All Things Livestock...

[Spiveyman]

It is really neat when you see it done right by a momma cow that is worth more than her weight in beef. I love to see the herd come together. There is a story inside "Texas Longhorn Cookbook & Campfire Stories" about a matriarchal cow who was on her last legs. The rancher checked on her all day, and later that night she died. When the rancher got up the next morning the entire herd was laying down around her in a circle, with horns pointed out "as if to say, no coyote is going to get this one." We bought these cows in lots. Maggie and Lucie were our first two. They've been great. They came together and had pretty much grown up together. With just the two of them they each knew their place. Then we bought 8 more and stuck them in the field. Jumpy was the matriarch of that lot. She and Lucie fought it out a bit trying to see who would run the herd, Lucie kicked her tail. I think maybe that's why Jumpy started to raom. There are some pony's in the neighbor's field. Maybe they let Jumpy have control, so that's where she wanted to be. Here's a shot of Lucie:



Do you have any pictures of your bull(s) or cows? I'd like to see then as I'm not familiar with beefmaster cattle. (I think that's what you called them.)

 

[texasjohn]

Here's my web site, but I haven't maintained it in a long time.. has a few photos.

And, this is the breed web site.

 

[Spiveyman]

Thanks, at least now I know what you are talking about. That's a heafty looking bull there. Do you know what his weight topped out at?

Very interesting that the breed has brahman blood in it, yet disposition is one of the 6 essentials. Brahman's seem like the pit bulls of the cattle world. My uncle had some brahman in his herd, and they were always the cattle that seemed to want to kill you. I guess with the right selective breeding you can take advantage of the brahman traits you want and get rid of the bad stuff. I've heard that brahman cattle don't have the troubles with flies that most other cattle do (pink eye) because they can twitch their skin and keep them away better than the other breeds.

 

[texasjohn]

I have never had a case of pink eye, nor has anyone I know of, and that covers several thousand cattle.

When we had been in the business a few years, we had the vet over to vaccinate our heifers for brucelosis (mandatory to have vet..live vaccine, records). As we ran all animals thru the chute, he kept looking in the ears of each animal and sorta shaking his head. After watching this for about 10 animals, I asked him what he was doing. Seems he was looking for ticks. My immediate neighbor with black baldies had had him out only a couple of days before for all day. They had to put every one of his cattle in a chute, immobalize the head, dig into each ear and remove dozens of ticks from each. There were so many that they were filling up, dropping off and down into the ear canal, festering in there and causing all sorts of problems, including the staggers because they were losing their equilibrium from the problems. He had not found a single tick on any of my animals. We continued to watch, including all over each animal. Finally, we found one tick crawling on the hind quarters of one cow, but not latched on. I firmly believe that there is an oil in the hide of Beefmasters, likely from the Bramaha influence and hardiness trait, that is a repellent/inhibitor to ticks and biting insects.

Some years later, I sold a Beefmaster bull to an uncle. He used Beefmasters for several years. One time I assisted him working the herd and observed that the number of ticks attached to his animals was directly related to the amount of Beefmaster blood. His Charloais/Angus cross cows had quite a few, first cross heifers/cows had less, 2nd cross heifers would have 1 or two. That's my unscientific analysis.

Dispisition is, IMHO, highly heritable..either good or bad. I can see it's result in the calves of our bulls. Yes, there are bramaha cattle that will only show you their tail as they vanish into the brush.. and those that will stomp you in a pen. As you can see from my photos, it is easy to get close to my cattle. I have to be careful to not make petting pets of them... they are too big to hold in your lap. Bad disposition has been removed from the Beefmaster breed... except for the animals spoiled by bad handling, which happens in every breed.

The bull in the picture was about 1950 lbs, pasture condition in the photo.
Bull we are currently using is about 2200 lbs pasture condition.
Note: I don't believe in feeding bulls lots of grain/feed ... yes, they should be in good shape and stay that way on grass, but if you put fat on them, IMHO, it is solely for the purpose of impressing people, not for furthing their breeding capability. In fact, too much fat will cause problems regarding breeding.

