I'm putting together a small hobby farm in NE Texas. While I have about 133 acres, it is hilly and perhaps 12-15 acres can be set aside for grass. I enjoy tinkering and optimizing, and while I am a complete amateur in Ag, I do have a background in molecular biology et c and a number of friends who understand the practical side of things. To that end, I want to use my tiny operation to learn and experiment in ways that might be useful beyhond the tiny amount of product that I make.
Broadly, the three big avenues that I want to explore are perennial, dhurrin-free grain sorghum (though unfortunately "perennial" and "dhurrin-free" are both available but mutually exclusive and dhurrin-free is patent protected), high efficiency, high fat milk production via Jersey genetics and high efficiency high tenderness terminal cross calves. I have globally found that jumping into an arena and deciding that you'll do something better than the folks who have been working on those problems for decades because you're smarter very rarely turns out well. I have also found that there ARE gaps where outsiders can make inroads IF you find niches where separate groups of highly optimized industries remain separate. In this case, I think that the gap between dairy and beef production as well as what I see as the underutilization of what are now hay pastures in the American Southeast provides me an opportunity to at least try to use my knowledge and tiny acreage to provide a common benefit (as the posters in Jimmy John's say: "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted."
For starters, sorghum. It is always best if you aren't the ONLY person who thinks your idea is good, and it is even better if you can identify why "your" idea isn't already popular. In the case of sorghum, that's pretty easy. First, it started at a cultural disadvantage against wheat, corn, hay grasses, millet oats et c., and has steadily proven itself despite that. Second, hydrogen cyanide is bad for people and cows. There is as of this year a dhurrin-free variety, and there will be more. Second, and this is a bigger picture item, C4 photosynthesis is more efficient than C3 photosynthesis, and that advantage becomes progressively more pronounced the warmer the climate. Wheat and traditional hay grasses aren't at a terrible disadvantage in Kansas or SD, but in Oklahoma, Texas, Lousiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, et c, C4 crops can do far better. Corn is the other popular C4 plant, and it dominates due to that inherent advantage in Iowa and Wisconsin. Perennial crops are a separate but similar effort, with a few small private non-profits working with universities. Kernza is the best known through the Land Institute in Kansas with UMN, but they are also working on a perennial sorghum with Texas A&M (though this effort is completely separate from the dhurrin-free effort from Indiana).
Hybrid sorghum-sudangrass appears to be problematic in the SE because it is TOO productive and grows back up through windrows before the cut stuff can dry. Grain sorghum doesn't have that problem, but if you have an excess of primary productivity that you need to harness, that's a far better problem than not enough that you are fully exploiting. Physics sets limits on how many photons we can turn into people and cow food; finding those limits and then exploiting as much as possible is, usually, a winning strategy. Thus, my first goal is to learn to grow sorghum that won't kill me or animals, whether through harvesting or spending for dhurrin-free seed. The payout is that low-intensity land that currently only produces hay could one day produce grain and hay, possibly with yields similar to what we are seeing with single purpose crops.
Concurrent with that, I want to start (extremely) small with a pet cow and one calf. In cattle genetics, the two biggest productivity outliers are Jerseys and the DM breeds (Piedmontese, Belgian Blue, some Limousin et c). That is not a value judgement on raising beef cattle and economics; it's a very narrow statement on "these breeds do one specific thing to a much greater degree than any other breed". In the case of Jerseys that's turn grass into milk calories (NOT volume) and in the case of the DM breeds that's turn grass into meat. As in most cases, if those attributes were all that mattered, EVERYONE would be raising just those breeds; this is clearly not the case. As it happens that there are a lot of factors which make for a profitable beef operation, and even elevated FCR resulting from myostatin deficiency isn't simple, either agronomically or economically.
