Now that's a pretty cool formula!
Seems to be pretty accurate too.
I butchered my 18 month old Angus freemartin on Saturday. After having fasted her for 24 hours, I weighed her with the "fat cattle" side of the tape and then weighed her by the formula. Tape said that she weighed 895 lbs, the formula put her at 942 lbs. And really I'm more likely to believe the formula since it takes into account the length of body.
This was a salebarn calf, bought with umblical cord still wet, and weighing no more than 30 lbs (I could carry her under one arm).
I was quite surprised that she weighed as much as she did, I had guessed her at no more than 800 lbs by her appearance.
And I'm always accused of being morbid for examining the organs of the animals that I raise and butcher, but what can I say, I raise rabbits and with them it's the only way to find some diseases. This heifer was on a very hot diet for the last few weeks, so I wanted to examine her liver and digestive tract for signs of problems with the feed. And, since she had the external signs of being a freemartin, and only cycled about every 3 months, I just had to check out her reproductive organs and see how normal or abnormal they were.
Everything appeared completely normal, except the ovaries. One ovary was a dark, shrivelled little thing (think raisin), the other was larger than normal and had several corpus luteum as well as several developing eggs.
Quite interesting, I must say -- but a much bigger job than I had anticipated. The largest I had butchered up to this point weighed 500 lbs, and there is a HUGE difference in the amount of work required to gut the beast.
Ann B
