02/22/07, 11:39 AM
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Alberta Farmgirl
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Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Alberta, Canada (Not the USA!)
Posts: 903
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We raise feeder calves ourselves.
We buy them when they're 500 lbs, 6 months old, just freshly weaned off their mommas in the fall. Usually they're bought when prices are at a bit of a low, at around $85/cwt. They're penned in a smaller corral for a few weeks to get them used to their new home, given their shots for shipping fever, and also keeping an eye on them for such illnesses that always come up in newly weaned calves as respiratory. Some folks south of us have other things to worry about like blackleg, lice, etc. In four weeks they're run through again with booster shots (Vit A/D shots, plus Oxyvet LA200), and dehorned, if there's a few horned calves running with the herd.
We feed them barley silage and timothy-alfalfa-smooth brome hay, and through out a bit of straw for them to survive the cold winter months. In the spring, they're still on the barley silage and hay, until the grass has grown to a good enough length (we throw them on the pasture when the grass is at least 9" tall), and they're on pasture for the summer. They get a whole mix of grasses: smooth brome, meadow brome, fescue, wheatgrass, reed-canary, clover, and alfalfa (last two legumes are mostly volunteer, especially clover). We rotate them onto three different pastures so's the grasses get to regenerate and the pasture rests a little.
Then we sell them in the fall, when they're between 900-1000 lbs, sent to a local feedlot to get fattened up for a few months before slaughter.
Some folks buy calves at the same age as we do, but buy them at a different time of year (spring, mostly) and fatten them up on pasture, until they reach 600 lbs, then sell them. We sell them at a higher # because we get more profit thataway (even though the prices are lower for 900-1000 lb steers than they are for 500/600lbers.)
There's even a market for fattening up heifers for slaughter, though I don't know much about that, I assume that it is the same process as what it is for steers.
I forgot to add another thing. Sometimes we get bulls or stags in the steer herd, so we have to spend some extra $$$ to get them castrated via vet. Our vet doesn't charge much for the process, luckly. Depending on how busy we are with seeding crops and other things, often the bulls/stags get cut at about 8 or 9 months old; sometimes sooner.
And you have to expect to loose some animals. Every cattle operation goes through that, though I think you are already aware of that.
If you have any questions on this, prairiegirl, don't hesitate to ask. BTW, hope that helps a bit.
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