I think that's the niche that I can fill because my risk is a pet cow and her calf and some straws (I have a portable -80C freezer, so that's not even an expense). The specific thing that I want to try is crossing a Piedmontese bull with a Jersey (probably A2/A2 Beta-casein, just to try and have that economic niche if I can actually sell milk products some day) using female sexed semen (for a project this small, the added cost in money is minimal vs the added cost in time). Piedmontese, like most Italian breeds, have about 70% A2, so there is a decent chance that I get an A2/A2 calf without a lot of extra effort. Ideally, that gets me an A2/A2 myo+/myo- heifer with a slight increase in muscle mass, but not so significant that she cannot calve. The goal will then be to continue back-crossing that line with female-sexed A2/A2 Jersey semen with the aim of producing an animal that is a slightly heavier Jersey with one functional myostatin gene. If the F1 is A1/A2 beta casein, that problem will probably work itself out either because the A2/A2 fad dies out or one of the Jersey back-crosses renders the line A2/A2.
Assuming that I can work through whatever problems inevitable arise, that plan address two goals: 1) gives me years only with two cows to feed while I figure out how to grow (non-toxic) cow food and 2) ideally, eventually produces a >88%+ Jersey cow with myo+/myo- genetics but little else from the remote Piedmontese parent. The goal at that point is to set myself up for terminal crosses with Piedmontese semen to produce 50% double muscled calves as terminal beefxdairy crosses. Notably 50% of the calves, both terminal crosses for beef AND replacement cows will need to be veal. I.e. 50% of the replacement cows will get a myo+ from mom and 100% will get a myo+ from dad, resulting in a regular old jersey cow EVEN IF I pay for female-sexed semen. The terminal beefxdairy crosses will also suffer from 50% being useless, as mom will provide a functional myostatin gene to exactly half of them even though the Piedmontese semen is myo-/myo-. A JerseyxPiedmontese will command the opposite of a premium at sale, will still be inferior to any beef breed for meat and honestly they should probably go to the freezer as soon as possible.
Globally, the plan is to keep the momma cows as high value dairy animals, the calves to 18-24 months for meat, but while I am building up infrastructure and learning the ropes, I am content to let the momma cows just be moms without a lot of milking effort on my end.
For anyone who made it through all of that, I am really curious about opinions. I don't have any money into this yet, and even several years in won't have spent much that cannot be readily converted into keeping normal types of cows. I think that theoretically, the biggest problem is what to do with half of the calves that don't manifest any particularly good traits. My thought is "Google veal recipes, this isn't a problem", but I really want some feedback on the long term cost issues with this plan at scale. I also have all of the usual questions about starting up from scratch, but I have a lot of folks close by to help with that and I can use the forum search feature as well.
Thanks!
Broadly, the three big avenues that I want to explore are perennial, dhurrin-free grain sorghum (though unfortunately "perennial" and "dhurrin-free" are both available but mutually exclusive and dhurrin-free is patent protected), high efficiency, high fat milk production via Jersey genetics and high efficiency high tenderness terminal cross calves. I have globally found that jumping into an arena and deciding that you'll do something better than the folks who have been working on those problems for decades because you're smarter very rarely turns out well. I have also found that there ARE gaps where outsiders can make inroads IF you find niches where separate groups of highly optimized industries remain separate. In this case, I think that the gap between dairy and beef production as well as what I see as the underutilization of what are now hay pastures in the American Southeast provides me an opportunity to at least try to use my knowledge and tiny acreage to provide a common benefit (as the posters in Jimmy John's say: "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted."
For starters, sorghum. It is always best if you aren't the ONLY person who thinks your idea is good, and it is even better if you can identify why "your" idea isn't already popular. In the case of sorghum, that's pretty easy. First, it started at a cultural disadvantage against wheat, corn, hay grasses, millet oats et c., and has steadily proven itself despite that. Second, hydrogen cyanide is bad for people and cows. There is as of this year a dhurrin-free variety, and there will be more. Second, and this is a bigger picture item, C4 photosynthesis is more efficient than C3 photosynthesis, and that advantage becomes progressively more pronounced the warmer the climate. Wheat and traditional hay grasses aren't at a terrible disadvantage in Kansas or SD, but in Oklahoma, Texas, Lousiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, et c, C4 crops can do far better. Corn is the other popular C4 plant, and it dominates due to that inherent advantage in Iowa and Wisconsin. Perennial crops are a separate but similar effort, with a few small private non-profits working with universities. Kernza is the best known through the Land Institute in Kansas with UMN, but they are also working on a perennial sorghum with Texas A&M (though this effort is completely separate from the dhurrin-free effort from Indiana).
