This weekend, I took my horses down to a friend's place, to help him him gather, pen and sort some cattle to take to the sale on Monday. He has about 120 head of Corriente cows, that he breeds to either Angus or Brangus bulls every year, This year he had split the difference and used Ultra Black bulls. These cattle are on about 200 acres of old cut-over timber. It is ( or was) overgrown with Kudzu when he put the cows in last January. Broom sage, Johnson grass as tall as my saddle, all kinds of briars and honey suckle is what these cows live on. There is a creek and a pond on the property, and he keeps free choice salt and minerals in the corral. This pasture hasn't ever been seeded with grass, or fertilized or had a bush hog on it. This is our quail and rabbit hunting property. so, we are rounding up these cows, probably around 700 lbs each, with big, black, polled calves nearly as tall as they are! These cows calved in February, so they are right at 6 months old. He only leaves his bulls in for 30 days, and after that he pulls them. He puts in a Corriente bull for cleanup. He gets about 10-12 Corriente calves each year, which is what he wants to do. There were 9 Corriente calves this year, and yeah, they were 3-4 weeks younger than the black calves but they were half the size. 300-350 lbs is my guess.... good size for Corrientes that age. We hauled 50 of these black steers and one bull calf that got missed at castration time Sunday night. They weighed between 500 and 540 lbs! That's pretty damned impressive...700 lbs cows ( all fat as a tick by the way, on sh*t for forage) weaning 540 lb calves.... about 80% of their own weight. They carried the heifers Monday morning , so I didn't see how much they weighed. But he just told me the steers brought $1.46 lowest to $1.58 highest. Heifers were $1.36 to $1.46. The one bull calf was $1.54. The same price as the other black calves did that day, and higher by 10-20 cents than red, white, brindled etc calves did.
There is no way he has more than $350-$400 in these cows...many were closer to $200- $250, depending on when he got them. He has virtually no additional costs in them, except for salt and minerals. When they calved in February, I went down there to rope the calves for castration and ear tagging, and Sunday was literally the first time he had been there since February. There were NO black calves out of commercial Hereford, Braford, Black Baldy, Charolais, Simmental, Gelbiev, Limosine, Wyenoogie or even Angus or Brangus that brought more per pound that day. None from these kind of cows that weaned calves at 6 months at 75-80% of their mommas' weight....with zero feed, hay, medical or TIME costs involved. For what a good cow or heifer of those breeds cost, you can buy 4-5 of these Corrientes, and feed those 4 or 5 for less money than you can another commercial beef cow. and keep 4 or 5 on the same acreage it takes for 1 or 2 commercial beef cows.
IF I ever decide to fool with cow/calf operations again,. then this is exactly what I'd do: Buy these $300 cows that will give me a $700-$750 calf the first year, with zero labor, zero calving problems,. zero vet costs, and virtually zero feed costs. Like Longhorns, Corriente are as heat, disease, insect and parasite resistant as a Brahma, and as cold tolerant as a Highlander.
www.righttoroam.org.uk
