The answer seems to be in your own backyard..............
"In study after study,
South Devon have risen to the top on carcass quality. When compared with 16 other breeds at MARC, the South Devon breed had the highest meat tenderness score of all beef breeds. These earlier tenderness findings from MARC have been confirmed by recent trials at
Oklahoma State University"
We have been doing "grass-fed" for a long time (some ppl prefer it) and what some other folks say is that the grass-fed beef just doesn't taste as good as the grain-fed beef and I tend to agree. That being said, you have to be more particular about the breeds of cattle you use for grass-fed, as you don't want to start out behind the 8 ball.
There are also some other issues you need to think about before you jump in on grass-fed.
1. How do you plan on aging your grass-fed carcass, as the answer to that question can help you pick the best breed or breed cross to use for your situation.
The commercial beef business uses wet-aging of beef, which hopefully you will
NOT be using, as all they are striving for is Choice YG 2 (for a grain fed animal). They want the leanest carcass they can get, so they don't have to trim BF. Straight Hf and Straight An tend to pack on the external fat, as well as Hf x An to the tune of YG 3-4.
Dry-aging is the traditional way of aging beef carcasses, so you really want a bit more external fat as it serves as an insulator to the beef carcass allowing you to take the aging process past 14 days into day 17 or even 21.
The longer you can hang that carcass the more tender it will become and you will need this advantage as a grass-fed beef producer. I've seen some ppl take this a little too far, so I prefer 17 days.
2. Forage base is as important as cattle breeds you choose. I have a neighbor that raises the worst grass-fed beef I have ever eaten and the more you chew it the bigger it gets in your mouth, which is not a pleasant eating experience.
What you have to do on your grass-fed calves is to effectively keep the nutritional plane on an ever-increasing (positive growth) rate. This isn't easy to do and this is where most ppl fail in the grass-fed business.
How to maintain a positive nutritional plane throughout the finishing phase is not that hard, but it does take some planning. This can get complicated, but I will give you the short version.
a. For brood cows, just maintain their nutritional requirements like you would any other cow.
b. For calves, you plan to market, the game is much different.
You have to be able to overlap your forages, so that at no time do you ever crash their nutritional plane.
For example:
We calve in Oct and wean calves in May. By the time they are a full ruminant animal they are grazing Rye (Jan, Feb, Mar) (still on their mama) and by April up to weaning, May, they are on Clover, so that even while still nursing their mama we have maintained an increasing nutritional plane for the highest rate of gain pre-weaning.
At weaning time (this years grass-fed calves AWW were #575) are maintained on clover (which they are already accustomed to) up until our Millet is prime grazing, usually by mid-May. They are grazed on Millet all summer (May, June, July, August), where we can expect a 2.25 ADG minimum. August 1st we re-plant millet, so that in the end of August, we have a new crop of prime grazing to push us into October.
This maintains that ever-increasing nutritional plane.
October 1 as they are coming up to 12 months of age, they are all weighing about 925 plus. We then feed them alfalfa hay through October up to November 15th and maintain weight gain of about 2.25 lbs per day, which puts them all over 1025#.
We get them back on rye grazing about mid-November and supplement that grazing with alfalfa hay up until harvest time as the finishing phase is complete. They normally will be ready for harvest at ~~ 1225 - 1325#.
This is time consuming to do a really good job with your cattle and any that lag behind in weight gain are removed early.
3. Cattle breeds are really important too, but how you plan to age your carcass should help you decide. I, personally, don't like Red Angus for several reasons, the most important being their rate of gain post-weaning. However there is one Red Angus bull that we have used in the past that does really well, which is an AI sire through ABS, "Brown Commitment". He has exceptional growth and carcass merit qualities, but he is definitely not the norm. I like Horned Hereford cows, they do well. Black Angus do well and Hf x An do well.
South Devon (SD) cows will get it done as I believe they are better mamas than these above. As for bulls to use on SD cows--- I refuse to give up my genetics there, but I went Red.
JS
MarkM":3fyc0tiz said:
I am almost finished getting my farm set up for rotational grazing and would like some input on best breeds as well as opinions on my plans.
My ultimate goal is to direct market grass-fed beef. However, it will some time to realize a cash flow from that part of the operation. In the interim, what would be a good plan for generating a cash flow? Yearlings? Calves?
In my part of the country, 20 miles southeast of Ada, Black Angus seems to rule. I assume that any short term plans should use a black animal. However, I would prefer a red breed for my long term grass-fed plans.
All ideas, opinions, suggestions are appreciated. I am posting this in the "Beginners" as well as "Breeds" forums.
