I started something else the FEAR OF JOHN .AS THESE bulls were just weaned...so I would pour out a bag of feed for the herd of calfs I put them in with and walk around the feed trough if the bull let me get into kick distance I kicked him in the belly..and say MOVE ON .not hard just everytime they let me get close....sometimes I had to take a quick step to get near them to kick. and I did this EVERYDAY...got to were I had to go hunting for the bull in the herd to kick him...also got to were the bull was looking at me with one eye and looking at the feed with the other and I always yelled MOVE ON ..as I said NOT HARD just I am BOSS you MOVE AWAY when I got close...and it has worked so far on 5 bulls.. I even did it with the 2 year old bull I bought...he is the one in pasture now 6 years old and going strong

.MY bulls even with a cow in heat I can walk out there and yell MOVE ON and they will move away now they will not leave the cow very far but they will move away and never paw the ground if they do time to MOVE ON TO THE FREEZER only one has had to go to freezer early I think he was 4..and he would bow his neck paw ground .....now I have had them butt the tractor with a hay bale on it.....like they do not have the fear of the tractor at that 6 years age but I can get off and say move on and they will walk away...my wife also can say move on and they move on...but I MAKE HER HAVE A STICK IN HER HAND ALSO


Do not know but it might work on a teen ager if you start early but the kicking in the belly will get you in trouble


btw My name is JOHN MYERS get it FEAR OF JOHN

One other thing I let my bulls walk thought the milking parlor with the cow there wanting to follow my set up lets me do that.....so they never think I am in there with there cows..so I never chanlleage them for herd KING but they know who is BOSS

ha! Good for me to keep in mind. Will have to put the fear of J into mine.

I had a Great Uncle that used to do that very same thing...hitting a Bull to tell him who was boss.

After a few months my Great Uncle got between a in-heat Heifer and the bull and the Bull showed my Great Uncle just how frail the human body is when a 1200 pound bull decides to kick, stomp and nudge a 60 year old man. In the end my Great Uncle spent over a week in the intensive care with punctured lungs, bleeding organs, broken bones and other trauma I do not remember.

There was no need of it...

I have grown up on dairy farm all my life and while Bulls get my respect, we have never gone out of our way to beat on one. We have cracked a few wayward bulls over the head with a 2x4 and used other corrective action, but to go out of the way to deliberately beat on an animal is completely asinine and foolhardy.

There is an American Proverb that says: Every Dog has its day. In every farm I have been too that has intentionally abused their bulls, every bull had its day as well.

I have a 2 year old bull, and I just tell him that momma is going to smack his nose. Then I raise my hand like I will smack him and he behaves. He likes to be petted and given snacks. If he doesn't mind, he doesn't get them. Now if my DH walks out there, he tries to challenge him. I told him that I believe that it is a male thing and he can smell DHs testosterone. May be wrong on that, but DH has never done anything to the bull and he really doesn't like him. I am safe though, I am momma and momma gives treats and love. ;)

Plowpoint....I never BEAT A BULL..and as I said NOT HARD I did kick a calf..after he got to 250 pounds I could never get close to them to kick them......why I called it THE FEAR OF JOHN..

...A full grown bull hitting with a 2 x4 to teach him WHO IS BOSS...is crazy to me..
hitting with a 2 x 4 to load on a trailer or to go down a chute is another thing but a shocker works better I also said if they paw the ground there gone....if they get the idea they CAN BE BOSS...hard to change there mind with anything



Sorry that happen to your Great Uncle

bambitsk with him coming into your space wanting a snack YOU NEED TO BE CAREFULL.....he will want to get HIS snack out of your pocket or were every you have it hid....2 years old is when they can TURN TO A MEAN BULL in one day

you did not say it was a jersey but those are the mean ones or the dairy breeds ...a 2 year old angus are usally tame for ever

myersfarm,
If you steer them does it stop the meanness?

agreed

YES if you do it when they are young ...never tried to steer a 6 year old bull would not take the chance of losing STEAKS
but every once in a while a steer or a heifer will hurt you just to get what they want a treat in your pocket......a friend had a heifer he always scratcher her neck ...he stopped the bush hog out in pasture and was greasing it heifer walked up wanting her scrathes he ignored her and she butted him head first right on bush hog...

...nothing mean about it

but it could have been really bad a 1000 pound anything does not know how hard it can hurt a 200 pound man just by rubbing against it

myersfarm, I realize dairy bulls have a rep for mean, but your statement that angus bulls stay nice forever is well ..bull. I have seen a few scary angus actually there is not any breed that should be trusted.

BRUCE READ what I said you missed the word USALLY

No I mean steer them young. I have a jersey about to calf and I am actually hoping for a bull since I have had only heifers this yr and have no replacement steer for next yrs meat.

yes steers are tamer

Do bulls taste nice? Or do they get the cow version of boor taint?

