New Arrivals and Old Friends

Hello friends!  

I have many new arrivals for you to meet this week. Starting with my new best friend and partner in crime.... 

Shadow!! 

Shadow was found early last week near the farm and he has been hanging out ever since.  He really likes helping with chores and riding in the truck!  He also loves to fetch.  So far no one has claimed him and I may just take him to the vet this week to get him all checked out!

The calf farm also got a couple new neighbors.   Two cows and a bull.  The cattle are the neighbors and he primarily turns them out to keep the bull and cows with no calves away from the rest of the herd just for safety reasons or breeding reasons.

He looks very serious.  I am sure he puts up with nothing in his big woods lot.  

Our next new arrival is another important one!  The boys have been very busy, as I said last week, planting corn.  The regular #2 corn is done and seed corn and beans are in the works, but you can already see the fruits of their labor!  

This was taken early last week, the corn is growing so much already!  

And I saved the best new arrivals for last!  Double D had 6 baby lambs!  5 boys and 1 girl!  Look how cute these boys are!  

Awwwwww

Now for the old friends,  if you look closely you can see two previously introduced friends.  726 is Smores from "An Average Day" fame and 704 is Freckles from "Beware of Buckethead" fame.  They are all grown up and in the weaning pin!  The weaning pin is full if can't tell.  

That is about it for this week, just keeping up.  We are actually short calves due to the busy spring calving season being over so life is pretty nice right now complete with pretty nice weather!  

Calf Count: 69 

Enjoy your week!  

The Lifecycle of the Cattle Farm

Hello again!

Meet my new friends.  They have no names so if you have ideas let me know! 

So I did get 8 new little guys this week including the two you see above, but other than that it was a rather slow week at least in terms of the blog.

We did finally get our rain.  Almost 2 inches this week which is a ok.  The forecast for this week is more rain...not so ok for the boys.  

Anyway, since I didn't accomplish much other than the regular this week I thought I would talk about the lifecycle of our cattle.

So let's review what you know so far.  I get them when they are a few days old, they hang out in their snazzy huts for about 2 months, and then they get weaned!  

From the weaning pin, they head to one of our many lots where they proceed to grow up one pound at a time.  We are almost at full capacity so many of the lots are full but we are making it work.  

One of the lots

These guys you see here are actually 6 months old.  I raised them from the beginning and they are getting quite big!  They have moved around a few times but here they are now, and they will likely stay here quite a while.  I would venture to guess that they weigh anywhere from 400 to 600 pounds.  

Eventually they will get to be upwards of 1000 pounds and move to the big finish lot.

That's where these big boys are!  

The finish lot has a big feed bunk and plenty of room so they can get really big and still stay happy.  They stay at the finish lot until they weigh between 1300 and 1700 pounds.  When their day arrives, they take a ride in the trailer to the sale barn where they are normally sold to a meat packing company.  The company takes them and we get a check to use to start anew.  The boss man only goes to the sale on Saturdays and we try to make it work so that we can send 10 steers a week.  It doesn't always work, but that is the goal.  And if you do the math that means 520 calves go to market a year.  Not a bad number if you ask me.  

Now not all the steers go to the sale.  Sometimes we do take in some steers to a local butcher who will butcher the steer as we wish.  We often sell the meat to friends or neighbors who are interested.  We often don't make money on this, but the steers usually have some sort of issue, not effecting the meat, but their life like a broken leg or something that does not allow them to grow up.  Its less of a loss than a total loss and we get to enjoy all our hard work through some tasty meals.

Now I know the next question, do I eat my own calves.  Yes I do, its a fact of life on a farm that your raise these guys for food so I have learned to accept  thanks to all those years of 4-H.

Either way in a little more than a year's time (anywhere from 12 to 18 months) the calves are grown up and sold to feed America and/or the world.

Questions or thoughts for next week?  Let me know!


Until next time!

Red thinks you should enjoy the sunshine like him, relax!  

Have a good week!

Calf Count: 71