Since we do not feed our cows other than hay in the winter, we have had some really large cows that just couldnt cut it. If the bigger girls gets thin on what we feed our cows, we do cut them. If they stay in good flesh, they stay. We buy very little feed. I could see that if i were having to run to the feed store to keep my cows healthy, yes, maybe big cows wouldnt be my thing. But, as i've said before, we have plenty of grazing so its not an issue at how much grass they eat. If a big cow, or smaller requires more food than the herd is offered, she'll show it. Sometimes if she's young we'll do like what we did to this cow and move her to the older herd where they do get the best hay. Not that we have bad hay, but the older ones get the best of the bunch. The intermediate herds get the lesser quality of the hay stash. The calving heifers get the best also. So if we have a big cow, like Joker the other big cow i posted a picture of, who is in the intermediate herd where the nutrition is lowest of the young and old, she'll show it if she's needing more to eat. As you can see, Joker is in very good flesh, gives tons of milk and gets the same food the smaller cows get.
As far as losing the sim lines, about half our herds are still mostly sim or half sim. We do have a couple black sim/angus bulls. We put them on those cows. We'll keep heifers out of them because they will be big and probably black. We eventually will get less and less sim, but since our big red sim died a few weeks back, we'll be replacing him with something. Not sure what yet, but it wont be angus. We put the angus bulls on the younger cows. I think 4 are registered angus, 1 or 2 are black sim/angus..We have one big white face sim, but he's mix with some other things but is mostly sim. We have one brangus/angus. 3 simbra/sim/angus... We lost Big Boy,and here i go again, he was HUGE...i wasnt too happy with his calves, although all of them weighed around 100+ when born, almost all of them had contracted tendons. But, it worked out because since they were so big, it helped them in the nursing department. The cows in this bulls herd were big fat and sloppy, and old. Sometimes those sim calves can be kind of stupid and will work the cow up high...so the contracted tendons were ok...This year, i think Big Boy Jr must have bred the cows because i only had one with contracted tendons and the rest have been around 80 pounds. He was in there with his father, his father tore his ACL and we had to sell him. Got 1700 for him at the auction which surprised the heck out of us.
We did have a cow who we were giving a second chance after missing a year. She missed another year so we got her up and planned to sell..Well, around that time we had sold a heifer to a kid to show and something happened to her when they got her home and she stayed lame. After several months we offered to buy her back. We put the heifer in the pen with the open cow and looked at them. The limping heifer we planned to eat, the big fat grass fed cow we were going to sell. We thought, what the heck, why eat that small heifer who had been on antibiotics for months when we could eat the open cow. Hauled the cow to the butcher where she weighed close to 2000..her hanging weight was 1000. They had to hang her for 27 days. She made so much meat it was ridiculous,we are still eating it and it was 2010 when we had her processed.. Her T-bones were so big they covered the whole plate. I felt like Wilma Flintstone when i set them on the dinner table. Best meat ever. She was marbled to the hilt..