Hybrid sorghum-sudangrass appears to be problematic in the SE because it is TOO productive and grows back up through windrows before the cut stuff can dry. Grain sorghum doesn't have that problem, but if you have an excess of primary productivity that you need to harness, that's a far better problem than not enough that you are fully exploiting. Physics sets limits on how many photons we can turn into people and cow food; finding those limits and then exploiting as much as possible is, usually, a winning strategy. Thus, my first goal is to learn to grow sorghum that won't kill me or animals, whether through harvesting or spending for dhurrin-free seed. The payout is that low-intensity land that currently only produces hay could one day produce grain and hay, possibly with yields similar to what we are seeing with single purpose crops.
Concurrent with that, I want to start (extremely) small with a pet cow and one calf. In cattle genetics, the two biggest productivity outliers are Jerseys and the DM breeds (Piedmontese, Belgian Blue, some Limousin et c). That is not a value judgement on raising beef cattle and economics; it's a very narrow statement on "these breeds do one specific thing to a much greater degree than any other breed". In the case of Jerseys that's turn grass into milk calories (NOT volume) and in the case of the DM breeds that's turn grass into meat. As in most cases, if those attributes were all that mattered, EVERYONE would be raising just those breeds; this is clearly not the case. As it happens that there are a lot of factors which make for a profitable beef operation, and even elevated FCR resulting from myostatin deficiency isn't simple, either agronomically or economically.
I think that's the niche that I can fill because my risk is a pet cow and her calf and some straws (I have a portable -80C freezer, so that's not even an expense). The specific thing that I want to try is crossing a Piedmontese bull with a Jersey (probably A2/A2 Beta-casein, just to try and have that economic niche if I can actually sell milk products some day) using female sexed semen (for a project this small, the added cost in money is minimal vs the added cost in time). Piedmontese, like most Italian breeds, have about 70% A2, so there is a decent chance that I get an A2/A2 calf without a lot of extra effort. Ideally, that gets me an A2/A2 myo+/myo- heifer with a slight increase in muscle mass, but not so significant that she cannot calve. The goal will then be to continue back-crossing that line with female-sexed A2/A2 Jersey semen with the aim of producing an animal that is a slightly heavier Jersey with one functional myostatin gene. If the F1 is A1/A2 beta casein, that problem will probably work itself out either because the A2/A2 fad dies out or one of the Jersey back-crosses renders the line A2/A2.
Assuming that I can work through whatever problems inevitable arise, that plan address two goals: 1) gives me years only with two cows to feed while I figure out how to grow (non-toxic) cow food and 2) ideally, eventually produces a >88%+ Jersey cow with myo+/myo- genetics but little else from the remote Piedmontese parent. The goal at that point is to set myself up for terminal crosses with Piedmontese semen to produce 50% double muscled calves as terminal beefxdairy crosses. Notably 50% of the calves, both terminal crosses for beef AND replacement cows will need to be veal. I.e. 50% of the replacement cows will get a myo+ from mom and 100% will get a myo+ from dad, resulting in a regular old jersey cow EVEN IF I pay for female-sexed semen. The terminal beefxdairy crosses will also suffer from 50% being useless, as mom will provide a functional myostatin gene to exactly half of them even though the Piedmontese semen is myo-/myo-. A JerseyxPiedmontese will command the opposite of a premium at sale, will still be inferior to any beef breed for meat and honestly they should probably go to the freezer as soon as possible.
Globally, the plan is to keep the momma cows as high value dairy animals, the calves to 18-24 months for meat, but while I am building up infrastructure and learning the ropes, I am content to let the momma cows just be moms without a lot of milking effort on my end.
For anyone who made it through all of that, I am really curious about opinions. I don't have any money into this yet, and even several years in won't have spent much that cannot be readily converted into keeping normal types of cows. I think that theoretically, the biggest problem is what to do with half of the calves that don't manifest any particularly good traits. My thought is "Google veal recipes, this isn't a problem", but I really want some feedback on the long term cost issues with this plan at scale. I also have all of the usual questions about starting up from scratch, but I have a lot of folks close by to help with that and I can use the forum search feature as well.
Thanks!