NOT MINE That I can taste but I only have 20 cows and 2 bulls I bred to have calves in Sept.. and pull my bulls April 1 and I keep the bulls on grass for several months with out cows and the month before freezer camp I feed them 8 to 10 pounds of corn also getting the 3 year old bull ready for breeding season...I usally have a baby bull in there also...I guess the bull cleaness himself of all the boor taint during that time....I never tatse it...it might be different if you pulled him from the breeding herd and butcher him also with out the corn

I feel the corn makes the meat tender because people talk about tuff steaks and I feel it is all in how you cook them I have mine sliced to 1 1/4 inches thick also

How does the meat from the bull taste as compared to a steer.
is there a difference in flavor. how do you finish/ grass or grain?
I have a 3yr old herford bull coming with 2 cows.
Not sure if it.s worth keeping him with only 2 cows.
Any thoughts

I have only had one steer in 15 years so hard for me to tell taste but my bulls taste better than a bought steer from the store thats for sure...... feed grain after a long time away from cows

I would like to point out something.
We have generally shipped our bulls by around 15-18 months old. They have done their job *and* we have over 40 fenceline neighbors and live in the village. The liability involved in keeping a mature bull around is not worth it. Especially with our fencing. There are some places where the fencing is one strand of barbed wire (if any wire at all). For that matter, until three years ago, we mostly AIed, and ran bulls for clean up purposes.
Not sure which bull we had at that time, though I would suspect it was Jason. He had twice shown a touch of aggression. The one time towards me when I was wearing a hood. I took the hood off and he was fine.
The night he was to be shipped? I walked right up to him, put the halter on his head and led him up to the barn. He was calm and fine. But, he had bred everyone and so it was time for him to go.
He had been hand raised, of course. We don't baby our hand raised bulls. They learn respect, but not through physical violence from humans.
Oscar's older maternal half brother is 3 or 4 this year. I don't recall which. He was exclusively dam raised. He'd be gone, but we can't hold him in a pen long enough to get him loaded (he has his daddy's issues). He hates being out of the fence, so so far is not much of an issue. Not aggressive at all. In fact, he "heads for the hills" when we walk towards him.
I'm trying to remember the last bull we had that was down and out mean...I just don't think we ever kept one long enough for that to be an issue.
Unmanageable in our fencing? Sure. Done with their job? Yup. Mean and a danger? Not really.
Even Mast was not showing serious signs of aggression. He was not purposely charging us or being threatening. He just finally realized we weren't bigger than him and that he could go where he wanted. Hence needing to ship him that night. He had become a large liability with so many neighbors so close by.
The farm used to keep the Jersey bulls for a long time. 6-8 years old. Until they needed new blood. The bulls tended to go on to other farms to be used.

Bulls definitely need to be respected and never be trusted. Period, but I just have to wonder how much the upbringing has on it. Our dam raised, but handled bull, acted the same as our hand raised bulls.

Ah well. If we had the proper fencing, we would have been able to keep Mast longer, but with our fencing what it is, it means keeping bulls around for less time.

I just wanted to make it clear we ship the bulls when we do due to liability of neighbor issues and not because the bulls have already turned.
Do they have that potential? Yup. Every male does.
You think bulls are bad? Hang out on the goat boards for awhile. Smaller animal means being raised even more improperly which leads to aggression issues.
We don't have aggressive bucks here either due to the way they are hand raised.

My bull is a smaller Scottish Highland. I never hide treats. They know tyecontainer, and I always keep it in plain site for tyem to see.

I have had beef from both bull and steer and Jersey and Jersey angus cross. There were slight differences. Bulls grow faster and put more meat on. Some tend to put more beef on their necks, which isn't the best place for beef. As for taste, bulls have a slightly more "beefy" taste (I can't describe it any other way) which I prefer. Steers tend to have less flavor IMHO. I would eat a 6 year old bull anytime. My wife won't, but that is all in her head. I think she would if she would give it a chance. Oldest bull we ever had was 2 years old and tasted great.

I cut all my males this year just because I started AI this year and I don't want to end up with a young bull breeding his mom or sister or have to separate them out for breeding season and have them trying to get back in. My goal is to not have any more bulls - not because I don't like the meat! It is more because they tend to get out test the fences much more - and because of the issues with having bulls and AIing cows. Also so I can have one herd of cows all year round and still time my calving.

As for the bulls getting mean, I have never had a problem with mine but I always carry a stick or pipe or something just in case. I have found the bulls raised around bulls don't tend to be as mean towards people. Bulls raised in the absence of a dominant male, have more of a tendency to see people as a threat to their territory - but that is just my opinion. Of course when it comes to cows in heat, you better be careful regardless. Once those hormones get flowing they change. I would never challenge a bull trying to breed a cow unless I absolutely had to - then I would have a good stick and a plan to escape if things go the wrong way. IMHO