turning grass into beef
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good looking cattle Killala. It's nice to see some shorthorn pictures here. Keep them coming.
We too have seen that sometimes weaned calves here in western Canada get docked for not being "the right color". The way we have avoided that is don't sell newly weaned calves. We background all of our calves. The heavier steers are sold at 9 - 10 months of age and weigh between 800 - 900 pounds. All of the heifers and the light end of the steers are put back on grass. Other than replacement heifers these cattle are sold as long yearlings off grass in the fall. By doing this we get well paid for our grass. The other benefit is that yearlings are a very liquid asset. If we do have a dry summer they can be sold and the grass is then used for the cowherd.
As for the calving problem issue: calving problems can attributed to a multitude of issues, breed of bull only being one of them. I have no doubt that somewhere, someone has had calving problems when using shorthorn bull. The same can be said of others using bulls of other breeds. That does not mean that the breed of bull was the only problem. To those of you that have had calving problems using a shorthorn bull, I can only relate to you what we experience with our cows year in and year out. We usually calve out around 500 females each year and we help less than 1% of the mature cows (that includes malpresentations).
Thanks for the pictures Killala. It's good to see Shorthorns from different parts of the world.
We too have seen that sometimes weaned calves here in western Canada get docked for not being "the right color". The way we have avoided that is don't sell newly weaned calves. We background all of our calves. The heavier steers are sold at 9 - 10 months of age and weigh between 800 - 900 pounds. All of the heifers and the light end of the steers are put back on grass. Other than replacement heifers these cattle are sold as long yearlings off grass in the fall. By doing this we get well paid for our grass. The other benefit is that yearlings are a very liquid asset. If we do have a dry summer they can be sold and the grass is then used for the cowherd.
As for the calving problem issue: calving problems can attributed to a multitude of issues, breed of bull only being one of them. I have no doubt that somewhere, someone has had calving problems when using shorthorn bull. The same can be said of others using bulls of other breeds. That does not mean that the breed of bull was the only problem. To those of you that have had calving problems using a shorthorn bull, I can only relate to you what we experience with our cows year in and year out. We usually calve out around 500 females each year and we help less than 1% of the mature cows (that includes malpresentations).
Thanks for the pictures Killala. It's good to see Shorthorns from different parts of the world.
