Raising Calves -- Where's the Beef?!

A new chapter has begun on our little farm: raising calves for meat.

This project was instigated by Isaac, our farm boy.  For 3 and a half years, he worked on the Andrew Dairy Farm as often as time would allow.  There he would mix feed, sort and tag cows, drive equipment, and basically perform any task asked of him.  He loves everything to do with the farm and learned so much!  And the Andrews loved having his help as often as they could get it.  Last year, before he turned 16 and qualified for a better-paying job, he let the Andrews know that he would be leaving them.  In gratitude for his help on their farm, they gave him a steer.  This steer was passed up by other buyers because of it's awkwardness--it had extra long legs and droopy ears. So the Andrews named it "Isaac's steer" and kept feeding it with their other calves.

This summer, Isaac worked hard to rebuild and strengthen the fence in our pasture so that he could bring his steer home.  On July 4th, 2018, Isaac borrowed the Andrew's truck and trailer to transport "Loopy" from their pen to ours.  He was such a funny cow, with longer-than-usual legs and a long tongue that he used to slurp the water from the hose as we filled his trough.  He was taller than I imagined, and we had trouble those first few days keeping him in the fence.  In fact, Rachel and I chased him back to the pen several times and finally decided to post a guard with an electric cattle prod to keep him in.  But once he got caught on some barbed wire while trying to escape, and then he didn't try anymore... until Papa came to watch our place while we were on vacation and the dogs chased Loopy.  He jumped the fence at least twice and the neighbors had to help Papa get him back in... after he explored across the street, chewed up an extension cord, and ran through the neighbor's field corn!

When we learned of Loopy's latest escapades, we were anxious to watch him more diligently to keep him safe.  Then one night as I drove home late from a meeting, I hit a neighbor's cow which had escaped the enclosure and was crossing the road.  My van sustained some major damage to the windshield and front end, but luckily I was unharmed.  This experience jolted us into action.  We didn't want something like that to happen with Loopy (or any of our neighbors!), so we felt it would be safest if we scheduled his appointment with the butcher sooner than planned.  But our local butcher had no openings until February!  That was 6 months away!!  So we went with a butcher in Downey, one hour drive away, because they could help us within 2 weeks.  We borrowed a horse trailer from a neighbor to haul him there and Isaac had to miss his first hour class on September 17th in order to deliver Loopy at the appropriate time.  But it all worked out.

Now  he's in the freezer--well, his carcass is in the freezer, nicely prepared for human consumption and wrapped in clean, white, freezer paper.  His spirit is in cow heaven, where green pastures are not encumbered by fences. ;)

The week after Loopy had been evicted from the pasture, Isaac and Rachel concocted a plan to buy some more calves, raise them, and hopefully sell some of the beef to earn money.   After all, the fully fenced pasture was now vacant! Why not?!  The price had dropped to $40 per bull calf, so on September 23rd, between the two of them they bought 3 newborn bull calves from the Andrews.  Isaac borrowed a trailer and delivered them to our pasture, where they received their first bottle-fed meal.  One took right to the bottle, but the other two took some coaxing.  Isaac had to feed one of them with a feeding tube for the first few days until it figured out how to drink from the bottle.

Since the Andrews fed their calves twice per day, that's how we started.  Isaac and Rachel would go out at 6am and again around 6pm to give each a bottle full of milk.  However, after the first week and a bit of research, we decided to increase their rations to 3 bottles per day.  As taught by some ranchers, we reduced the ratio of powdered milk replacer to water for each feeding so that the calves got just the right amount of nutrients and plenty of fluids.  So now Isaac feeds at 6am, Rachel feeds right when she gets home at 3:30, and they take turns feeding at 9pm.  It seems like they are always hungry.

After a few weeks of hand feeding the calves, these enterprising youth came up with a better way to bottle feed:

And after 6 weeks of bottle-feeding, these calves were ready to graduate to water and hay. Since we noticed that one calf was bigger and bullied the others out of their share of hay and grain, Isaac and Dad came up with a stall feeding system so that each of the calves could get their share.

The calves spent the winter in this shelter until it was warm enough to let them venture out. It was a sad day when we lost one calf to scours. In the Spring, we moved the two calves over to the pasture, where they have been eating and growing ever since.