Buyers prefer that calves be weaned for a minimum of three weeks before shipping, so plan accordingly. Heifers or steers that you’ll be keeping for your own herd need to be kept separate from their mothers for about three months, and heifers should be kept separate from the bull until they’re ready to be bred.
Rebreeding Cows
New calves are left with the cows throughout the breeding season (they don’t seem to notice their parents’ amorous activities). Many producers leave the bull with the cows year-round because it results in a much happier bull, and cows generally begin cycling again about the time you’d turn a bull out anyway. Next year’s calves may be a little earlier, but you can correct this when you change bulls by not having the new bull delivered until it’s a little later in breeding season. If you’re using AI, then the timing of the breeding is at your discretion, not the bull’s.
As mentioned earlier, a bull that has bred your cows for two years should be sold to prevent him from breeding with its daughters. If you really like a bull, you may be able to board and breed the heifers at someone else’s farm, perhaps in exchange for doing the same for their heifers, in order to keep the bull for one more year.
When it’s time to sell the bull, you can look for a private buyer, ship him to an auction, or eat him. Bull meat is prized by some, although others think it’s a little too flavorful.
| Warm-Weather Weaning I try to wean during the first cold snap in fall, when everyone’s windows are closed, but it isn’t always possible. If you wean in warm weather, when everyone’s windows are open, you may not get a lot of sleep that first night, and you risk complaints from nearby neighbors. At any rate, the noise tapers off after a few days, and the cows and calves settle into the new routine within a couple of weeks. |
Marketing and Processing Beef Cattle
It’s time to say good-bye. The steers are fat, the calves are weaned, the cow has gotten too old to calve, or the bull needs to move on. You have four choices: sell at auction, sell to a grade and yield processor, have the animal processed locally for your own freezer or for sale directly from your farm, or sell to a neighbor who wants stocker calves. With feeder calves, you can also sell directly to a feedlot.
Selling at Auction
Sending animals to an auction barn for sale is probably the most common way for small producers to market their beef cattle. An estimated 85 percent of beef cattle in the United States are sold through a local auction barn at some point in their lives. These barns hold regular auctions for a variety of different ages and weights of animals, from special fall feeder-calf auctions to weekly auctions of fat cattle and cull cows.
To find the auction barns in your region, check your area farm paper, ask the neighbors, or call your extension agent. If you’re fortunate enough to have a choice of two or three different barns, find out which type of cattle each barn specializes in, and keep an eye on their sale prices. You don’t want to send a load of beef feeder calves to a barn specializing in dairy cattle because the buyers obviously won’t be too interested in beef calves. If they were, they’d be at the auction barn having the feeder-calf sale. Somebody at a dairy barn will probably buy your feeder calves, but they won’t have to bid nearly as high to get them, which means that you, the owner, lose money.
Once you’ve decided on an auction barn, call to get more information and instructions for selling your cattle there. Many auction barns have field representatives who will talk to you over the phone or even visit your farm to discuss the best time to sell cattle and how to prepare and transport them to obtain the best price. Ask if you should have the cattle there the day of the auction or the night before. Find out what the availability and charges are for penning, feeding, and watering your cattle before the sale.
Most types of beef cattle don’t require any special preparation before an auction, except to make sure they are well watered and fed and are loaded calmly onto the truck. Feeder calves do require some special measures to obtain a top price. Buyers are especially interested in uniform groups of calves that will grow and finish at the same rate. Usually, buyers will pay a bit more for calves that are already vaccinated and weaned, have been started on a grain ration (also called bunker broke), and have been knife-castrated.
This is a very important point, so I’m going to repeat it: calves that are to be sold as feeders in the fall, whether directly to a feedlot or at auction, should have been weaned for a minimum of three weeks, should know how to eat grain from a bunker feeder, and should have been knife-castrated. They also should have been vaccinated in the neck and boostered two to four weeks later, again in the neck. Heifers that are to be sold as breeding stock should have their brucellosis vaccinations.
Some auction barns have programs in which the cattle owner or the owner’s veterinarian signs a document stating that these procedures have been done. This will be mentioned during the auction and usually affects the sale price. Yet it’s not all about money. When you’ve preconditioned your calves, you know that their sale and move to a new home will be much easier on them. Calves that are preconditioned have lower rates of illness and death compared with calves that are not. The former are less stressed and are more likely to settle into their new homes quickly and to gain weight rapidly. Those calves build your reputation among buyers.
Grade and Yield
Grade and yield buyers are just what the name implies: they pay according to the carcass grade (prime, choice, select, standard, commercial, utility) and the amount of meat it yields. In other words, they pay so much per grade and per pound. USDA quality grades are a subjective measure of the meat-palatability traits of flavor, juiciness, and tenderness. A grade and yield operation can be a good place to send cull cows, which often bring a little more sold by grade and yield than they would if sold at a regular auction barn. Just as with auction barns, asking around is the best way to find grade and yield operators.
To sell beef from your farm, you must have it butchered by a qualified processor.
Getting Your Beef Processed
Decades ago, every neighborhood where beef cattle were raised had a small-scale processing plant. Today, if you’re lucky, there will still be one in your area. If you’re not, you may have to drive a distance. Small-scale plants are completely different from the huge meat-packing plants with their assembly-line cattle processing. At a small plant, each animal is handled individually, and the plant owners and workers are often your neighbors.
Find a reputable plant by asking other beef producers their opinions. A reputation for making good sausage is a plus. You should then pay a visit. Don’t go in the morning, when most of the heavy work is being done and the staff may not have time to talk. Instead, head over in mid-afternoon, when it’s less hectic. The plant should look and smell clean. Talk to the manager, who is often also the owner. Most managers are willing to deal with beginners and will take the time to explain the entire process, from loading your steer onto a truck to picking up the meat. Ask how long it takes from the time the animal arrives at the plant to when the animal gets slaughtered; if it’s going to be a few hours, ask whether they make water available to the steer.
Ask about the processing charges. Most plants charge a per-pound processing fee, with extra charges for fancy butchering or sausage-making. If the plant picks up the steer from the farm, then there will also be a trucking charge.
Once you find a processor and make arrangements for your steer, you’ll be asked to decide how you want the meat butchered and packaged. Typically, you’ll need to tell them how thick to cut steaks, how many to put in a package, how big you want the roasts, and whether you want all