 

[Spiveyman]

Wow, you are making a believer out of me in the Beefmaster breed. That is great. Thankfully Longhorns posses many of the same traits, but more out of necessity of survival than engineering. There wasn't anyone to take the tics out of their ears as they roamed across Mexico and the southwestern US. We've not been doing this very long, but so far we have not had any problems with pink eye or tics. I don't know if I can say that categorically we won't have problems, just haven't yet.

Man... if only Beefmasters had horns!

By the way, totally agree about bulls being on pasture only. All of our animals are that way though.

 

[EasyEd]

Hey All,

Spivey I enjoyed the story about catchin jumpy. I've done some pasture skiing too only in a corral. Had 6 steers and 5 heifers that I had to teach to wear fecal collection bags (don't ask you can if you want) and esophageal collection bags and a couple were rumen cannulated - so they had to be tame so I could change their "diapers" - believe me changin diapers on a real kid ain't bad after changin diapers on steers! So I do know my sh_t!

I put them in a squeeze put on a cow halter and let em go and hung on to the end of the rope till I got them to mind me. One steer - I named him Boxcar Willie - was real stubborn about learning. I actually drug him around behind an experiment station chevy luv a bit! Darn near burn't out the clutch - I know I shortened it's life! I'll have to dig out some slides and see if I can convert to pics.

All this was before I knew of Temple Grandin so I would do it different today but I admit it was fun!

TexasJ Great site - you should update it. It was fascinating reading. Now I admit I'm always a bit nervous about people who ask folks to click on a link so that we can see them in their kilts but y'all look good! I have an uncle from Scotland! Beefmasters are good cattle especially for the country your in. Being so much further north we don't need the heat adaption of "eared" cattle and so more british and continental breeds are what we go for. I used to raise shorthorns.

Spivey how goes the drought?

-Ed-

 

[texasjohn]

EasyEd, just get a donkey to teach those critters how to lead!

Facinating story about your s***** work!! I can tell that you're one of them fellers that got his PhD by walking behind a cow, watching her poop, then observing and testing the plop for the next 4 years as it returns to the earth... oh, so much more facinating than watching paint dry How can I get a copy of that work??

True story: I purchased years ago a bull from Florida... top end bull with great EPD's... gentle as a puppy when we got him... couple of years later he got sick, can't recall exactly what the illness was, but vet gave us something for it. I walked up to him in the pen, pinched his neck skin and gave him a shot right there.. didn't even shake his head. Later, I followed his progress by walking up to him in pen or pasture and depositing rectal thermometer (long string required so you don't loose it) for the appropriate time then removed it. It's SO nice to have gentle cattle!

This morning, alone, I went to the barn and gathered every cow and calf into the pen...over 50 head in all. I didn't even put out any cubes until 3/4 of them were in the pen.. then shut gates and moved stuff around to make an empty pen for the more shy ones so they could come in and not be bullied away. Was extremely pleased... I don't have any calves this year that are going to be a disposition problem. This is actually the 2nd time the cows have been in the pen in over 6 months... first time for a bunch of the calves. Once trained, they have long memories!

Put one cow in squeeze chute and tipped her horns with very long handled hedge trimmer..they were rotating down and touching but not yet penetrating the skin on her jaw...

Spiveyman... beefmasters DO have horns... I'll have to take a photo and show you... For a long time I used electronic dehorner at about 3 weeks to dehorn the calves, then, other life events came along and I no longer am able to provide that level of management attention. Agreed, many of the cattle in the photos don't have horns.. but only a couple of mine are natural polled.

 

[Spiveyman]

Ed, Glad you enjoyed the stories. That's funny about the Chevy Luv. You're right there are certainly better ways to do things when you get your act together. Unfortunately, as we're just getting into this business, we weren't as discerning with some of our initial purchases as we would be now. We got some great cows and some that will be hanging in coolers in the weeks to come. Some for disposition, some more for confimation. We will cash out the purchases we aren't pleased with and use that money for better stock. We'll make very good money on the one's we bought, so as a business decision it will still be good, but for the sake of the herd we will be culling some.

Now then, that being said, we have a blast everytime we get to "cowboy" a bit. I'm sure there will come a day soon when our age will necessitate that we do things smarter, and I'm also sure the novelty will wear off very quickly, but we have so much fun just messing around with them. We're both still young enough at this point to enjoy a challenge.

However, I do not include changing steer diapers in the category of "challenge." That is serious dedication.

