Ive picked up two longhorn steers. One i got 4 months ago at 450lb i estimate he is 650-700 now and i just picked up another one at around 700lb. They are fixing to be on alfalfa and wheat fodder aka sprouted grain with 8 acres to forage throughout the next 4 months. Possibly sprouted corn when it warms up.
Good video never have done it this way only grass fed but I plan on doing it this year. Also I definitely don't want my calves living in a feed lot either. Want them to be in a natural habitat!! Like your plan.
how old are your boys at the end there? and im curious About what age do you castrate them? Is that just done with an elastic ring/ band or do you open them up and remove the teste too? You mentioned that if you let them grow out as a bull calf then steer them later they grow a stronger frame and make a beefier steer, What sort of overall carcass gain is achievable doing it that way?? Im in New Zealand and generally most are steered very young so as not to 'check' their growth so im curious about your out come, i guess to factor in the cost to castrate older because here we have to call the vet out, Do you castate your own? interesting video, thank you for sharing.
We raise our beef to about 2 years of age. They will typically be very close to 1000lbs at butcher. On the rail they will weigh 500-600lbs and that will yield 350-400lbs of retail cuts. We castrate our own. I band them. Most often I do it either at weaning or shortly after. I have a video on my channel detailing how I do it.
They were 10-12 months old in the video. We typically ween ours somewhere around 6-8 months depending on the conditions of the mother, weather conditions, and how the health of the steer looks. I’m shooting for a live weight of 900-1000lbs at the time of butcher. Because butcher dates are so hard to get, I schedule dates way in advance and then sort of work backwards. I know I want to slowly increase grain for a minimum of 60 days and a maximum of 120. So I basically set down and look at what their weight is at weaning. Then look at how long I have to the butcher date. Then I develop my plan of when I’ll start the feed out process to try and get them to a minimum 900 lbs. it’s a little different each time. If an animal is kept on grass the whole time and never fed grain they have to be butchered older to hit the 900 lb weight I’m looking for. These guys were butchered at 1.5 years. For grass finished it’ll normally be more in the 2 year range.
@@murrayfarmranch8447 Thank you for the reply. I've got 3 steers around 18 months old and plan to harvest a couple this fall so trying to gauge when to start introducing grain. The drought here has driven hay prices up to $24 a bail. What's the easiest method to determine weight? The tape method? We only have a small herd so equipment is scarce at the moment.
Yes hay and feed is getting ridiculous. It’s only going to be worse with diesel prices. A 1000 lb steer will yield about 430 lbs of table meat. If you are raising angus I’d imagine that at 18 months they are already pretty good size. 90 days of grain with good quality grass or hay will probably get you what you are looking for. I hope that helps. It’s a little different each time. Make sure you have mineral available to them as well. They can have all the protein in the world but if they don’t have required trace minerals they won’t gain like they should. The tape method will get you close. Honestly the more you do and the more you are around them the better you judge weight. If I ever take any to the vet I pay close attention to weights and also when I drop them off for butcher we get live weights so now I am pretty good at estimating their weight.
I start them slowly to reduce GI upset. The needs differ on the time of the year and what sort of grass or hay they are on. For example, if I have a steer in the winter months that moved to winter pasture and is being fed dry hay forage I may start with a ration of 5 or so pounds because the dry day they are filling up on will reduce diarrhea. Another example would be for a spring steer that is on a green pasture such as wheat, rye, or barely. The lush green forage is a lot for their bodies to handle and if you add a lot of grain initially it will go right through them. I may start them on only 2 lbs or so then increase the ration every 3 days or so. Basically I watch their stool and make adjustments by what I’m seeing. I don’t want to waste money by having the feed go right through them. Each batch of steers is a little different because the conditions change.
These three will go in October. Currently we have 4 bull calves from this year’s crop that we will be evaluating for next fall. We will have more calves born in the fall that we’ll evaluate. Hopefully in 2022 and 2023 we will start having calves butchered both spring and fall.
I’m mainly looking for body weight. I try to get ours to around 1000lbs. That will put them at around 600 lbs on the rail and 400ish pounds of cuts and burger. The way we utilize our grass paddocks and feed out period I’m not worried about flavor, marbling and so forth. I know they’ll taste good.
I don’t know where I would get corn silage in my area. If it was readily available I’d say absolutely go for it. I buy the super sacks of mixed feed which run about $230/ton. My feed out program fluctuates from year to year based on what’s available. For example, one year I got an excellent deal on horse quality small squares of alfalfa. I used those for the bulk of my feeding program that year. Another year the feed store mixed a corn molasses mix that they planned on selling to deer hunters but it was too sticky to run through feeders. I bought several thousand pounds of it dirt cheap and feed it heavily that year. The thing that never really changes is I try to always give them access to high quality forage and supplement with good quality hay. They have free choice mineral at their disposal. I think you can tweak your feed out program any number of ways and still get excellent results. Thank you for watching!
