Next Steps, Ranch Goals and Improving Genetics

[Travlr]

Hey everyone, I'm looking for a few ideas on our five year plan and where we are going with genetics and culling. We have taken on almost all responsibility in the day-to-day operation, and have also started a farm-to-table freezer beef business.

So a question... Are you selling all of your calves as freezer beef? Are you getting close to that goal, or is most of your product going to a sale barn?

Because the advice I would give would differ quite a bit depending on the answers.

Look, it's a reality that we live with the CAB marketing scheme and it pretty much demands that you produce black animals so you can sell them for a CAB premium. And there's not really anything wrong with black cattle other than they are related to each other more and more as time goes on and they may be less heat tolerant.

But if you're selling everything to individuals to put in their freezer, you aren't limited by the black hide prison. The only goal is good beef to a customer that wants to barbeque on the weekend. You can use any genetics you want, and there are some d**n fine red cattle... which are also more heat tolerant and have wider genetic diversity. Or at least they can be used with black cattle to improve your mix. Your product, if you're selling your animals as freezer beef, is meat and not black hair.

What a concept...

 

[CVHFarmsLLC]

So a question... Are you selling all of your calves as freezer beef? Are you getting close to that goal, or is most of your product going to a sale barn?

Because the advice I would give would differ quite a bit depending on the answers.

Look, it's a reality that we live with the CAB marketing scheme and it pretty much demands that you produce black animals so you can sell them for a CAB premium. And there's not really anything wrong with black cattle other than they are related to each other more and more as time goes on and they may be less heat tolerant.

But if you're selling everything to individuals to put in their freezer, you aren't limited by the black hide prison. The only goal is good beef to a customer that wants to barbeque on the weekend. You can use any genetics you want, and there are some d**n fine red cattle... which are also more heat tolerant and have wider genetic diversity. Or at least they can be used with black cattle to improve your mix. Your product, if you're selling your animals as freezer beef, is meat and not black hair.

What a concept...

Our initial goal was to sell all direct to consumer. We were selling everything from a 1/8 cow to a whole cow, to individual cuts. It got out of hand. We went from enjoying our cattle to not enjoying it at all and having zero time off between the beef business and our jobs. We were constantly delivering beef, attending farmers markets, dropping calves at the processor, picking up boxed beef at the processor, doing social media posts, inventorying what we had, figuring out how we were going to sell cuts that people didn't want which changed as frequently as the weather, etc. We decided about 6 months ago that we had to scale that back to a manageable business so we had time for ourselves and our family. Going forward we will sell to a core group of repeat customers by processing fed out groups just twice a year. That was probably more than anybody wanted to know, but felt like it might help someone looking to get into freezer beef. We want the 5-10 year plan to mostly be based on marketing calves via more traditional avenues like the precondition sale.

 

[CVHFarmsLLC]

There is no benefit to Angus+/ UB. You are not getting better genetics than Angus and it will cost you money with ear on ear.

I have had them, also. We started out with Brangus. I was die hard on them because I thought my bulls had to have ear. You can read my early posts on here where I said so. CB and other guys who have Brahman influenced cattle would tell me to ditch the composites but I didn't listen. I was BSing with my long time Brangus breeder and he talked me in to going down the road to look at their Angus+ bulls. He assured me they would make me more money, hold up just as good, and guaranteed me if I wasn't happy he would swap me back out for a Brangus bull down the road. I took him up on it. He was right. We bought several from them.

After seeing the success I tried one pure Angus. I will say we did spend more money on the Angus. He was a better quality bull. I atribute cutting the ear and going to a better quality bull for taking our calves from the avg, or slightly above price, to the upper bell ringer range. We had to get stocking rates and nutrition and all that under control also to maximize the genetics but the genetics came from those bulls.

We exclusively run Angus bulls now with the exception of alternating Hereford and Brahman bulls over the Brahman group.

I have played around and put a Hereford or Brahman over the general herds. There is too much loss on doing that vs producing those big black and bwf calves. Plus it's deviating from the breeding plan and adding less uniformity.

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If you don't mind me asking, what did you look for in an angus bull, where did you buy, and what kind of average weaning weight do you see in the calves?

 

[Brute 23]

If you don't mind me asking, what did you look for in an angus bull, where did you buy, and what kind of average weaning weight do you see in the calves?

The number one for me is always that they will prosper in our operation. All the high epds in the world don't mean any thing if the bull dies in 90 days. That is not an exaggeration, we had 2 GAR "meat bulls" literally die on us. First one died and the breeder replaced it. The second one died and he just refunded us our money. Our saving grace was we had other natural bred bulls bought at the same time that were thriving.

We have looked at a lot of Angus bulls and many of them are huge a pumped full of feed. Other breeders are chasing the latest and greatest names in the Angus world.

Im not a big epd guy but when I find a breeder I trust I want moderate sized bulls with moderate bw and as high as a ww as we can afford. I just want moderation across the board. The only think I know I do not want is high milking numbers.

I try to keep it simple and look at environment they are raised, structure of the bull, moderate bw and 600+ ww.

 

[gcreekrch]

The number one for me is always that they will prosper in our operation. All the high epds in the world don't mean any thing if the bull dies in 90 days. That is not an exaggeration, we had 2 GAR "meat bulls" literally die on us. First one died and the breeder replaced it. The second one died and he just refunded us our money. Our saving grace was we had other natural bred bulls bought at the same time that were thriving.

We have looked at a lot of Angus bulls and many of them are huge a pumped full of feed. Other breeders are chasing the latest and greatest names in the Angus world.

Im not a big epd guy but when I find a breeder I trust I want moderate sized bulls with moderate bw and as high as a ww as we can afford. I just want moderation across the board. The only think I know I do not want is high milking numbers.

I try to keep it simple and look at environment they are raised, structure of the bull, moderate bw and 600+ ww.

You could buy bulls for me.