Rustler9
Well-known member
This is part of an article that ran in the February issue of the Trails. This is the monthly breed publication for the TLBAA-Texas Longhorn Breeders Assoc. of America. I thought this was an interesting article but didn't copy it word for word. I'm basically giving a summary of what he wrote:
The author is a longtime cattle rancher and ran a feedlot for about ten years. He runs about 150 commercial cows and began breeding his first calf heifers to Longhorn bulls about five years ago after getting tired of pulling calves. These are Angus-Limousin cross heifers. He says that before he started using Longhorn bulls on the heifers, he had held back breeding them so they would calve at 27 ot 28 months old and still would lose calves and some of the heifers. He now has them down to calving at 22 months old and has had to pull one calf in three years.
He admits that when marketing calves with alot of color that he gets hit 10 to 15 cents per pound. About 75% of his calves are solid colors and do fine when sold at weaning but he does take a hit on the balance.
He says that last year he decided to feed out some of his colored calves and see how they did.
This is what he wrote:
Calves were 1/2 Longhorn, 3/8 Angus, 1/8 Limousin out of first calf heifers.
Weaned at 205 days, weighed 510 lbs. average
Put out to pasture for 110 days, weighed 777 lbs. off of pasture (2.42 lbs. a day average gain)
Put on feed (growing and finishing ration) for 169 days
Gained 438 lbs. or 2.59 lbs. per day
The last 50 days on feed gained only 53 lbs. and were eating 37 to 40 lbs. per day
Went to packer at 484 days, or only a little over 16 months of age
Weighed 1,215 lbs. after 4% shrinkage
Graded PRIME-HANGING
WEIGHT WAS 693 LBS.
YIELDED 59+%
Consumed 3,110 lbs. of feed while on feed, converted at 7.1 to 1
These steers were fed a commercial feed from Hi-Pro Feeds (their growing and finishing ration)
He says that if he had taken them to the packer at 120 days, the steers would still have weighed about 1,160 lbs. and would have had an average daily gain in excess of 3.5 lbs. per day and would have still graded upper choice or better. The feed consumption would have been around 2,000 lbs. with a conversion of probably around 6 to 1.
He goes on to say that he knows that we'll never be able to convince commercial feedlot operators to trust colored cattle but is convinced that you can make money by feeding out Longhorn crossed cattle. That is if you can carry them all the way through and sell them on the rail. He also says that his biggest advantage is not having to pull calves and to be able to get a calf out of first calf heifers earlier. He raised these steers on the high Chihuahuan Desert of south central New Mexico and West Texas. They were pasture raised with no creep feed.
The author is a longtime cattle rancher and ran a feedlot for about ten years. He runs about 150 commercial cows and began breeding his first calf heifers to Longhorn bulls about five years ago after getting tired of pulling calves. These are Angus-Limousin cross heifers. He says that before he started using Longhorn bulls on the heifers, he had held back breeding them so they would calve at 27 ot 28 months old and still would lose calves and some of the heifers. He now has them down to calving at 22 months old and has had to pull one calf in three years.
He admits that when marketing calves with alot of color that he gets hit 10 to 15 cents per pound. About 75% of his calves are solid colors and do fine when sold at weaning but he does take a hit on the balance.
He says that last year he decided to feed out some of his colored calves and see how they did.
This is what he wrote:
Calves were 1/2 Longhorn, 3/8 Angus, 1/8 Limousin out of first calf heifers.
Weaned at 205 days, weighed 510 lbs. average
Put out to pasture for 110 days, weighed 777 lbs. off of pasture (2.42 lbs. a day average gain)
Put on feed (growing and finishing ration) for 169 days
Gained 438 lbs. or 2.59 lbs. per day
The last 50 days on feed gained only 53 lbs. and were eating 37 to 40 lbs. per day
Went to packer at 484 days, or only a little over 16 months of age
Weighed 1,215 lbs. after 4% shrinkage
Graded PRIME-HANGING
WEIGHT WAS 693 LBS.
YIELDED 59+%
Consumed 3,110 lbs. of feed while on feed, converted at 7.1 to 1
These steers were fed a commercial feed from Hi-Pro Feeds (their growing and finishing ration)
He says that if he had taken them to the packer at 120 days, the steers would still have weighed about 1,160 lbs. and would have had an average daily gain in excess of 3.5 lbs. per day and would have still graded upper choice or better. The feed consumption would have been around 2,000 lbs. with a conversion of probably around 6 to 1.
He goes on to say that he knows that we'll never be able to convince commercial feedlot operators to trust colored cattle but is convinced that you can make money by feeding out Longhorn crossed cattle. That is if you can carry them all the way through and sell them on the rail. He also says that his biggest advantage is not having to pull calves and to be able to get a calf out of first calf heifers earlier. He raised these steers on the high Chihuahuan Desert of south central New Mexico and West Texas. They were pasture raised with no creep feed.