Drought - still on. We got a decent rain a couple of weeks ago, but haven't had a drop since. We may get a bit mid week. Still, it's not hurting us as bad as others since our herd isn't that big compared to our land. We got lucky there too and learned a valuable lesson in a bad year, have enough land for the bad ones. I'd rather have extra in a good year than to run out in bad year.

texasjohn, we got the info from BBU Saturday. My partner was cracking up at how much we enjoyed the magazine with all the pictures in it (of course we only got it for the articles ) There are some stout looking bulls, the one on the center page of the magazine made our biggest bulls look pretty puny. We also did notice some horns on some in the pictures. I have to be honest with you, both of us had the same thought. We'll include them in our business plan for now, and then hopefully when we are comfortable financially, we both want to mix the Longhorn and the Beefmaster and try to get a freakishly huge bull like in the picture with massive horns! We'll create our own breed - LongMasters! HA! (That's probably a sacrilege to a Beefmaster man.)

 

[EasyEd]

Hey All,

Spivey maybe you should call them Masterhorns!

Actually drought wise you are fortunate to have more land than cattle - many end up in just the reverse situation. There are a lot of management things one can do to prepare for drought - unfortunately too many people don't prepare well and so get caught sellin into bad markets, buying expensive hay and the like. Probably the best things one can do are to always have a years supply of hay on hand (easy to say hard to have the discipline to do), structure your cowherd so you can do things like early weaning and selling of calves, run some stockers or grassers that you can sell early, know who your culls are and sell. All of this designed to keep your main cowherd in feed during a drought year. In essence you have as the core of your operation a cowherd that requires less than the land you have and you use "temporary" cattle to "top up" your stocking rate during normal and above normal years. With the hay on hand your always ready for at least a year or two-long drought. I see so few producers who even think about this kind of stuff yet drought is absolutely inevitable. In Alberta I saw the effects of the driest year in recorded history and it wasn't pretty for full time producers. It was something I'll never forget. I had research cattle on trials and had to pull them off the pastures and supplement.

TexasJ I never published that stuff but I do have a Ph.D. thesis on file at Oregon State that I can direct you to. I do plan to go through my slides this next weekend and make some digital for you guys to see - and me to see how thin I once was. I've also a number of reports on a number of research projects I did that might be electronic somewhere. If interested I can type out what my dissertation was about.

Now I'm gonna shock you guys. Lately I been thinkin about these.

Breeds of Livestock - Australian Lowline Cattle

I do know that the breed can't supply enough and carcasses command a premium price because their frame size is so small and so the steaks, ribeyes and such are perfect for restaurants - plus they are Angus. I've seen these cows up close and personal even though I've never owned any the possibilities absolutely fascinate me. They are not the result of any dwarfism gene and look like any other cattle only a mature cow is about 750lbs and a bull 900 to 1000lbs. How much additional stocking can one get? Maybe the thing to do is buy semen and AI small cows of I'm not sure what breeds and raise and sell the calves at a premium price. The possibilities for small property owners really intrigue me. If you live near a city you probably have a market that would not be hard to develop. As I'm currently on Vancouver Island they might fit this environment well. Just thinking about it.

-Ed-

 

[Spiveyman]

A couple of things there, keep in mind we're doing cattle differently than most folks. We aren't in the business of selling cattle, we're in the business of selling beef. We buy cattle, and raise cattle, all for the purpose of putting meat on the shelf at the grocery or in folks freezers, and soon in restaurants. This changes the options that we typically have for managing our herds. We can't NOT have the animals when the grocery store makes an order. The good thing for us though is that cattle have been on "sale" all summer and fall. What has really hurt others has actually helped us a bit.

That is a very good point though about the hay deal. If I had the structure to store it in, I'd definitely have set some hay aside last year.

My granny actually told me about those short cattle. She wants me to get some and put on the farm. They are supposed to be a good deal in terms of profit pound for pound, but I haven't really pursued it. We have such a nitch market here with the Longhorn, we can't just put any beef in there. I've heard there are miniature longhorns too though. MY partner's wife runs herds of minature animals and wants some of them. Just doesn't seem manly to me though. It'd be like driving a Chevy Luv (no offense) instead of a Dielsel Dually. HA!!!